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Ellen Gutoskey
Joined: Jun 24, 2019
Ellen Gutoskey was a Mental Floss senior staff writer who especially loved covering pop culture, not-so-popular culture, literature, really tiny things, really giant things, and anything that was previously thought to be lost. She used to work in publishing, she's usually laughing, and you can follow her on Twitter @ellengutoskey.
The English language is bursting with colorful expressions that come from strange and surprising places—and many of them once had literal meanings that the general public has long since forgotten.
How did we get from one ugly Christmas sweater party in Vancouver to … here? It’s quite a yarn.
Jesus’s birthday is subject to interpretation, and there are plenty of intriguing theories to explain how we landed on December 25 to celebrate Christmas.
While it might seem a little more magical if we told you that nobody really knows why Santa lives there, there is a relatively traceable paper trail.
Nobody will think you’re talking about baseball season, open season, or any other season. But why?
Americans favor 'Merry Christmas,' while Brits opt for 'Happy Christmas.' Here's how we got here.
Life is bursting with pairs of commonly confused things—we’ll teach you how to tell a bunch of them apart.
Do members of congress get paid during government shutdowns? And do they get free health insurance? Let’s get to the bottom of some common myths.
Thanksgiving isn’t the only major November holiday—here’s how Native American Heritage Month first came to be.
Whether we're springing forward or falling back, we do it at exactly 2 a.m.—but why?
As anyone who’s seen the movie ‘Titanic’ already knows, the ship didn’t sink immediately. So how long was the process?
The origins of the phrase (indirectly) involve smelly cabbage, Donald Duck, and several Canadian journalists.