Mental Floss
Mental Floss

BIG QUESTIONS

Whether you end a letter or e-mail with it—or you recognize it from the end of each Gossip Girl episode—“Xoxo” is commonly known to refer to the phrase “Kisses and hugs.” But how did these two inconspicuous letters come to represent that well-known

Sean Hutchinson
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For everyone who’s ever been unhappy with the way they look in a picture or on video, there’s almost always someone there to try and comfort them by pointing out that the camera “adds ten pounds” to its subjects.Sometimes this just excuses actual flabbine

Matt Soniak
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Poinsettias are as indispensable to Christmas as evergreen trees and mistletoe. Every year, they come out of the greenhouses and off the store shelves into our homes, and every year, some well-meaning but factually-challenged aunt or family friend warns u

Matt Soniak
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Buckingham Palace has confirmed what the British tabloids have suspected for a while: The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting. Unfortunately, Kate has also been admitted to the hospital due to hyperemesis gravidarum, or acute morning sickness—so severe that

Kara Kovalchik

For a long time, scientists thought that pruning of the skin after spending time in the water was simply a matter of fingers being a little spongey. The outermost layer (the stratum corneum) of the outermost layer (the epidermis) of our skin is mostly mad

Matt Soniak
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After the tri-state area was devastated by Hurricane Sandy, food, gas, and power were in high demand but short supply. In those situations, people get desperate, and they sometimes become violent, throwing not just common courtesy, but also any sense of w

Nicholas Ferroni
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In large swaths of the U.S. this time of year, it seems you can’t get more than a few feet without tripping over a Canada Goose; they come down here from the Great White North for the winter months (or, in some places, hang out year-round). When they’re n

Matt Soniak
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Back when I was a kid, life was pretty simple. Saturday morning cartoons were awesome, Ecto Cooler was abundant and the Soviet Union collapsed before they could drop any nukes on us. I couldn’t watch the news, or even my cartoons, though, without being re

Matt Soniak
Element5 Digital, Unsplash // Public Domain

In the majority of the United States, one candidate gets all of a state’s electoral votes. Two states, however, don’t have to go the all-or-nothing route: Nebraska and Maine, thanks to the Congressional District Method.

Stacy Conradt
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Don’t be surprised if you hear a meteorologist refer to the nor'easter that’s about to hit the East Coast as “Athena.” They’re just following the example of The Weather Channel, which recently announced that it will name “noteworthy winter storms,” just a

Erin McCarthy

Wikimedia CommonsThat’s all, folks: The 2012 election is finally over. In the run up, we tackled big election questions, from why we vote on Tuesdays to what would happen in the event of a natural disaster on Election Day to whether Americans actually mov

Erin McCarthy
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I could write a book on the strange stuff my cat does, but when I switched her food from dry to wet recently, she started doing something really weird: She’d maneuver her way around her food dish, pawing the ground as she went. Her behavior was odd enough

Erin McCarthy
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Like the Shaun of the Dead slogan says, "aim for the head." But before you start readying your zombie apocalypse weapon of choice, you'd better find out if you're going to get in trouble for taking out the infected. According to San Diego criminal lawyer

Jill Harness
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Every dog seems to have one—that special spot on his belly or flank that, when scratched, sends his back leg kicking like crazy. It’s odd and amusing, especially because some dogs seems to be as confused by it as their owners are. What’s going

Matt Soniak
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It’s a reliable movie trope: Our heroes are lost in the woods, and in their valiant effort to make a beeline out of the forest or back to camp or civilization, they inevitably get turned around and wind up back at the same spot where they began.When a sci

Matt Soniak
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Coat patterns such as a zebra’s stripes afford animals the ability to blend into their environment and among other individuals with the same patterns. Predators can’t see camouflaged animals or target specific individuals in a mass of spots or stripes. A

Monica Granados

Wikimedia Commons"Happy as a clam" is one of those expressions that makes you wonder: Does this phrase come from an actual measurement of the happiness of

Erica Hersh
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Stereoscopy—the illusion of depth created by showing a separate image to each eye—is at least as old as photography itself. In the last few years, however, stereoscopic 3D movies have come back in a big way. Theaters show you 3D movies by projecting two i

Andrew Koltonow
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