In case you weren’t obsessively refreshing mentalfloss.com all week, here’s what you missed:

1. 9 Very Rare (and Very Expensive) Video Games, by Rob Lammle
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2. 10 Famous Disembodied Voices, by David K. Israel
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3. No CGI Please: Special Effects Before Computers, by Jill Harness
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4. 8 Online Tournaments (That Have Nothing To Do With Basketball), by Miss Cellania
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5. The mental_floss Guide to the NCAA Tournament, by Ethan Trex
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6. Jayhawks, Hoyas & Owls (Oh My!): How 21 Schools Got Their Nicknames, by Ethan Trex
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7. 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Martha Stewart, by Ethan Trex
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8. 9 Medical Marijuana Ads, by David K. Israel
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9. The Quick 10: 10 Gestation Periods in the Animal Kingdom, by Stacy Conradt
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10. Strange Geographies: The House on Ghost Mountain, by Ransom Riggs

You guys know I’m always a fan of the latest memes, and so of course I have a special place for Bizarro Keyboard Cat – play them off!
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Umm … I think there’s something on the roof. Is it a bird? A plane? No, it’s a lobster! … And a sundry of other intriguing rooftop sculptures.
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If you’re planning a heist, I wouldn’t recommend targeting any of these 10 Safes Capable of Protecting the Worlds Riches.
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Of course, do not click on the above link if you suffer from Plutophobia (fear of wealth). And you may not want to visit this site – the Phobia Guide – if you have Verbophobia (fear of words).
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If you’re still coming down from St Patty’s Day week and need more reasons for general celebration, consider embracing some of these 13 strange holidays.
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Here’s a headstone befitting the world’s greatest electrician.
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Pets often steal the show, whether they are simply cute in real life or whether they’re one of these 10 Awesome Dogs from the movies.
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Extra! Extra! Shed a Tiny Tear – World’s Smallest Man has passed away.
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I started out strong and am now (like most everyone else) free falling in my NCAA bracket. Unsurprisingly, it seems that the odds of a perfect NCAA Tournament bracket are extraordinarily slim.
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Kids need a lot of exercise, but just getting them away from the TV to play with their toys is not enough, especially if they’re one of these 15 examples of toys that will make your children fat! (That cheese grater is kind of scary – surely that’s more of a hazard for slicing off a finger??)
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Hmm … what to each for lunch? If only I could see scans of delicious sandwiches to tempt my palate …. oh wait! You can. Introducing: Scanwiches.
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Thanks to everyone who sent in links this week – you are all my heroes! Send your finds and submissions to FlossyLinks@gmail.com.

Can’t remember the way that certain TV show’s theme song went? You might find it here: 22 TV Themes in 7 Minutes. Two guys, a guitar and a keyboard (and in one instance, a kazoo). Pretty impressive, and it reminds me how great some of those tunes are!
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Landsat 7 amazing and beautiful satellite photos of Earth … Absolutely gorgeous! (Thanks as always to Jan, links-finder extraordinaire!)
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As this website points out, sure college textbooks can be expensive … but they have nothing on the 10 Most Valuable Books in the World! (although some come close …)
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Still hungover from St Paddy’s Day? Forsooth! What you need is some of Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo! (That’s a Wodehouse reference for any of you fellow nerds out there). If that won’t do the trick though, here are 10 hangover cures from around the globe.
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A thoughtful article on Sippers Vs. Gulpers — Which Way Do You Read the Internet? I am absolutely a gulper – even though I don’t tweet or update my Facebook status on the regular, I always have Gmail open and am constantly reading blogs! What about you guys?
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Ladies, do not pull on your girdle while on a date! Ok, some of the rules from this 1938 Dating Guide may be obsolete … but I actually abide by many of them still!
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From great links contributor Sarah: “I saw a show on this lightbulb cam a few years ago (second show on the page) but blame the mental_floss e-newsletter for bringing it to mind tonight with someone’s ‘insanely interesting fact’ submission about light bulbs on the NYC subways!”
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Need a quick carrying device or an extra pouch? Learn how to temporarily turn your hoodie into a bookbag.
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Parodies of “We Are the World” are everywhere these days, because even though the organizers mean well, the product cannot be anything but cheesy. From Merinda, here are the 11 Greatest Parodies Of We Are The World.
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Finally, a little cuteness: the Adventures of Milktoof!
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Stay tuned for another fresh batch of links tomorrow!

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was written by Lewis Carroll in 1865. The fanciful story was tailor-made for film adaptation, although Carroll had no way of knowing that in the 19th century! Here are ten film versions at which you can take a peek.

