Honestly this 'no context' theme is the most pleasurably captivating episode that this channel has created to date.. Please make these a new standard. the breezy tangentilness is very refreshing and lovely not knowing what's going to come next
There's an app I really enjoy called "Ultimate Facts." You can click for more context (oftentimes a lot of it) or just keep the little nugget they offer you without exploring in great depth... They've curated a really wonderful collection. (It's free... also works without using data if you're offline/in a dead zone though I'm sure it'd eventually need to refresh to cycle through the million facts or so.)
@@MentalFloss I'm sorry but that is a no from me. If you tell me some fact with no context, it is just words. There are a number of other channels that present this way or with the wrong or limited context. Your program has always stood above the rest for presenting well researched information in nice size bites. Do not lose that which made this channel great.
@@jwharvey7167 We'll definitely continue to make more of the in-depth videos you're referring to (we have an episode of Food history coming out today that I'm especially proud of). And when we do release videos on the sillier/more trivial end of things, like this one (which I have to admit was more fun to make than I expected), we'll be sure to title them in a way so that audiences can choose their own adventure, so to speak.
PERU!!! I've sat here for several minutes trying to name countries, and then I started singing the Animaniac's song Yakko Sings All the Countries of the World to think of more countries, and then I hit Peru and BAM!! I had it. I knew it had to be shorter than Typewriter (the longest word you can write on 1 row) and it couldn't be the bottom row as there are no vowels, and the middle row was unlikely since I only had A to work with, so I figured it had to be on the top row with a short name.
Nice! I also thought it'll probably be relatively short, and then tried to think of countries with only A's for vowels, hoping to either find one or eliminate the middle row and then go with the top row :) Sadly, I gave up pretty quickly, but good for you!
After the Vietnam War, Army Special Forces medics wanted to continue practicing medicine and petitioned the AMA. The position is commonly known as Physicians Assistants, and over 10% of PAs are former Special Forces medics
You never mentioned the best part about the first fact! Guy de Maupassant would eat lunch everyday *at the Eiffel Tower* because, according to him, that's the only place in all of Paris where you don't have to look at it.
One of my favorite facts actually has two. During to the filming of Raiders of the Lost Arc, almost to the entire cast an do crew ate locally and got very sick. When they are in the the marketplace, it was supposed to have a swordfight scene with Indy and the assassin. Harrison Ford had very bad diarrhea so it was changed to just shooting the assassin. The only person who didn't eat the local food was Steven Spielberg who ate food out of a can. The cast and crew kind of laughed because he was eating cold food, but Steven has the last laugh.
Bobby Richardson, of the 1961 New York Yankees, is both the only player from the losing team ever named World Series MVP, and the only second baseman ever named World Series MVP.
On my old Olympia that my grandfather bought for use aboard several ships in WWII (Pacific), you could JUST about type Turkey on one line because the K is bent up like a SOB.
@@CorneliusCody “Coke like?” Is that slang for having to snort a keybump of cocaine to wake yourself up enough to type that comment? Or does RC Cola = Coke like? So confused.
During the filming of the original 1968 movie 'Planet of the Apes' on the first day of filming on the Ape City set, when the lunch break came around all extras were directed to the tables where caterers had set up their meals. Surprisingly, and with no instructions or directions to do so, extras made up as chimpanzees grouped together, as did gorillas and orangutans.
I would say that the way girl is historically used it was applied along the lines of sex not gender as the ide of gender identity as something different from sex was only invented by dr Money a few decades ago
Chaucer was the first known person to use the word in the 1300s and it was spelled "gyrl." Male children were called "knave girls" and female children were called "gay girls." It started to shift towards meaning only female children in the 1400s and by the mid 1500s it had completely changed to it's current meaning of a female child with "boy" being used as it is now.
My absolute favorite fact: there are no snakes in New Zealand. (Second favorite fact: there are more lakes in Canada than in the rest of the world combined).
Some scenes in the movie Barry Lyndon were shot using a Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 lens. The lens was designed specifically for NASAs Apollo Lunar program so they could get photographs of the dark side of the moon.
