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There’s nothing better than a historical mystery, which is why I love this piece by Jake Rossen—things don’t get much more mysterious than the Old Leatherman. This mid-19th century figure would, over the course of around 35 days, walk a 365-mile trek to the same places in Connecticut and New York before starting the journey all over again. Who he was, where he came from, and why he walked was a total mystery; he never told anyone his name and never spoke beyond more than just a few sentences in French. Things didn’t get any clearer (or any less weird) even after he died. Trust me, you’ll want to put this one on your reading list.
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is one of Disney’s most bizarre attractions, and I had a blast writing about the quest to save it in the 1990s. Discovering that savetoad.com is still live and preserved in its pre-Y2K glory will go down as a career highlight. If only the shirts that say “ASK ME WHY MICKEY IS KILLING MR. TOAD” were still for sale.
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Fear of revenants was a very real thing back in the day. We took the opportunity provided by a potential revenant unearthed in a burial ground in Poland this year to ask Kristina Killgrove to explore the many ways people tried to keep the dead from rising. My favorite fact I learned from this story is that corpses were sometimes buried with stones in their mouths, which in theory kept them from eating their burial shrouds to gain strength and stalk the night.
A baby can cost new parents 750 hours of sleep.
For first-time parents, having a baby can remove 750 hours from their usual total sleeping hours for an entire year.
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Just as people in Eastern Europe were once very concerned with keeping possible revenants in their graves, people in the UK and America were quite interested in keeping witches out of their houses. To do it, they’d conceal a shoe in a wall of their home. This fascinating piece by Mental Floss’s Science Editor Kat Long details the origins and history of the strange tradition; one founding father’s birthplace in particular had a lot of concealed shoes, but you’ll have to read to find out which one!
A grumble is a group of pugs.
They’re called a “grumble” because of their tendency for snorting and grunting.
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It is always so funny to me when a guy is trying to create a machine that uses electromagnetic waves to measure the density of gases and accidentally invents a musical instrument instead. That’s what happened to Leon Theremin, who called his invention—you guessed it!—the etherophone. Michele Debczak tracks the theremin’s (it got a name change) trajectory from the early Soviet Union through to ’90s Hollywood with a clarity that conveys how wild the story is without saying “How wild is this story!” at every turn.
Garfield used to own G-Mail.
Before Google launched Gmail in 2004, “G-Mail” was a free email service on the Garfield website. Garfield Mail operated from 1998 to 2001.
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Crayola is literally "oily chalk."
The name is a compound of the French craie (chalk) and ola (“oleaginous,” “oily”).
Abraham Lincoln was a wrestling champion.
Before he was president, Abraham Lincoln was the wrestling champion of his county. Abe fought in almost 300 matches, losing only once.
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Meet the snot otter, a.k.a the eastern hellbender. Freelancer writer Maggie Gigandet takes us on a journey into a river canyon in Tennessee to show how biologists are saving these charismatic giant salamanders from a gauntlet of environmental threats. I couldn’t help but admire the two scientists trying valiantly to get pairs of the finicky, mucus-covered amphibians at the Nashville Zoo to raise their young without eating them first.
Ask many members of the Mental Floss staff and they’ll tell you that Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a criminally underrated part of the Halloween cinematic universe (especially when you compare it to many later Halloween sequels). In this piece, Shayna Murphy breaks down a number of fascinating facts about this weird little movie that definitely deserves your attention. Before you know it, you’ll be rooting Dr. Dan Chalis on.
As a cat person, I had a ton of fun getting to know some of history’s most fascinating felines for an episode of The List Show. I just regret not being able to sneak my own very cool cats into the script.
I loved editing this piece by Kirby Conrod for a number of reasons: Not only did it explain why pronoun slip-ups happen and how to navigate them, plus tips for how to get pronouns right, but it also helped me understand why I sometimes miss particular words when I’ve been reading and editing all day (function words, I’m looking at you!).
I can’t be the only one who has tossed out a baking sheet because I can’t get it clean. No more, thanks to this excellent advice Michele Debczak received from Roger Sitrin, lead recreational chef-instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education. This isn’t the only time we’ve consulted ICE this year; in fact, its chefs have given us a number of delicious receipes to try, from butternut squash soup to sweet potato waffles to smashed onion burgers and beyond.
Queen Elizabeth II has had over 30 corgis in her lifetime.
Queen Elizabeth had Susan, her first Corgi, when she was 18. From Susan, she had 14 generations’ worth of Corgis throughout her life. However, the last one died in 2018. Currently, the Queen has stopped breeding new ones for fear of trampling over a puppy.
Relative to their bodies, Chihuahuas have the biggest brain in the dog world.
Chihuahuas are very tiny, so that’s not really saying a lot.
Elvis Presley's manager sold hate merch for profit.
One of the most iconic marketing fun facts: Elvis’ manager, Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, sold “I Hate Elvis” badges to make money from people who weren’t buying his merchandise.
Avocados never ripen on the tree.
Farmers can use the trees as storage units. As long as avocados are still attached to its parent tree, they can stay fresh for up to seven months.
At the Humane Society of Missouri, kid volunteers comfort anxious shelter dogs by reading to them.
Shelter dogs have usually lived through significant trauma. This makes it difficult for some dogs to be adopted due to their changed behavior. To solve this, the Humane Society of Missouri created the Shelter Buddies Reading Program. It pairs kids aged 6 to 15 with anxious, mistrustful dogs to socialize them for home life.
China owns all of the pandas in the world.
The pandas you see in zoos are actually loaned by China at US$1 million a year.
Penguins used to be 6 feet tall.
Whether a terrifying or adorable fun fact: bones found at Seymour Island showed that penguins stood at 6 feet tall and weighed 250 pounds 40 million years ago.
A scientific calculator is 6 times more powerful than the Apollo 11 computer.
A TI-83 calculator has 6 times more processing power than the computer that landed the Apollo 11 on the moon.