Our Top 16 Stories of August 2012
In case you weren’t obsessively refreshing mentalfloss.com all month, here’s what you missed:
1. 24 Vintage Photographs of Abraham Lincoln Being Awesome, by Lucas Reilly * 2. 11 Geeky Wedding and Engagement Rings, by Jill Harness * 3. 11 Time Traveler Urban Legends That Pretty Much Debunk Themselves, by Bill DeMain * 4. Why Do Olympians [...]
Prince Harry is Partial Owner of a Racehorse Named Usain Colt
John Stillwell/PA Photos/Landov
Adrienne Crezo is on vacation this week, but she found time to share that fact with me yesterday. I am grateful. Stealing a line from our Managing Editor Jessanne Collins, I love the things that things are named.
If you’d like to use this opening to come up with some punny names for [...]
The Coffee Shop Where Customers Pay for Each Others’ Drinks
Two years ago, a woman walked into the Corner Perk coffee shop in Bluffton, South Carolina and paid for a cup of coffee with a hundred dollar bill. She asked the barista to use the change to pay for other people’s orders as they came in. This simple, random act of kindness spun into a [...]
19 Outstanding Words You Should Be Working Into Conversation
There are some of our favorite words that appeared in mental_floss stories in 2011. Some are foreign words. Others come from medical dictionaries. And there’s a surprising amount of hobo slang. Have fun working these into conversation this holiday season!
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1. Kummerspeck (German): Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon.
2. [...]
The Quick 10: Boston Marathon Facts
I’m out again next week, and once again, the lovely Adrienne Crezo will be keeping you entertained and educated. I know – it’s awfully close to my last vacation, but it’s actually just a trip postponed from last year. My sister-in-law ran her first Boston Marathon in 2010, you see, but I was too pregnant [...]
October’s Most Popular Stories (So Far)
In case you weren’t obsessively refreshing mentalfloss.com all month, here’s what you missed:
1. What 10 Classic Books Were Almost Called, by Stacy Conradt
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2. 10 Awesomely Geeky Birthday Cakes, by Jill Harness
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3. Found Snapshots: Hide This Please, by Ransom Riggs
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4. 10 Amazing Costumes for Halloween, by Miss Cellania
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5. 10 Abandoned Psych Wards Photographers Love Sneaking Into, [...]