I was so pleased when I figured I could spell EUROPE only using the top row, but then I reread the challenge: One country, not a collection of countries. Is the answer PERU?
A couple of random facts that I know of, presented without context: - Taco Bell wouldn't be here if it weren't for McDonald's. - The moon is the only reason life as we know it exists on this planet.
North Korea may be the only Necrocracy now, but the Inka empire was officially ruled by several dead emperors at once. The Spanish even managed to pit some of its dead rulers against the living ones.
107: False, modern flowers appeared 130 million years ago in the fossil records, but because of two distinct evolutionary events, the earliest possible flowers likely date back to 319 million years ago.
“Only one countey’s name can be spellled using one keyboard row” Me, after thinking about it for a while while staring at my keyboard: * swaps the q and a keys * It’s Eritrea!”
Relatedly - when instant cake mixes were first invented, all you had to do was add water, mix, and bake. Despite their convenience, they didn't perform very well because they felt TOO easy. Later formulations asked the user to add eggs and oil, to make it feel like they were actually contributing to the process.
I think my brain needs a reboot.. I did enjoy hearing that tall people score better on IQ tests than short people. Maybe I'll someday find out why. And what is the space between your eyebrows called.. when you have a monobrow?
Saftig is also just plain old german, I'm not sure if the word is actually from yiddish when yiddish derived mostly from german which already calls juicy "saftig"...kinda odd
Emily Spinach is a FANTASTIC name for a pet snake-its cadence reminds me of Jiminy Cricket. I don't know anything about Alice Roosevelt except for who her father was and, thanks to this video, that she had GREAT fashion sense and a GREAT taste for snake names. That photo could be improved upon, though... had they included her Spinachy Emily... who surely was Madam General Spinach, Emily for short.
www.pba.com/sites/pba/files/2022-03/PBA%20RULE%20BOOK%202022%20FINAL%20v7%2002-22-22.pdf Not all the holes are for gripping, but it does add up to 11 permitted, by rule.
"PERU" - can almost type "PUERTO RI(C)O". But I guess that's not a country anyway.... Any number whose digits add up to a multiple of 3 is itself a multiple of 3 - and only multiples of 3 have this property. Koalas have two opposable thumbs on each "hand" In "Gulliver's Travels", Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars - some 150 years before they were actually discovered. Every part of the common dandelion is edible.
I miss watching mental floss videos, nice to see some new content. A bit fast though... The way I figure it, I won't remember most of these facts anyway, but slowing down could help. I can't even go "wait what?!" or "WOW! That is interesting" before the next fact comes along, Mr. Green use to throw a joke in here and there which helped. But Still like this video.
14:13 Poland was partitioned 3 times with the first partition in 1772. The country ceased its existence for 123 years. I wouldn’t call that “temporary “. Are your facts so “well researched and accurate “ as this one?
I do believe that you're incorrect when you said that most bulldogs were born by C s andection because in fact I do believe that it's all bulldogs are born by C-section at least the American kind
The name "Bulldog" with out specifications on a specific breed not only covers the english bulldog but also all of the bully breeds like the american pitbull, the american bulldog, and th mastiff which are all normally giving birth naturally unless there is a complication. So saying that "most" bull dogs are born via C-section would be proper and correct.
Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother was mistakenly buried alive before he was born, but startled the grave robbers when they found her. Source: Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
In Oklahoma, Sooner's were people who claimed land before the start of the Oklahoma land run. The capital of Oklahoma used to be Guthrie until residents from Oklahoma city stole the great seal and moved it to OKC. Oklahoma's state flower used to be Mistletoe (now the state floral emblem) which is a fungus. Oklahoma's state vegetable is the watermelon. Oklahoma as a land locked state has a "No Whaling" law. Nothing will ever beat, Lobster's pee out of their eyes
We counted 5 grip holes, 5 vent holes, and 1 mill hole which "may appear periodically," but maybe that's an incorrect interpretation of the rule? www.pba.com/sites/pba/files/2022-03/PBA%20RULE%20BOOK%202022%20FINAL%20v7%2002-22-22.pdf Saw some sources saying the max. used to be 12, which gave us more confidence that the new max. was 11, but I'd be curious if you can clarify.
