AROUND-THE-WORLD

French Fries Around the World

6 Awesome April Events from All Over

11 Reasons to Be Optimistic in 2014

Although the news often focuses on doom and gloom, there is plenty of good news around the world: we are making tremendous advances in life expectancy, disease prevention, poverty, and hunger. As we head into 2014, here are 11 reasons to be optimistic.

6 Ways Cell Phones Are Changing the World (Beyond the Ways You're Probably Thinking)

More people have access to a cell phone than a toilet. What are all those phones doing?

8 Bizarre European Tourist Destinations

The next time you’re backpacking through Europe, forget the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Instead, venture into the unknown lands of Europe’s quirky landmarks and tourist destinations.

10 Deserted Places and Why They Were Abandoned

Eerie pasts and uncertain futures.

Flickr User: U.S. Embassy Jakarta, Creative Commons License

5 Reasons to Give Thanks in 2013

6 Reasons Friday Was International Day of the Girl

Ramadhan Abdulla holds cassava on his farm in Tanzania. © Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/Jake Lyell

3 Insanely Important Crops You've Never Heard Of

7 Birthday Traditions from Around the World

Many cultures have long-standing traditional ways to celebrate birthdays that don’t involve a sugar rush.

10 Magnificent European Museums

We previously looked at beautiful libraries from across the globe, but if you’re looking to expand your travels to educational locales with beautiful architecture, you may also consider traveling to these lovely museums, starting with those in Europe.

14 Wonderful Vintage Canadian Propaganda Posters

In honor of the Canadian men and women who bravely served during WWI, here are 14 fantastic wartime propaganda posters.

11 Scenes from "Mummies of the World" in Portland

How "The Power" Literally Rocked the House

Turbo B and Penny Ford, featured performers on "The Power" On July 5, 2011, the 39-story "Techno-Mart" mall in Seoul, South Korea shook for ten minutes, causing a two-day evacuation and an investigation. The cause of the tremors? Seismic experts conclu

11 Weird and Wonderful Webcams

In the go-go 90s, the Internet was new and we were all excited about the potential of "webcams," a new technology allowing tiny images, almost-live, to be viewed online. Nearly twenty years after the advent of the technology, the bloom is off the webcam

The Weird World of Country-Specific Web Domains

As the dot-com bubble reached its peak in 2000, Internet entrepreneurs faced a problem: every word in the dictionary had been registered as a dot-com domain name. So their bold new innovation was to register domains ending in something other than dot-co

6 Easter Traditions You Might Not Know

The sacred Christian holiday of Easter is celebrated in somewhat similar ways around the world, but there are some traditions from various regions that may be new to you.1. Baranek

Australian Toilets Don't Flush Backwards Because of the Coriolis Effect

Toilet image via Shutterstock File under "News to Me": you know that old story about how northern hemisphere toilets flush counter-clockwise, and southern hemisphere toilets (and buckets, drains, and such) flush clockwise, due to the Coriolis effect? I

Cramming People Into a Thing: A Photo History

Phone Booth Cramming was a late-1950s fad with a simple premise: cram a phone booth full of dudes (and/or ladies) and take a picture before the people on the bottom suffocate. As you can imagine, this pastime was most popular among college students, and

11 Cold Hard Facts About Antarctica

If you're planning a trip to Antarctica, here are some things you should know. 1. Nobody owns Antarctica. Although a few nations, including Australia, Argentina, and the United Kingdom, have tried to lay claim to it over the years, it remains free of gov

(Some) Dead Sea Scrolls Available Online

It was bound to happen: you can now access the Dead Sea Scrolls online. Well, some of them. The scrolls as a collection include over 900 texts, many of them fragmentary, so what we've got here is a starting point. In a collaboration between the Israel

The Hoax Archive

Got some time to kill and an internet connection? You've got hoaxes! The Hoax Archive (aka Museum of Hoaxes) catalogues historical hoaxes by both date and category. Some favorite categories of mine: Travel and Exploration Hoaxes; Extraterrestrial Life

Werner Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams"

Werner Herzog's latest documentary is about the Chauvet Cave, which is remarkable primarily for its cave paintings -- dating from the ice age, the paintings are surprisingly detailed, and some show a sort of "painterly" quality. In some cases, this effec

Rocks that Rock: 8 Stone Giant Sites

Nature carves wonderful sculptures all over the earth. We saw some in a previous post; now let's take a little trip and see a few more of the many awesome giant rock formations suggested by mental_floss readers. 1. The Old Man of

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