Lifestyle

Did you have an English teacher who read way too much into what a poem really meant? That teacher has nothing on fans of the Roman poet Virgil (also spelled Vergil): They believed his poetry could be used to predict everything from the outcomes of battles to who would be king. It was all there—if you knew how...

When people need to transport their life’s accumulation of material objects from one place to another, they get behind the wheel of a U-Haul. The moving and storage company rents trucks, trailers, and other cargo vehicles to people motivated to move themselves.These vehicles have an interesting quirk: Most of them carry license plates from Arizona, even though the...

The word Swiftie describes a Taylor Swift stan. Swiftae, meanwhile, is the second half of the scientific name of a millipede recently christened in the singer’s honor.As NPR reports, the full nomenclature is Nannaria swiftae—Nannaria referring to a genus of millipedes commonly known as “twisted-claw millipedes.” This particular species was discovered at Fall Creek Falls State Park, which...

The Windy City has given a lot to the world: the Ferris wheel, deep dish pizza, Al Capone … but it’s only fair that Chicagoans have kept a few things for themselves. The Midwestern accent alone is tricky to decipher, but admitting you don’t know the meaning behind any of the city’s long-standing slang terms is akin to...

Flip through enough 13th- and 14th-century manuscripts, and you're likely to come across a startling image in the margins: a group of bunnies roasting hunters over a fire and boiling their hounds. It’s called “The Rabbits’ Revenge,” and it was fairly popular among medieval texts.Today, rabbits are most commonly depicted through their softer side. People tend to emphasize...

Deep in the depths of time, there was the Ocean of Milk. The gods and demons both desired amrita, the nectar of immortal life, which could only be obtained from the great ocean. The supreme god Vishnu told them to use Mount Mandara as a churning stick, and to rotate the mountain with the giant serpent, Vasuki, as...

Amy’s job is pretty repetitive, but normally she doesn’t mind doing what she’s asked. Today, however, she’s working alongside Sidney. Amy can’t help noticing that Sidney is receiving a small reward every time he completes a task, while she gets nothing. After a few rounds of this treatment, Amy has had enough. She refuses to go on performing...

Recently, some scientists taught an artificial intelligence software, called Delphi (after the ancient Greek religious sanctuary), to make moral pronouncements. Type any action into it, even a state of being, like “being adopted,” and Delphi will judge it (“It’s okay”). Delphi is a “commonsense moral model” that can reason well about “complicated everyday situations,” according to Liwei Jiang, a computer...

This article contains affiliate links to products selected by our editors. Mental Floss may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.We don’t know who needs to hear this, but there’s no need to shell out a small fortune to quickly (and easily!) elevate your bath or shower experience. In fact, some of the best—and most useful—tub-friendly...

The RMS Titanic has remained a tragic fixture in our minds for well over a century now. It represents both the pinnacle of human engineering and technological prowess, as well as the depths of human carelessness. With its gargantuan size, Titanic was a floating tribute to excess, hubris, and hope, which is why its sinking on its very...