1903

The first movie version of Alice in Wonderland was filmed in 1903, only 37 years after Lewis Carroll wrote the story. Directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, the film was twelve minutes long, but only eight minutes survive.
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I love Peeps. I don’t want them right out of the box, though. I prefer to cut a small slit in the box, then let them sit around for a few days getting a little bit crunchy. That’s right: stale Peeps. One of life’s little pleasures. But you don’t have to have a serious sugar jones to appreciate the value of a Peep. Check out these 10 ways you can make use of the sugar-coated, marshmallow chicks.

1. Peeps aren’t just for Easter… but you probably already knew that. There are apparently some people out there that don’t realize that Peeps come in more shapes than chicks and bunnies, because Just Born, the company that makes them, has recently adopted the slogan “Peeps: Always in Season.” And they are, pretty much. You can get them in Halloween shapes, Christmas shapes, Valentine’s Shapes and even Fourth of July shapes. I think they’re missing the boat on shamrock Peeps, myself.

2. The Peep-making process is almost totally automated now, but there was a day when each shape was formed by hand. From start to finish, it took 27 hours to make a Peep when they were first introduced to the public in 1953; these days you can have a fresh ‘mallow in your hot little hand in six minutes flat.

3. Peeps aren’t just for eating. They’re for crafts and experiments as well.

4. According to Just Born’s research, my love of stale Peeps isn’t very normal. Only 17 percent of people polled liked crunchy Peeps; the other 83 percent take theirs fresh out of the box. To which I say: Have you ever tried it? Give (stale) Peeps a chance. (more…)

As long as you can find the right DVD, television and film’s fake colleges are always in session. How well do you know your fictitious colleges? Take the quiz to find out your grade.

Take the Quiz: Fictional Colleges

Note: Readers commenting under today’s Friday Happy Hour post brought up an age old question: “Is blood blue when it’s inside the veins?” Matt Soniak kindly put together this response.

Why do veins look blue? One answer you’re likely to hear is that veins look blue because the blood inside actually is blue, because it’s deoxygenated. If you wonder why you’ve never seen blue blood before, someone might tell you that’s because when you bleed, the blood is oxygenated upon contact with air, and immediately turns red.

First things first: Our blood is not blue. It is always red.¹ Even when it’s deoxygenated. Even in the absence of oxygen in a vacuum. (Remember, when you get blood drawn at your doctor’s office, they use a vacutainer, which is essentially a vacuum in a tube. The tube is attached to the needle in your arm, exposing the inside of the vein to the vacuum and drawing the blood out.)

How red it is varies. (more…)

Premiering Sunday (March 21) at 8pm on the Discovery Channel in the US: Life, a new documentary miniseries from the producers of Planet Earth. Set your DVRs now!

Back in 2006, we were treated to Planet Earth, a BBC/Discovery Channel coproduction which was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC, and the first shot in full HD. It was a groundbreaking series, and for good reason — four years of hard filming brought us spectacular photography and compelling narratives, making every one of its eleven episodes memorable. Now, four years later, the team is back with Life, a series that promises more of the same — and boy, does it deliver. It took 70 camerapeople in 50 countries to shoot this thing. Here’s the trailer:

Now, let me back up for a minute and talk about how documentary reviewing works, at least for me as a blogger. Media outlets (in my case, PBS and several science-related cable channels) send me their upcoming schedules, and I pick out shows that might interest the mental_floss audience. I ask for “screeners” (generally hand-burned DVDs, often not the final versions of the shows) which then arrive in the mail with a brief info packet, or a link to some website with PR info. I watch the DVD, and if I think it’s good, I write about it. To be honest, a lot of the time the material isn’t good enough to write about, and that’s that. On those happy occasions when the material is good, I write it up right here.

So it was a big surprise when I got the Life press kit. Normally a press kit for a documentary is a DVD (sometimes two, if it’s a two-parter) with a handmade label, and a few photocopied sheets of press info. Everything is stamped with “for press review only,” has no commercial value, and so on. But the Life press kit is basically a gigantic coffee-table book with an embedded video playing device — yes, a video screen inside the book, with speakers — and screeners available both in DVD and Blu-ray. (See video of the kit here.) As soon as I saw the kit, I was suspicious: the kit was so elaborate that I thought either a) the film isn’t that great, so it needs massive PR help; or b) the film is SUPER GREAT and Discovery is so psyched about it that they went a little nuts on the PR front. I’m pleased to announce that it’s the latter — actually watching five hours of the show (including some on Blu-ray), it is absolutely spectacular, and very much in the vein of Planet Earth. This is, hands-down, the best nature documentary you’re going to see this year. It appears that the press kit is a further reflection of the focus on new technology and obsession with quality that went into the making of Life, like Planet Earth before it.

The Good News

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