@@MentalFloss I defer to your counting and stand corrected. I did not consider the mill hole, as the bowler/ball fitter does not drill that hole. In prior years, a balance hole was allowed, which, excluding the mill hole, would make 11.
There are several names spelled very differently from how they sound. It's weird, and fairly annoying. Example: Taliaferro is pronounced "Tolliver." (Bonus: Beauchamp is pronounced "Beecham.") It's like a plot started centuries ago to ensure we in the future embarrassed ourselves. There are many more of these, and looking them up is entertaining!
“Hey, That old 500 facts video with John is getting a lot of traffic from the algorithm for some reason.”
Erin: HOLD MY KEYBOARD!
I mean...
and then it gets 54k views in 6 weeks
@@quizzer I miss John tbh. He brought an energy and wistful wisdom that is hard to replicate.
Honestly this 'no context' theme is the most pleasurably captivating episode that this channel has created to date.. Please make these a new standard. the breezy tangentilness is very refreshing and lovely not knowing what's going to come next
Ha, thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure if this will be the new standard, per se, but I'm quite sure we'll make more vids in this vein.
On the other hand, I much prefer getting context
There's an app I really enjoy called "Ultimate Facts." You can click for more context (oftentimes a lot of it) or just keep the little nugget they offer you without exploring in great depth... They've curated a really wonderful collection. (It's free... also works without using data if you're offline/in a dead zone though I'm sure it'd eventually need to refresh to cycle through the million facts or so.)
@@MentalFloss I'm sorry but that is a no from me. If you tell me some fact with no context, it is just words. There are a number of other channels that present this way or with the wrong or limited context. Your program has always stood above the rest for presenting well researched information in nice size bites. Do not lose that which made this channel great.
@@jwharvey7167 We'll definitely continue to make more of the in-depth videos you're referring to (we have an episode of Food history coming out today that I'm especially proud of). And when we do release videos on the sillier/more trivial end of things, like this one (which I have to admit was more fun to make than I expected), we'll be sure to title them in a way so that audiences can choose their own adventure, so to speak.
PERU!!! I've sat here for several minutes trying to name countries, and then I started singing the Animaniac's song Yakko Sings All the Countries of the World to think of more countries, and then I hit Peru and BAM!! I had it. I knew it had to be shorter than Typewriter (the longest word you can write on 1 row) and it couldn't be the bottom row as there are no vowels, and the middle row was unlikely since I only had A to work with, so I figured it had to be on the top row with a short name.
When in doubt, start singing Animaniac songs.
Nice! I also thought it'll probably be relatively short, and then tried to think of countries with only A's for vowels, hoping to either find one or eliminate the middle row and then go with the top row :)
Sadly, I gave up pretty quickly, but good for you!
Apparently without context or a pause to catch your breath.
Going to have to watch this a few times. 😁
After the Vietnam War, Army Special Forces medics wanted to continue practicing medicine and petitioned the AMA. The position is commonly known as Physicians Assistants, and over 10% of PAs are former Special Forces medics
long lists of random facts about anything and everything are my favorite lists ^_^
Also, Peru
You never mentioned the best part about the first fact! Guy de Maupassant would eat lunch everyday *at the Eiffel Tower* because, according to him, that's the only place in all of Paris where you don't have to look at it.
That is fantastic!!
[SPOILER?]
I dont know if it is the only one but I see Peru in the first row. I didnt even try with the third row since there are no vowels
Impressive! Plus the conscientiousness to do the spoiler thing, bravo!
Alaska is the only state in a row
I need more lists like this. Forget needing some sort of theme for a list just give me chaos of it all
:39 "PERU" fits on the top row of a QWERTY keyboard.
5:03 I understood "the n*z* party band" as I pictured a party rock band like "WHEN I SAY SEIG, YOU SAY HEIL!!" 🤣
No Big Ten alum has ever been elected President or Vice President, but Michigan alum Gerald Ford held both positions.
Gerald Ford was never elected President.
He was born a King.
In the city of New Ulm Minnesota, the Sioux laid sedge to the whole city except for 1 building. I would say why, but rules of the game.
