Mental Floss

LISTS

Windsocks can tell you which way the bise blows.

Geographers and climatologists have a goody bag full of wonderful words that get super specific about wind.

Arika Okrent

Novelists have used everything from real killers to newsworthy hostage situations to literal white whales to craft their fiction.

Erin McCarthy














You’ll want to start using these butt-related euphemisms from days past.

When talking about the fundament, some terms have slipped through the crack of lexical history—so please enjoy these old and enjoyable terms for the hindquarters.

Mark Peters


Sometimes a picture doesn’t tell the whole story.

From Elvis Presley wearing a velvet suit to meet Richard Nixon to the migrant mother who unwittingly became the face of the Great Depression, these are the true stories behind a few iconic photographs from history.

Ellen Gutoskey








Victor Hugo, Anne Rice, and Thomas Hardy were all believers.

Some, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Victor Hugo, believed they had communicated with spirits directly; others, like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Hardy, had ghostly encounters they couldn’t explain.

Lorna Wallace