Mental Floss

LISTS

Colson Whitehead, Jhumpa Lahiri, and John Updike are among the novelists who have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The authors on the list are just a few whose novels have nabbed the prestigious prize since it began being awarded in 1918. 

Erin McCarthy


Olympic gold medalist Wilma Rudolph.

Wilma Rudolph made history as a Black woman athlete at the 1960 Rome Olympics, becoming the first American woman to win three gold medals at one Olympics.

Lucas Aykroyd


Robert Shaw, Robert Redford, and Paul Newman in The Sting (1973).

As Khan Noonien Singh once said, “revenge is a dish best served cold,” and cinema is filled with stories where vengeance and retribution gets served with chilling brutality and precision. Here are 25 of the best of those tales.

Todd Gilchrist












Gallaher's Cigarettes recommended a hack that involved setting butter on fire.

From raw beef for wrinkle prevention to cleaning paintings with potatoes, here are some of the most memorable life hacks from days of yore.

Ellen Gutoskey
A sign in Irish on Achill Island in Ireland.

You may hear an "Erin go bragh" or two, but even on the most Irish of holidays, we don't hear much of the Irish language—which is a shame.

Arika Okrent




Venus Williams at the 2023 ASB Women's Classic.

Venus Williams took the sports world by storm when she first arrived on the international stage as a teenage tennis phenom. She hasn't slowed down since.

Rashad Grove




Silent letters are a clue to how words entered English.

Silent letters are the scourge of spellers and a stumbling block when learning how to write in English—but they're often hidden remnants of how the words passed through different languages on their way to English.

Arika Okrent
Keanu Reeves stars in John Wick (2014).

'John Wick,' the 2014 revenge thriller starring Keanu Reeves, started a film franchise full of bullets, chases, and plenty of ice baths for its leading man.

Jake Rossen