How Smokey Bear Helped Win World War II
Only you can prevent forest fires, but only Smokey could help us topple the Axis powers. © CORBIS Forest fires posed a terrifying threat during World War II. Fighting wildfires required huge chunks of...
View Article5 Fictional Bears and Whether They’d Kill You
From docile to deadly, we’ve ranked our favorite fictional bears by your likelihood of surviving an unplanned run-in with them. Paddington Bear Andean Bear The only bears native to Paddington’s home...
View ArticleHow Secure Are Electronic Voting Machines?
Getty Images It’s not that the machines have slight security glitches. It’s more that they’re almost comically hacker-friendly. Take the touchscreen Diebold Accuvote system. In 2012, nearly...
View ArticleIntroducing the mental_floss iPad App!
We’re very excited to announce the launch of the iPad version of mental_floss magazine! The app is free, and if you download it now, you can get the new issue free as well (thanks, Boeing). If you’ve...
View ArticleThe Magazine With a Smartphone Inside
The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly has a smartphone in it. Yes, inside the print magazine, there is a fairly complete phone — screen, battery, T-Mobile 3G SIM card (!), Android operating system,...
View ArticleThe Sperm Bank for Nobel Prize Winners
The Repository for Germinal Choice, better known as the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank, was founded in 1980 by multimillionaire Robert Graham, inventor of shatterproof eyeglass lenses. His goal was to combine...
View ArticleThe Sad Story of Alfred Nobel
Despite being one of the richest people in Europe, Alfred Nobel was not a happy man. The Swedish industrialist made his fortune by inventing (and later producing) dynamite. But his work made him a...
View ArticleThe Nobel Winners Who Foiled the Führer
As the Nazis swallowed Europe, two scientists fought back with the only weapon they had: chemistry. Getty Images When the Third Reich took control of Germany, Danish physicist Niels Bohr (pictured)...
View ArticleWe’ve Got the Perfect Thing for Your Shiny New Tablet
If you got your hands on a new tablet this holiday season, your next move should be downloading the mental_floss magazine app. And when you make that next move, you get the current issue of...
View ArticleThe Late Movies: High School Haka
As I prepared an old mental_floss magazine article for the internet, I was struck by YouTube’s “related videos” section. It appears that the Maori war dance known as the haka has been adopted by not...
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