Mental Floss

BIG QUESTIONS

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We’ve all no doubt heard the countless claims about how vinyl simply sounds “better” and “warmer” than today’s digital music. And this belief is taking today’s consumers beyond the boxes in their parent’s attic. According to an article by Forbes published

Will McGough
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As disappointing as it can be to tear into a bag of Lay’s to find empty air where your afternoon snack should be, that extra space in the package is there for a reason.

Roma Panganiban


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Nope. Fortunately, your lungs are too large to fit through your trachea, so they’re not going to come flying out of your mouth. However, they don’t necessarily stay where they belong.

Matt Soniak




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If you ever noticed an odd smell when around your grandparents, you're not alone. Like other body odors, this “old person smell” is produced when chemicals from the skin glands get broken down into small odorous molecules that waft away into the air.

Matt Soniak




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Blushing is an involuntary reaction that seems to serve no purpose beyond making an embarrassing situation even worse.

Caisey Robertson






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While they might seem trivial to some degree in today’s world of technological check-ins, the numbers aren’t entirely random, and they aren’t meaningless. In fact, you can presume a lot about a flight just by its number.

Will McGough
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Possibly the only thing worse than morning breath is the alarm clock itself, but no amount of brushing, flossing, or stinging mouthwash rinsing the night before seem capable of saving you from the stinking scourge. What gives?

Roma Panganiban






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One of America's most intriguing cold cases heated up this week when a tip from a retired mobster sent FBI and Michigan law enforcement officials wielding shovels and bulldozers to a suburban Detroit field in search of the decades-old remains of former Te

Jessica Bloustein Marshall


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When I saw the Caribbean Sea in person for the first time, my eyes metaphorically popped out of my head. As a kid who grew up in South Jersey, I was used to the dirty, almost brown, kinda-sorta blue color of the coastal Atlantic Ocean. But this was differ

Will McGough
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Encores have become concert standard issue. Artists pencil in a big hit or two at the back end of their set list, walk off stage, wait for fans to shout for the encore, act surprised, play aforementioned hit songs in all their encore glory, rinse, repeat.

Erik van Rheenen