World’s Strangest

I’ve put a lot of miles on my car and my frequent flier card this year, tramping through villages in the South Pacific, abandoned buildings around California, the shorelines of toxic seas and junkyards littered with the carcasses of jetliners, among other places — all with my camera in tow. This is a rundown of [...]

This week, we’ll be counting down the year’s most-read mentalfloss.com stories. I know the suspense is killing you, but we’ll start with #20. 20. Strange Geographies: The Mojave Desert’s Airplane Graveyard by Ransom Riggs Out in the Mojave Desert, two hours from anywhere, you can see the silhouettes of a hundred parked jetliners. A mean-looking perimeter fence keeps [...]

The two-minute warning comes up at the end of each half in every NFL football game. Most fans take it for granted, but why does the NFL stop the clock with two minutes or so left in each half? Is it just so the NFL can sneak an extra commercial break into the action? Here’s [...]

Popular belief holds that the average American gains somewhere between 5 and 10 pounds over the holiday season (Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day). A few studies over the last decade, though, have found that we’re not nearly as gluttonous as we think we are. After weighing 94 graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Oklahoma [...]

In the 1940s, The Adventures of Superman was a radio sensation. Kids across the country huddled around their sets as the Man of Steel leapt off the page and over the airwaves. Although Superman had been fighting crime in print since 1938, the weekly audio episodes fleshed out his storyline even further. It was on [...]

Since he was a young boy, Anthony Toth has seen the first class cabin of an old Pan Am 747 as the very quintessence of luxury. So he has spent the past twenty years building a simulation of that environment in his garage. In addition to spending $50,000 on the project, he’s traveled widely just [...]

Making a mix of love songs for your special someone? Looking for something lively to slip in between Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” and The Temptations’ “My Girl”? I highly recommend a little number called “Chirp-Buzz-Buzz” by…a group of Brazilian free-tailed bats. Turns out that bats are quite the romantic crooners, using “love song” [...]

The Heene family’s Balloon Boy hoax is still lingering in the news this week. Will charges be filed? Is a reality show in the works? Do you really care? We’re guessing you don’t. So instead, let’s look back at four historical hoaxes. 1. The “Computer” That Outsmarted Napoléon Centuries before Deep Blue started whuppin’ on Russian grand [...]

Around this time of year, I always have to take a break from pumpkin planning and marvel at bird migration. How do they find their way around the world without Google Maps? We’re not really sure, but research has given us evidence that they use an array of navigation techniques… 1. Migratory reflex and navigational skills [...]

Last week’s announcement that President Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize raised eyebrows around the world. Even his staunchest supporters seemed to admit that it was a bit odd the president would win such a prestigious award so early in his first term. We’re not here to get political, though. Instead, let’s [...]