World’s Strangest

The Winter Olympics are still a week and a half away, but it’s never too early to start getting warmed up. Let’s take a look at the origins of some of the events you’ll be enjoying from Vancouver. 1. Figure Skating Skating has been around for centuries, but figure skating’s expressive movements are actually somewhat more recent [...]

Now that college basketball season is in full swing, hoops fans are hearing a lot about teams’ home arenas during broadcasts. While it’s easy to figure out the origins of many of these namesake arenas—basketball fans surely know where Rupp Arena and the Dean Smith Center got their names—some aren’t as clear. Who was Cameron, [...]

Of all the inane lawsuits we hear about, these are the worst offenders. Well, maybe not all of them; I suppose there are plenty of people out there who have wanted to sue God at one time or another. But these seven cases are truly outrageous! In 1991, a Michigan man sued the large brewer for [...]

“QUANTUM SHOT” #602Link – by A. Abrams Mind-bending images and ideas from a fabulous cartoonist and a superb illustrator If you ever wondered what a steam locomotive racing might look like, or fantasized about driving the biggest baddest vehicle across the desert with its own supply of sharks and waterplanes, look no further – the eccentric imagination [...]

With the holidays here, I bet lots of you are planning on traveling (we are). I love nothing more than to break up a road trip with ridiculous little stops, much to the chagrin of my car companions. They grumble, but they secretly love me for it (I hope). If you’re looking to break up [...]

Most of us remember our college roommates as partners in crime who ate all our Easy Mac. Some famous athletes may remember their roommates as “that four-time Super Bowl winner who slept on the bottom bunk,” though. Here’s a look at 11 famous roommate pairings from the world of sports: 1. Tony Dungy and Flip Saunders The [...]

I knew a family once that had several mounted deer heads on their walls. At Christmas time, they would put a red clown nose on one of the trophies, which I though was rather clever. My kids didn’t like it at all. Unfortunately, they moved away and I couldn’t find any pictures of the idea [...]

We’re all hunkering down here in the Midwest since a blizzard is supposed to be hitting us pretty much all day Tuesday and Wednesday. As blizzards go, it’s probably not a big one… just enough to close the Interstates, schools, and some businesses. There have definitely been far worse – here are 10 of them. 1. [...]

It takes a certain kind of chutzpah to crash high profile events. Aspiring reality show stars Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who crashed a state dinner at the White House last week, are just the latest in a long line of publicity-starved trespassers. 1. David Hampton David Hampton crashed his first gate in 1983 when he was [...]

When mental_floss asked me to write about my experience with The National Sports Daily—one of the biggest swings (and subsequently one of the biggest misses) in the history of American sports journalism—I took an inventory from my days there as the Chicago Bureau Chief and later as the Detroit columnist. • I have a book signed [...]