The ship's horn on the Queen Mary is a lower bass A
One of my favorite facts actually has two. During to the filming of Raiders of the Lost Arc, almost to the entire cast an do crew ate locally and got very sick. When they are in the the marketplace, it was supposed to have a swordfight scene with Indy and the assassin. Harrison Ford had very bad diarrhea so it was changed to just shooting the assassin. The only person who didn't eat the local food was Steven Spielberg who ate food out of a can. The cast and crew kind of laughed because he was eating cold food, but Steven has the last laugh.
The awkward moment when you shout Peru!!!! At 12:40am… in a duplex…. I hope I didn’t wake my neighbours!
Loved the Polish facts! Thanks for including them. ❤️
I immediately had to pause cause I went "hold on Erin that's too fast" 😂
Bobby Richardson, of the 1961 New York Yankees, is both the only player from the losing team ever named World Series MVP, and the only second baseman ever named World Series MVP.
Peru is the country
yeah that was easy
On my old Olympia that my grandfather bought for use aboard several ships in WWII (Pacific), you could JUST about type Turkey on one line because the K is bent up like a SOB.
I’m listening to this as I go to bed and figured it out and had to coke like the first comment I saw who got it right
@@CorneliusCody “Coke like?” Is that slang for having to snort a keybump of cocaine to wake yourself up enough to type that comment? Or does RC Cola = Coke like? So confused.
@@leumas75 same with Puerto Rico but with the c
Delivery so FAST that I had to slow the playback speed to 75% to understand what you were saying.
During the filming of the original 1968 movie 'Planet of the Apes' on the first day of filming on the Ape City set, when the lunch break came around all extras were directed to the tables where caterers had set up their meals. Surprisingly, and with no instructions or directions to do so, extras made up as chimpanzees grouped together, as did gorillas and orangutans.
Therefore proving in an odd, the longway 'round sort of way, humans are a _piece_ of nature.. we are not above it.
That was fun:)
My random fact: “girl” didn’t intend gender originally, it was just a term for young person. I Wonder when and why it changed!
I don’t know when, but the old timey notion that women are perpetually child-like tracks with that idea.
I would say that the way girl is historically used it was applied along the lines of sex not gender as the ide of gender identity as something different from sex was only invented by dr Money a few decades ago
Chaucer was the first known person to use the word in the 1300s and it was spelled "gyrl."
Male children were called "knave girls" and female children were called "gay girls."
It started to shift towards meaning only female children in the 1400s and by the mid 1500s it had completely changed to it's current meaning of a female child with "boy" being used as it is now.
"Man" used to mean "human" and the words for man and woman were "were" and "wif."
That Chet Hanks one! *Screaming* 🤣🤣
J appears in the German periodic table for Iodine.
This feels like all the facts that ended up on the cutting room floor from previous list videos.
President Zachary Taylor could spit tobacco juice into a spittoon from across the room.
My absolute favorite fact: there are no snakes in New Zealand.
(Second favorite fact: there are more lakes in Canada than in the rest of the world combined).
Some scenes in the movie Barry Lyndon were shot using a Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 lens. The lens was designed specifically for NASAs Apollo Lunar program so they could get photographs of the dark side of the moon.
Nice piece,
Many thanks 👍👍👍👍
The acronym/initialism JWST for the James Webb Space Telescope has as many syllables as the full name.
I work in a hospital. Cracks me up people using the acronym GSW to "shorten" gunshot wound.
3 syllables vs 5 lol.
@@brian.willett Kinda like WWW vs world wide web. 9 syllables vs 3.
Giraffes have as many bones in their necks as humans do
A crocodile is more closely related to a chicken than to a snake.
LBJs Beagles is peak dad joke.
I can imagine his smug smile when one of them peed on the floor “get Him in here!”
Studies show that humans eat more bananas than monkeys.
It's true! I can't remember the last time I ate a monkey. 😋
Now I want context for many of them! Where do I find the context?? 😅
I love how subtle number 37 is
The country of typewriter.
The Good Ship Lollipop is a plane.
I was so pleased when I figured I could spell EUROPE only using the top row, but then I reread the challenge: One country, not a collection of countries. Is the answer PERU?
Sí!
