I didn't know about this fun factoid: On April, 1970, the Grumman Aerospace Corporation—manufacturers of the Lunar Module—sent a $312,421.24 bill to North American Rockwell—who made the service module that malfunctioned in the Apollo 13 mission—for towing services. Why, you ask? Here's the story.
Google claims to have made 890 improvements to search over the past year. Still can't find my keys though, can it, hmm?
Next time you go to Titan—one of Saturn's moons—remember this cool factoid: "The atmosphere is so thick and the gravity so low that humans could fly through it by flapping 'wings' attached to their arms" as pointed out in Robert Zubrin's Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization. How awesome would that be?
Our obsession with hacking life to become more efficient beings of human knows no end. We bookmark links that promise to make picnicking more enjoyable, we scour the internet for kitchen tricks and watch endless videos that promise anywhere from 7 to 101 life changing tips. But how often do these life hacks actually…
We're wasteful people. Maybe not you and maybe not me but definitely "we". Some of us try to live as consciously as possible but it hardly matters when the rest of us are inconsiderate and lazy. The United States wastes about $165 billion in food every year. Half of the food produced in the US is wasted between the…
Staring at the periodic table of elements was pretty much all I did in science classes but I learned absolutely nothing from it other than Bromine and Barium (but that's more because of a Google search on Breaking Bad). Anyways! Elements on that periodic table aren't all created equal. Especially Astatine (At). That's…
Being an enlightened individual means understanding basic scientific information about how the world works. Sure, we have teachers and parents there to fill our brains with knowledge, but the sad truth is that there are certain facts that take on a life of their own as they pass from ear to ear, eventually etching…
Traveling this summer? Don't forget to pack the suntan lotion. And check in to your flight online. And check if your flight is delayed using your flight number. Speaking of, how the hell do airplanes come up with flight numbers? Apparently there's a system! Like did you know flights that go east or north are usually…
When the App Store was fresh and new, you'd see different apps pop up in the Top Apps list. Those Top Apps lists were actually usable. But ever since Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja and whatever else decided to squat down, it's the same damn apps over and over. So how popular does an app have to be to crack these lists?
It's 2013. We should all know that there are clear differences between calling something a nerd and calling someone a geek. This is a fact! Slackpropagation created this nifty graph that shows the dividing line on what defines a geek and what defines a nerd. The easiest way to tell the difference? Geeks are fans of a…
You drink martinis and manhattans and mint juleps and pina coladas and tom collins and hell, so much more. Have you ever stepped back and wonder how these cocktails were named? Mental Floss' resident genius John Green shares the origin stories of 26 different cocktails so you can learn some. Warning: he's really good…
There are few things as refreshing as feeling the wind blow against your hair. There are few things as scary as violent winds smashing and crumbling a town. So what is wind? And where does it even come from?
Here's a short video that'll wrinkle your brain a bit. Like debunking 50 common misconceptions, this video shows 13 facts you might not know are true. Like how Neil Armstrong had to clear customs after going to the Moon. Or that Russia is bigger than Pluto. Learning is fun.
In 2012, 19 billion chat messages were sent each day across the world—compared to just 17.6 billion SMS messages.
As small businesses grow into large corporations that have to deal with mergers and hostile takeovers, their identities and branding similarly grow, evolve, and often end up being a mish-mash of various names which are then shrunk into acronyms and initialisms to make them easier to remember. A similar thing is done…
Where do you like sitting on an airplane? At the very front or the very back? At a window or an aisle? According to research by British Airways, the most popular seats on a Boeing 747 are 51B/51C, 52B/52C, 51H/51J and 52 H/52J. That's all the way in the back of the plane.
Over 500,000 Google Reader users switched to Feedly since last Wednesday. It's already upped bandwidth 10-fold to cope!
All the things that you thought you knew? Like that Vikings wore helmets with horns. Or that rice causes birds to explore. Or that Marie Antoinette said 'Let them eat cake'. Yeah, never happened. John Green of Mental Floss created this video that debunked 50 common misconceptions. Your brain might explode after…
Though most people in this world never want to think about math after high school, let's talk about its symbols. Where and when did the symbols for addition and subtraction get invented? We don't even question them when we see them now. But what the heck did people use before that?
Surprise! Everyone loves to look at porn on the Internet. Okay, that's not exactly a surprise. What is a little bit interesting is just how different our taste for porn can be. PornMD released its search statistics for pornography and broke down the most popular search terms by country and state. For example, the most…
