World’s Strangest

So it’s March, 1941. All the fashionable ladies are wearing wearing monocle veils. Then…nothing. The look disappeared. Did Col. Klink kill it as a fashion statement? Link -via Retronaut

Intricate Japanese Movable Type Sets Visual Caffeine: Exploring Art and Architecture, Issue 1 Impossible Plant-Animal Hybrid This creature should not exist… but it does. Heavy Bombers: Fearsome Angels of the Cold War A game of fear, played with monstrous planes The Jewish Engineer Behind Hitler’s Volkswagen Finally, the full story behind emergence of Volkswagen Fluid Dynamics & Liquid Photography It’s a Splash! – High-Speed [...]

The glorious march to making Star Trek real continues! We already have PADDs. Now, thanks to Peter Jansen, a researcher at the University of Arizona, we have a Next Generation-style science tricorder. Its sensors can measure temperature, humidity, magnetic fields, color, atmospheric pressure and more. Okay, that’s done. Dr. Jansen, please get to work on a [...]

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Here are some reasons to celebrate this month, plus the once-in-a-lifetime chance to create your own holiday. March 1st: National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day Peanut butter image via Shutterstock If you love peanut butter, today is the day to shout it from a mountaintop – and then polish off your PB-based sandwich of choice. Take some time to [...]

On March 21, 1920, the Sandusky Register reported on an astonishing invention in which W. W. Macfarlane, traveling in a car (driven by a chauffeur), held a conversation with his wife back at the garage -500 yards down the road! The article is reprinted at Paleofuture. Link

We’re due for another edition of The Mental Floss Trivia Show! Looks like the next stop is going to be Austin, TX. If you live near Austin or plan to be there for SXSW in March, send an email to austinflossers@mentalfloss.com and we’ll keep you posted. Tentative date: Monday, March 12th. Speaking of SXSW, our co-founders [...]

The tsunami that hit Japan in March killed 20,000 people, so that nation is now thinking seriously about how to prepare for this type of disaster. A company called Cosmo Power has responded by developing a floating fiberglass pod that people can jump into in a hurry: Company president Shoji Tanaka says the $3,900 (300,000 yen) [...]

Magnificent & Weird Trees The Walking tree, the Cannonball tree, and others Philosophy 101 (Funny Pics) Philosophy slogans to pick you up or bring you down American Concept Cars Showcase, Part 1 The Creme de la Creme of Automotive Design Unintentional Faces in Objects Funny, weird, screaming, and simply nuts Industrial Photography with a Soul Iron Bridges, Gothic Bell Towers and Mystery Machines Radical X-Ray [...]

Weird (Tasty?) Food Art Part 2 of this highly eatable showcase Absolutely Hilarious Signs! Part 14 of our wildly popular series Spectacular Cog Railways Clockwork Precision & Marvelous Engineering Gargoyles & Grotesques, Part 2 Still frighteningly strange… after all these years Oops! Craziest Accidents (Wow Pics) Part 6 in our highly popular series Nuclear Everything! Atoms in the Air, on Wheels, Rails, etc. May 27, 2011 – [...]