@@MentalFloss I found Alaska
Heard about the rabbit thing on scishow tangents. You are correct Mary toft is 1000000x worse than putting an egg back into a chicken.
The first female state senator, Martha Hughes, defeated her husband for the seat.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky hated Overture 1812, which is one of the most recognised piece composed by himself.
A couple of random facts that I know of, presented without context:
- Taco Bell wouldn't be here if it weren't for McDonald's.
- The moon is the only reason life as we know it exists on this planet.
The platypus is one of the only two venomous mammals that are venomous.
Ummm humans are both venomous and poisonous.
@@josephcosenza4016 just what I was thinking.
The brain named itself.
Thank you so much....
Yak butter is the principal export of Tibet.
Thank you to the Animaniacs for the list of country names in my head. I didn’t have to sing far: PERU
Enrique of Malacca was probably the first person to circumnavigate Earth.
North Korea may be the only Necrocracy now, but the Inka empire was officially ruled by several dead emperors at once. The Spanish even managed to pit some of its dead rulers against the living ones.
107: False, modern flowers appeared 130 million years ago in the fossil records, but because of two distinct evolutionary events, the earliest possible flowers likely date back to 319 million years ago.
The state vegetable of Oklahoma is the watermelon
second fact about ZZ Top - that 50 year run was the single longest lasting lineup of a band on record.
What about Eire or is that cheating?
Pretty hard to top old bacon face
Old Bacon-Face! 🤣😂
awesome!!!!
Jack Ryan, the man who invented the Barbie doll's bendable leg mechanism in the early 1960s, was later married to Zsa Zsa Gabor.
prophecy (-see) : noun / prophesy (-sigh) : verb
182. Bear in mind that author George Sand's actual given name was Mary Ann Evans.
Bear in mind that if they went around mentioning everybody's real names, they would NEVER end.
The nation of Peru fits the 10th fact's question.
Thanks for ruining it
@@ish_3 seriously, i was still trying to figure it out on my own i should have known
The moon smells like gunpowder in a breathable atmosphere
“Only one countey’s name can be spellled using one keyboard row”
Me, after thinking about it for a while while staring at my keyboard: * swaps the q and a keys * It’s Eritrea!”
Peru
@@TheGreenZone4 That works too
There is a county in Georgia called "Taliaferro," but it's pronounced "Toliver." I wonder which way Booker pronounced it...
I learned that Mozart fact from "Rock M Amadeus"
Cakes can be baked without eggs and come out remarkably similar in texture and taste.
Relatedly - when instant cake mixes were first invented, all you had to do was add water, mix, and bake. Despite their convenience, they didn't perform very well because they felt TOO easy. Later formulations asked the user to add eggs and oil, to make it feel like they were actually contributing to the process.
I think my brain needs a reboot..
I did enjoy hearing that tall people score better on IQ tests than short people. Maybe I'll someday find out why. And what is the space between your eyebrows called.. when you have a monobrow?
The last two syllable of prophesying are supposed to rhyme with sighing, not seeing.
The majority of people have an above average number of limbs.
Peru and I was the first person to say it but the internet is just slow here so just ignore everyone who said it before me. What do I win now please
Saftig is also just plain old german, I'm not sure if the word is actually from yiddish when yiddish derived mostly from german which already calls juicy "saftig"...kinda odd
The longest attack of hiccups lasted 68 years
The word "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" was misspelled in at least one printed encyclopedia.
Peru!
(I didn't look into the answers, honestly!)
St Patrick was Welsh, btw 🏴
Hitler and Napoleon were both defeated because they invaded Russia when they didn't need to
Wow, that was fun, but I feel rather beat up...
The lifetimes of Chief Sitting Bull and Albert Einstein overlapped.
At 36, you're 60% of 60. Not a huge fact but it makes people feel very old.
I'm 103% of 60
So Jerry Springer was born by leaving a smaller tube for a bigger one. Huh.
Emily Spinach is a FANTASTIC name for a pet snake-its cadence reminds me of Jiminy Cricket. I don't know anything about Alice Roosevelt except for who her father was and, thanks to this video, that she had GREAT fashion sense and a GREAT taste for snake names. That photo could be improved upon, though... had they included her Spinachy Emily... who surely was Madam General Spinach, Emily for short.
