Mental Floss

NEWS



Some stores are refusing to let Black Friday overshadow Thanksgiving.

Don’t leave your Thanksgiving grocery shopping to the last minute this year. Aldi, Publix, and Trader Joe’s are among the businesses giving employees the day off on the fourth Thursday in November.

Alvin Ward


The massive megafauna of the Ice Age / Getty / VICTOR HABBICK VISIONS/SPL

In this episode of Misconceptions, host Justin Dodd  thaws out a few myths about the ice age, from the idea that Earth was once frozen solid to what actually caused the mammoths’ extinction.

Kat Long








German is known for its extremely long compound words—Mark Twain once complained that some were “so long they have a perspective.” This quick video demonstrates how those words are constructed.

Arika Okrent




There’s no doubt about it—rotting food is gross.

The word ‘gross,’ which came to English from French, took on a variety of senses in English related to size. But the ‘gross of today is different from the ‘gross’ of the past thanks to teens.

Arika Okrent