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Romania's Merry Cemetery takes a different approach to dealing with death.
It's National Doughnut Day — a holiday so important, we celebrate it twice a year.
Scientists Are Finding More Two-Headed Sharks
While seemingly fit for a Syfy Channel movie, these fish typically don’t live long enough to terrorize anything.
The Most Impressive Thing About All 50 States
Every state in the Union has something to boast about. Here are our favorites.
In coming years, leaf peepers might still able to enjoy a road trip through fall foliage—but the display might not look the same. While foliage is notoriously difficult to predict, researchers suggest climate change may dull autumn’s vibrant red and yellow hues.
According to Nicole Cavender, vice president of science and conservation for Illinois’s Morton Arboretum, unpredictability caused by climate change—including extreme droughts and floods—could reduce the number of leaves on a tree, hindering the spectacle of foliage colors. One bad storm can change the entire year’s outlook for fall foliage.
Another effect will be the timing of the leaf change: Warmer temperatures generally cause trees to change colors later in the season. A group of researchers recently studied the effects of climate change on autumn phenology, or seasonal changes, and found that 70 percent of their study area (the Northern Hemisphere) experienced delayed foliage. Only the arid and semi-arid regions stayed unchanged.
Of course, Cavender notes, fall foliage doesn’t hinge on climate alone. Factors like the genetics of a tree, environmental conditions such as wind and strong rains, and the tree’s overall health all play an integral part.
While specifics remain up in the air, Cavender predicts that the growing number of frost-free days anticipated in the next 50 years will definitely dull the colors of some of the United States’ most popular fall trees.
The sugar maple, for example, known for its vibrant shades of yellow, orange, and red, is expected to decrease in abundance in America’s natural forests by 2100. It’s also one of many species whose natural habitats will shift north due to warming temperatures. The sugar maple isn’t alone: The yellow birch, beloved for its bright yellow fall leaves, will also migrate north—possibly above the Canadian border by the early 22nd century, according to National Geographic.
Trees aren’t the only species which will move as a result of changing climate: The range of insects are also predicted to dramatically change. The ash tree, which typically has yellow, red and even purple leaves in the fall, is particularly sensitive to insect-borne diseases. One such insect, the emerald ash borer in North America, has been decimating ash trees—although cold winters could help control the epidemic by reducing the insect population, very cold days have decreased by more than 30 percent in the last century, according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
These somewhat dire predictions have already changed this fall’s display: This year’s extended summer temperatures caused foliage delays in popular leaf peeping spots from Massachusetts to Indiana, among other locations.
But there are some things—besides reducing greenhouse gas emissions—that we can do to help. Fall foliage effects—such as colors, vibrancy, and longevity of those colors—varies by type of tree. Cavender says that by planting a diverse assortment of tree species, we can pave the way for colorful autumns well into the future.
“As the climate changes, it’s critical to plant the right tree in the right environmental conditions,” Cavender tells mental_floss. “The more tree diversity you have, the more likely you are to get fall colors every year.”
November 8, 2016 – 12:30pm
Although Greek yogurt seems to be available everywhere you look, that wasn’t always the case. Fage, the company behind the top-selling Greek yogurt in Greece, began in Athens in 1926. Today, Fage sells dairy products in over 40 countries, using milk, cream, and live active cultures to create all natural yogurt, free of artificial sweeteners and preservatives.
In 1926, Athanassios Filippou’s family opened a dairy shop in Patisia, a neighborhood in central Athens, Greece. The shop became popular amongst locals for its rich, creamy yogurt. Almost three decades later, in 1954, Filippou’s son Ioannis joined the family business and helped create a national wholesale network for yogurt, distributing the dairy shop’s yogurt all over Greece.
From the Greek imperative word Φάγε—English translation: Eat—Fage is often mispronounced by those unfamiliar with it. Φάγε is also an abbreviation, as the four letters in the Greek word stand for Filippou Adelphoi Galaktokomikes Epicheiriseis—translation: Filippou Brothers Dairy Company—after Filippou’s sons, Ioannis and Kyriakos.
In 1964, the Filippou brothers opened Fage’s first yogurt production plant in an Athens suburb. Over the next two decades, Fage continued to innovate. In 1975, Fage started selling containers of “Fage Total” branded yogurt to Greeks. Fage also expanded outside of Greece for the first time, exporting yogurt to the United Kingdom in 1983.