Thank you for using “comprises” sensibly i.e. not as a synonym of composes.
Zebras cannot sleep alone
Emperor penguins can be up to 4.3ft tall.
I can't find anywhere that says a bowling balls may have 11 holes.
www.pba.com/sites/pba/files/2022-03/PBA%20RULE%20BOOK%202022%20FINAL%20v7%2002-22-22.pdf Not all the holes are for gripping, but it does add up to 11 permitted, by rule.
"PERU" - can almost type "PUERTO RI(C)O". But I guess that's not a country anyway....
Any number whose digits add up to a multiple of 3 is itself a multiple of 3 - and only multiples of 3 have this property.
Koalas have two opposable thumbs on each "hand"
In "Gulliver's Travels", Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars - some 150 years before they were actually discovered.
Every part of the common dandelion is edible.
THANK YOU! :) I spent 20 minutes staring at my damned keyboard thinking of every country I could remember.
It's a country, it's just also a territory.
that trick works for multiples of 7 in octal, and for multiples of 3, 5, and F in hexadecimal
Cah-lee-vuh-lah. Kalevala.
2:54 few!
The words for marriage and poison is the same in Swedish.
There's some context still here.
I miss watching mental floss videos, nice to see some new content. A bit fast though... The way I figure it, I won't remember most of these facts anyway, but slowing down could help. I can't even go "wait what?!" or "WOW! That is interesting" before the next fact comes along, Mr. Green use to throw a joke in here and there which helped. But Still like this video.
You know you can slow down the video yourself right? Click the gear icon (on desktop)
@@tisjester Ah dang I totally forgot about that, thanks for the reminder.
14:13 Poland was partitioned 3 times with the first partition in 1772. The country ceased its existence for 123 years. I wouldn’t call that “temporary “. Are your facts so “well researched and accurate “ as this one?
To pick a small nit: the name Taliaferro is traditionally pronounced 'Tolliver'...
I do believe that you're incorrect when you said that most bulldogs were born by C s andection because in fact I do believe that it's all bulldogs are born by C-section at least the American kind
The name "Bulldog" with out specifications on a specific breed not only covers the english bulldog but also all of the bully breeds like the american pitbull, the american bulldog, and th mastiff which are all normally giving birth naturally unless there is a complication. So saying that "most" bull dogs are born via C-section would be proper and correct.
Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother was mistakenly buried alive before he was born, but startled the grave robbers when they found her. Source: Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
In Oklahoma, Sooner's were people who claimed land before the start of the Oklahoma land run. The capital of Oklahoma used to be Guthrie until residents from Oklahoma city stole the great seal and moved it to OKC. Oklahoma's state flower used to be Mistletoe (now the state floral emblem) which is a fungus. Oklahoma's state vegetable is the watermelon. Oklahoma as a land locked state has a "No Whaling" law. Nothing will ever beat, Lobster's pee out of their eyes
The bowling ball rule was changed last year. You can only have ten holes now.
We counted 5 grip holes, 5 vent holes, and 1 mill hole which "may appear periodically," but maybe that's an incorrect interpretation of the rule? www.pba.com/sites/pba/files/2022-03/PBA%20RULE%20BOOK%202022%20FINAL%20v7%2002-22-22.pdf Saw some sources saying the max. used to be 12, which gave us more confidence that the new max. was 11, but I'd be curious if you can clarify.
@@MentalFloss I defer to your counting and stand corrected. I did not consider the mill hole, as the bowler/ball fitter does not drill that hole. In prior years, a balance hole was allowed, which, excluding the mill hole, would make 11.
...I am now thinking.... I don't want to think about it.....
0:46 Peru
This is a form of torture.
There are several names spelled very differently from how they sound.
It's weird, and fairly annoying.
Example: Taliaferro is pronounced "Tolliver."
(Bonus: Beauchamp is pronounced "Beecham.")
It's like a plot started centuries ago to ensure we in the future embarrassed ourselves. There are many more of these, and looking them up is entertaining!
Samuel Pepys tripped me up for years.