Mental Floss

LISTS

Jessica Rothe and Rob Mello star in Happy Death Day (2017).

The most effective horror comedy movies serve up our greatest fears while also playing with them, making us question our own emotional responses to everything from witches to alien plants. Here are 25 of our very favorites.

Scott Beggs








Illustration of Ansault pear from "The Pears of New York".

From Ansault pears to passenger pigeons, you'll likely never find these delicacies from days past on a menu ever again.

Michele Debczak
Watercolor drawing of the leg of a patient, age 50, who had scurvy for 12 months' standing.

Scurvy’s mysterious cause wasn’t identified until the 20th century. Here are a few facts from the disease's long and miserable history.

Kat Long
Tech Decks were classroom nuisances, brah.

From slap bracelets to finger-sized skateboards, these are the distractions that filled teachers' desk drawers in the '90s.

Jake Rossen
The Ramones—Johnny, Joey, Marky, and Dee Dee—in 1979.

By stripping rock and roll down to its four-chord essentials, the Ramones helped pioneer the punk rock movement of the 1970s.

Scott Beggs


More than one donkey has been involved in a crime.

Whether they were guilty of having potty mouths or stealing shoes, these animals found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Kerry Wolfe






"Mesa boring."

A sampling of IMDb reviews has netted a list of recent movies that put audiences to sleep, including a disappointing Nickelodeon adaptation, a killer doll, and Jar-Jar Binks.

Jake Rossen
Tom Holland and Benedict Cumberbatch in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021).

It took just a single weekend for 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' to become America's highest-grossing movie of 2021. But what about worldwide?

Michele Debczak
Eva-Katalin/iStock via Getty Images

It’s nice to have a little chunk of change in your bank account, but it’s even nicer to invest a small amount of money and earn a big chunk of change.

Kiara Taylor






oatawa/iStock via Getty Images Plus

From really expensive NFTs to newly discovered shipwrecks to the latest developments in the world of K-Pop, here are a few things we learned in 2021.

Jonathan Mayer, Justin Dodd


sssss1gmel/iStock via Getty Images

Based on our most popular stories of 2021, it seems safe to say that our readers adore their pets, are fascinated by the strange features they see on motor vehicles, and really want to know what happened to all that white dog poop they used to see.

Editorial Staff
The Hanson brothers photographed in 1997, when "MMMBop" was topping the charts.

In 1997, the first Harry Potter book was published in the U.K., 'Titanic' arrived in theaters, and you probably had Hanson's "MMMBop" stuck in your head—whether you liked it or not.

Todd Gilchrist
Matayang (pool), Bun_Visit (arm)/iStock via Getty Images Plus

From Universal Orlando's wild (and usually inoperable) 'Jaws' ride of the '90s to the very real—and very captive—tiger shark that threw up a human arm and sparked a 1935 murder investigation, the Mental Floss team is sharing some of our favorite stories f

Editorial Staff