In 1998, Costas Mastoras, the owner of a grocery store catering to Greek Americans, visited Fage in Greece to buy cheese to sell at his store in Astoria, Queens. Mastoras tried a sample of Fage’s strained yogurt and loved its thickness. After ensuring that he wouldn’t be breaking U.S. Department of Agriculture rules by importing the yogurt (since it contains live active cultures), Mastoras ordered 120 six-ounce yogurt containers and had them flown to New York.
The yogurt sold so well at Mastoras’s store that Fage created Fage USA in 2000 to sell the yogurt more widely in the U.S. Americans who tried Fage didn’t mind paying a little more for the Greek yogurt, which is less watery than regular yogurt. Fage’s Total yogurt is strained—four pounds of milk are used to create one pound of yogurt—and the yogurt doesn’t contain the watery whey.
In the early 1990s, Fage started selling cheese and milk. Since 1991, Fage has produced cheeses like feta and gouda, but they’re not available in the U.S. Since 1993 in Greece, Fage has sold fresh milk that is pasteurized, homogenized, and packaged in its factories.
In 2008, Fage opened a U.S. production plant in Johnstown, New York. After a multi-million dollar expansion of the factory in 2014, the New York Fage factory has the capacity to produce 160,000 tons of yogurt annually.
In 2011, Fage recruited actor Willem Dafoe, a.k.a. Green Goblin in the Spider-Man trilogy, to narrate televised commercials. Chef Bobby Flay has also done ads for the brand. More recent UK commercials for the Fage Total split cups (which have yogurt plus a separate compartment of a sweet mix-in like strawberry, honey, peach, cherry, key lime, blood orange, or raspberry pomegranate) feature a female narrator.
The financial crisis in Greece greatly impacted Fage. In 2012, Fage executives decided to move the company’s headquarters from Greece to Luxembourg to avoid Greece’s instability and depressed economy. Although Fage isn’t headquartered in Greece anymore, the company retains its authentic Greek heritage by continuing to own and operate yogurt, milk, and cheese factories in its home country.
In 2014, two men in New York sued Fage (and Chobani, another Greek Yogurt company) for deceiving customers. In a class action lawsuit, Barry Stoltz and Allan Chang accused Fage of misleading customers into thinking that 0 percent yogurt means it has no sugar (the 0 percent refers to the milk fat) and of tricking customers into thinking that Fage is made in Greece when it’s really made in the U.S. The lawsuit is ongoing, but lawyers for Fage are working to get the lawsuit dismissed.
Fage’s parent company, Fage International S.A., is still completely owned and led by the Filippou family. In 2006, Athanassios Filippou’s grandchildren joined the company, continuing the Greek yogurt family business.
November 8, 2016 – 12:00pm
When a politician hits the campaign trail, it’s expected that he or she will press a plethora of palms and embrace a lot of infants. The handshaking makes sense, but the baby-kissing tradition is often an awkward, germy situation for everyone involved. So why does anyone do it?
It turns out there’s precedent for smooching chubby cheeks that goes back to Andrew Jackson, and maybe further. According to a story printed in 1887, Jackson, aware that baby-handling was part of the deal, eagerly grabbed a dirty-faced infant from his mother during an 1833 tour of New Jersey, declaring the tot “a fine specimen of American childhood.” Then he thrust the baby into the face of his Secretary of War, General John Eaton, and said, “Eaton, kiss him.” The secretary pretended to do so, everyone laughed, and the mother had a great story to tell her friends and family. Although there are several anachronisms in this story—the most obvious being that John Eaton had resigned from the position of Secretary of War two years prior—there have been several stories of politicians kissing babies since, including Abraham Lincoln.
Today, politicians believe that showing a softer side can help them win more votes; at the very least, they may sway the doting parent. In return, in a best case scenario, mom or dad can say their child met the future President of the United States. Worst case, it’s a photo op with a famous politician. Not a bad addition to the baby book.
Not everyone thinks baby-kissing is such a great tactic, however. After Benjamin Harrison politely declined to bestow a smooch on one in 1889, suffragist/activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton praised him, and quoted the editor of the New York Tribune, who wrote, “The parent who always expects the baby to be kissed, and the person who feels bound to kiss every baby that comes within reach are equally foolish and obnoxious characters. Children have a right to their kisses as well as older folks. They should not be made the prey of every officiously amiable person in their circle.”
Nonetheless, the tradition continued, even though some politicians expressed distaste for it. Richard Nixon refused to do it, worrying that such stunts would make him “look like a jerk.” Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, disliked the practice, even once telling The New York Times, “As a mother, my instinctive reaction is how do you give your baby to someone who’s a total stranger to kiss, especially with so many colds going around? And especially when the woman is wearing lipstick? I mean, I find that amazing that someone would do that.’’ But she did it to keep the masses happy.
