Lifestyle

This article contains affiliate links to products selected by our editors. Mental Floss may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.Amazon Prime Day is here, which for many shoppers is kind of like Christmas in July. Whether you want to get an early start crossing off names on this year's holiday list or are just looking...

Hollywood has been enamored with aliens for as long as movies have been a thing, but perhaps no alien-themed movie has had quite the impact of Contact, released 25 years ago this month. Based on the novel by Carl Sagan, the movie marked a sharp departure from the space-travel-and-alien movies of its time. For starters, the aliens come...

When ordering a meal at a restaurant, taste should be the main concern. Whether you can pronounce the name of the dish shouldn't factor into your decision, but that's not always the case. If you've ever ordered a salad to avoid saying vichyssoise to your server, it's time to brush up on your culinary vocabulary. Here are 20...

Virginia Woolf was convinced that women couldn’t have been writers in Shakespeare’s time. Even intelligent women “ have taken part in any one of the great movements which … constitute the historian's view of the past,” she lamented in her 1928 lecture, A Room of One's Own. If Shakespeare had had an equally talented sister, Woolf said, she...

After falling into disrepair and undergoing serious renovations since closing its doors in 2011, New York City’s notorious Hotel Chelsea is finally reopening (special “hard hat” rates are currently available from $375 a night if you want to take a peek before the official grand reopening this summer). Guests can expect shiny new amenities like a French-style bistro,...

One of my favorite TV shows as a teenager was a series called Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. This was a 13-part British television series looking at all manner of unexplained events, weird phenomena, and urban myths from around the world, introduced by the famous science-fiction writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke. The series divided up its subject...

In this summer's Thor: Love and Thunder, Chris Hemsworth straps on that famous Asgardian armor again as he leads one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's most anticipated entries to date. Tessa Thompson and Taika Waititi are also coming along for the ride, reprising their roles as Valkyrie and Korg, respectively. We'll also be introduced to the villainous Gorr the...

Honey bees know nothing. Literally. Honey bees have previously demonstrated to scientists they understand the concept of zero by selecting dotted paper based on a reward of sweetened water. Eventually, the paper with no dots that provided the treat was recognized.Apparently, their aptitude for math is even more impressive than initially believed. A new study has revealed honey...

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...