According to Grandpa, any wild mammal that invades your home or garden is a rodent, often lovingly referred to as a “varmint.” This turns out to be not quite so. We know that mice, rats, and hamsters are rodents, but other animals that resemble mice or rats may or may not belong to the order Rodentia. Find out about quite a few of these animals in this article I posted at mental_floss.
A guy on the highway saw a young driver texting, so he called the police and then started his video camera. That recording was given to the police, and stands as a testament to why you don’t text while driving. NSFW audio.
Five for Fighting, the story of the Sullivan brothers, who served together in the US Navy in World War II.
A gallery of soldiers coming home. There's something in my eye...
How Arlington National Cemetery Came to Be.
Is it true that women prefer men in uniform?
How We’ve Commemorated the Civil War.
In 1955, the Atomic Energy Commission started getting complaints from local citizens about nuclear testing. The government responded by publishing a cartoon booklet that made a nuclear blast seem like a family picnic. (via Gorilla Mask)
They say you can’t tell the players without a program! When a story is an “epic saga” or a long-running series, some kind of guide will help immensely. Plot lines turn on family secrets, and fresh material is injected by the introduction of yet another relative. And sometimes, complicated bloodlines meet as characters marry each other (since a wedding and new babies will always boost ratings). To help you along, TV, movie, and literature geeks will chart out those relationships in family trees. See eleven of them in this article I posted at mental_floss.
Acrobat Tiny Kline crosses the rooftops between buildings in Times Square hanging by her teeth in 1932.
Seven Little Girl Cats.
Mental_floss blog editor Jason English told me his daughter wanted a cuckoo clock, but she wanted one with a dog instead of a cuckoo. I began to wonder why clocks use cuckoo birds to identify the hour. As it turns out, there are quite a variety of ways clocks will announce the hour. See some of them in this article I posted at mental_floss.
Otto Rahn was one of the inspirations for the character of Indiana Jones, despite the fact that he was a Nazi. His real life story would be just as exciting as a movie, if so many details weren’t shrouded in mystery.
You go to a college baseball game and the rain starts. While waiting, the players entertain the crowds with a series of silly skits that are more entertaining than the game.
A zoetrope is a mechanical device that creates the illusion of moving pictures, based on a spinning cylinder in which slits are cut. You look through the slits at a picture on the other side, and the strobe effect of looking through the sequence of slits frames the sequential pictures on the inside. It was invented in about 180AD. That’s a long time ago! The modern way to do it is to use strobe lights or camera shutters to recreate the effect of looking through slits, but however you do it, a zoetrope is still magical. See a variety of them in action in this video collection I posted at mental_floss.
How do serial killers get their nicknames? An unidentified serial killer in Long Island doesn’t have a snappy moniker yet -or at least he hasn’t claimed one.