On the flip side, 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey defended his affection for children as genuine, stating that being around youngsters after long hours of glad-handing adults left him feeling “refreshed.”
Modern-day candidates are split: Bernie Sanders preferred to avoid baby-kissing, Hillary Clinton does it, and Donald Trump has, too. At the end of the day, as long as politicians think puckering up to a tot will help move the needle, the puzzling practice isn’t going away.
[h/t Mother Jones]
November 8, 2016 – 11:30am
Early humans may have been more sophisticated and even gutsier than we realized. Researchers examining 4000-year-old trash heaps have identified the genetic remains of several species of whales. The team published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.
The first Greenlanders were the Saqqaq people, who arrived on the frozen continent around 2500 BCE. These were tempestuous times for our planet’s climate and, consequently, for its inhabitants, especially those in extreme habitats. The Saqqaq had to be super-adaptable if they wanted to survive.
Much of what we know about these early Greenlanders has come as a result of picking through their trash. Over the last century, archaeologists have excavated numerous middens (garbage dumps) dating back to the very first Saqqaq settlements. Unsurprisingly, they’ve found a lot of chunks of bone. Bone fragments are super-interesting, but they’re also quite limited in what they can tell us about a given civilization. For one thing, it’s hard to differentiate closely related species by looking at chips of their bones. For another, not every animal skeleton would end up on a trash heap. If the Saqqaq were hunting large animals, it’s unlikely that they would have dragged whole carcasses all the way home.
Fortunately, the middens contained a lot more than just bones.
Researchers collected 34 different sediment samples from settlement sites dating from around 2500 BCE to around 1800 CE. They processed the sediment through a sieve, which left them with piles of midden soil and smaller piles of the parasite eggs that had been living in it. Then they put both dirt and eggs through a battery of DNA tests to identify their origins.
This approach has a number of perks. Genetic testing can pull information from all kinds of organic material, including fat, skin, meat, and claws. And recruiting parasites to the research adds a whole new level of detail, since many parasites are picky and will only feed on certain species. Finding those parasites means there’s a pretty good chance those species were once there, too.
The middens were delightfully diverse in their contents. The researchers found genetic traces of 42 different types of vertebrate animals, including dogs and wolves (which may have been companion animals tethered near the dump), hares, caribou, and seals, and—in the oldest sites—walruses, seals, narwhals, and bowhead whales.
Exactly how the Saqqaq had snagged these massive animals remains to be seen. Whale scavenging was not unheard of in prehistoric times, the authors note, and an unpredictable climate could have caused a surge in whale strandings. But it’s also possible that these prehistoric settlers were out bagging whales. Hunters in other Greenland cultures are known for using poison-tipped spears to immobilize enormous prey; the Saqqaq people may have done something similar.
The discovery that early Greenlanders ate whales is one that “requires re-evaluating maritime history,” the authors write. “Western history has always considered European whaling as the originator and pinnacle of marine exploitation,” yet this study “pushes back the first evidence of whale product usage in the Arctic and can be seen as a logical development of the powers of indigenous observation and ingenuity in the efficient use of a plentiful northern marine energy resource.”
The study is “quite interesting,” says historical ecologist Josh Drew of Columbia University. Drew, who was unaffiliated with the study, recently co-authored a paper on the 19th-century whaling boom’s effect on other species.
The new paper “recognizes the technological acumen of indigenous people,” Drew tells mental_floss, “and shows that they were capable of highly sophisticated hunting techniques (and apparently using biological warfare) to capture whales.”
On top of that, these findings shake up our ideas of a “pristine” baseline for marine ecosystems. “It turns out those populations weren’t so pristine,” he says, “and that our species has a long, tangled, history with Arctic marine mammals.”
November 8, 2016 – 11:00am
Want to brew a better cup of joe at home? If you’re only going to take one step to improve your morning brew, you need a burr grinder. As coffee experts explained to us earlier this year, switching from a cheap blade-type grinder to its burr equivalent will drastically improve the flavor you get from your morning beans. Burr devices grind coffee into uniform particles, which in turn facilitate even extraction of flavors. The end result of this even extraction is a tastier, more flavorful cup. If you’re dropping the money to buy quality beans, you really need a burr grinder to do them justice.
