HOW-TO

How to Make the Best Paper Airplane Ever (That Isn't Paper)

Want to see a glider that flies forever? (Or at least until a tiny gust of wind comes along....) BEHOLD!

The ABCs of Bachelorhood, According To An 1897 Guide

WATCH THIS: Going Deep With David Rees

How to Fold a Fitted Sheet

How to Cross a River Without a Bridge

Need to cross a roaring river? It’s always best to find a bridge, but if you absolutely must make it to the other side on your own, a few easy steps can keep you high and relatively dry.

Let's Make Some Fall Decorations!

How to Send Smoke Signals

Not getting any bars on your phone? That doesn’t mean you can’t communicate with faraway friends.

How to Build a Wilderness Shelter

Trapped outside without a tent? Don’t worry. With a little ingenuity, you can build a shelter that will keep you safe while ensuring you have a fascinating survival tale to tell.

How to Survive Without Water

Stuck in the wilderness with nary a drop of water in your canteen? Don’t worry. You can survive this situation and live to tell an incredibly interesting tale.

How to Pick a Lock

Whether you’re a suave spy or simply a guy who keeps forgetting his keys, lock picking is a handy skill to have.

How to Grow African Violets from Leaf Cuttings

How to Get Past A Lock

Dan Lewis runs the popular daily newsletter Now I Know ("Learn Something New Every Day, By Email"). We've invited him to share some of his stories on mental_floss this week. To subscribe to his daily email, click

How to Build an Ice Hotel

Lapland’s storied IceHotel, the world’s largest and longest-running luxury hotel made entirely of frozen water, is a little more involved than those bootleg igloos you constructed as a kid!

How Are Shrunken Heads Made?

Head shrinking is rumored to have occurred all over the world, but documented only among a few indigenous South American tribes living in Peru and Ecuador. How do you take a flesh-and-bone head and shrink it?

Camera Fun - Making Crazy Art Using Christmas Lights

It's that time of year -- strings of tiny lights are everywhere, and families are wandering around, checking out those lights. If you're like me, you bring your camera along on these light-viewing jaunts. And if you're like me, you use your camera to ta

How to Train Your Goldfish

Col. Konrad Most, one of the pioneers of modern animal training, began training service dogs while serving in the Royal Prussian Police in 1906. His book on the subject, Training Dogs, described many of the basic elements of operant conditioning—including

How To Get Yourself on a Postage Stamp

If you're like me, you probably take postage stamps for granted. I'll slap one on an outgoing bill or letter, but I don't usually give them much thought. However, there's a rigorous process that one has to go through to get his mug on a stamp, so we tho

Growing Tomatoes

For each of the last 15 years, I've grown between 50 and 100 tomato plants from seed, which gives me a year's supply of tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato sauce, and salsa. And plenty to give away,

How to Quit Smoking

Whether you're looking to start your own religion, swallow a sword, crack an unsolved murder, find Atlantis, buy the Moon, sink a battleship, perform your own surgeries, or become a ninja, our new book Be Amazing covers all the essential life skills! This

How to Become Invisible

Whether you're looking to start your own religion, swallow a sword, quit smoking, find Atlantis, buy the Moon, sink a battleship, perform your own surgeries, or become a ninja, our new book Be Amazing covers all the essential life skills! This week, we'll

10 iPhone Apps to Help You Survive the Holidays

As you settle down with family and friends this holiday season, be prepared: load up your iPhone (or iPod Touch) with applications to get through common holiday disasters. We've got a complete roundup here -- from fun photo moments to actual medical eme

Do-It-Yourself Molded Pumpkins

Those of you who have been around the mental_floss blog for a while know I grow pumpkins in my garden. Last spring I wrote about how gardeners are using molds to grow vegetables in odd shapes, and I said I was going to try that myself. Well, I

Salsa Time!

In August, it's hard to find time to sit down and research some fascinating subject for you because I'm knee deep in tomatoes. Everyday I head to the garden with a five-gallon bucket and fill it up. Sometimes twice a day. I also grow peppers, so that mean

How to Bind a Book at Home

In this video, actress/musician/writer Catherine Taormina demonstrates how to print and bind a book at home. The first step is to print a series of four-page signatures consisting of standard printer paper folded in half. Next, you sew each signature al

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