Mental Floss

BIG QUESTIONS



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An animal doesn't need to be a pig, a peacock, or something just as unconventional to qualify. What constitutes an emotional support animal has little to do with the pet itself and more to do with its owner.

Michele Debczak


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Support for Flag Day, a sometimes-overlooked holiday, was ignited during the Civil War. But there was a commercial purpose behind it.

Jake Rossen




iStock.com/Andrew_Deer

Cats are undeniably smart, but do they have an understanding of their own identity? Researchers in Tokyo may have found the answer.

Jake Rossen


Voyou Desoeuvre, Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

A New York chemist found a way to make dry cleaning safer and faster, so of course he named the process after himself.

Kara Kovalchik




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Each year, more than 1 million people descend on New Orleans for Mardi Gras, an organized parade of debauchery and alcohol-induced torpor where plastic beads are tossed as a kind of currency.

Jake Rossen










Edward Stojakovic, Flickr // CC BY 2.0

The polar vortex is famous for blasting arctic air south to the U.S. But what exactly is happening here?

Erin McCarthy
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Martin Luther King Jr. earned a doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955. In 1989, archivists working with The Martin Luther King Papers Project discovered that King’s dissertation suffered from what they called a “problematic use o

Matt Soniak