Burr grinders can get pricey, and it’s easy to spend over $100 on a mid-range model. But you don’t have to drop big money to see a significant improvement in your mug. Amazon is discounting the Cuisinart DBM-8 Supreme Grind Automatic Burr Mill all the way down to $38.95 today. It’s the same model that baristas recommended to us when we first wrote about burr grinders, and the deal offers a solid savings on a price tag that usually hovers in the $45-50 range. For the price of just a handful of specialty coffee drinks on your way to work, you can drastically improve your coffee experience. Pair your homebrewed goodness with a popular commuter mug like the bargain Contigo SnapSeal Byron 20-ounce for just $8.99, and you’ll find it’s easier than ever to avoid the pricey siren song of the coffee shop.
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Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy.
November 8, 2016 – 10:34am
While it had its “Capra ending,” Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) was an otherwise fairly dark film—much like It’s a Wonderful Life would be a few years later. Jimmy Stewart starred as the wet-behind-the-ears interim state senator Jefferson Smith, appointed because the likes of Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains) and others in power assume he’ll be naive enough to back a conspiracy to make them richer. Stewart’s character has his reputation ruined by Paine when he threatens to expose them all, culminating in a 23-hour filibuster by Smith to Congress, as suggested by his seemingly one ally, his secretary Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur). Not surprisingly, real-life American politicians weren’t crazy about how they were portrayed.
Initially, director Rouben Mamoulian bought the rights to Lewis R. Foster’s unpublished story, “The Gentleman From Montana” (known elsewhere as “The Gentleman from Wyoming”), for $1500, which he then sold to Columbia Studios chief Harry Cohn at the same price in exchange for the chance to direct another movie. In 1938, Columbia and Frank Capra issued a press release announcing that Capra’s next movie would be Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington, starring Gary Cooper, the lead in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). But Cooper was not under contract with the studio, and negotiations to make the film as it was originally envisioned eventually stalled. Capra was able to get James Stewart on loan from MGM, and the title was changed. Capra later said that Cooper was too old to play the naive Jefferson Smith anyway.
Because he wanted to rely on natural reaction shots in the three-tiered Senate chamber, which was recreated on a sound stage exactly as it was in Washington, D.C., Capra needed to employ what was then a unique multiple-camera, multiple-sound approach so that he could shoot multiple scenes before moving all of the filming equipment somewhere else. “Had we tried to photograph the Senate with the usual single camera, ‘jackassing’ tons of heavy equipment (lights, sound booms, camera platforms) for each single new set-up—we might still be there,” Capra wrote in his 1971 autobiography.
Having declared the part “the role of a lifetime,” Stewart was determined to make sure he completed the film. “He was so serious when he was working on that picture,” Stewart’s co-star, Jean Arthur, recalled. “He used to get up at five o’clock in the morning and drive himself to the studio. He was so terrified something was going to happen to him, he wouldn’t go faster.”
To make his voice hoarse, as if he really had been filibustering for 23 hours, Capra wrote that, “Twice a day Jimmy’s throat was swabbed with vile mercury solution that swelled and irritated his vocal cords. The result was astonishing. No amount of acting could possibly simulate Jimmy’s intense pathetic efforts to speak through real swollen cords.”
Harry Carey was brought in to play the President of the Senate. The 60-year-old kept blowing his lines until Capra cornered him after a lunch break. He asked the actor who he was. “Well, Harry Carey, of course.” “No, you are the Vice President of the United States,” the director told him. It did the trick.
Jefferson Smith helps out the fictitious Boy Rangers, and not the Boy Scouts, because the latter group made it clear to Capra that they didn’t want to be associated with the film. Capra, having already filmed some scenes in which the Boy Scouts were mentioned, had to lose that footage.
Sidney Buchman was the credited screenwriter on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but Capra had a big say in the final draft of the script. One of Capra’s contributions, which Buchman hated, was Senator Paine’s suicide attempt.
The movie originally ended with Jefferson and Saunders returning to Smith’s hometown, following the filibuster, for a parade in his honor. Smith also visited Paine to forgive him, as well as his mother, to get her blessing to marry Saunders. Test audiences didn’t seem to love this ending, so Capra cut it, though some of the original ending still lives on in the film’s trailer.
As Capra was finishing final edits on the film, the legal department at Columbia discovered a Pulitzer Prize-winning play called Both Your Houses (1933) by Maxwell Anderson that was a bit too similar to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for their comfort, legally speaking. They paid $23,093 for the rights to it so they wouldn’t get in trouble later.
The Washington Press Club screened the film at Constitution Hall with a number of congressmen, senators, and Supreme Court justices in attendance. Capra claimed that a third of Washington’s finest left, in disgust, before the film even ended. Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley described the movie as “silly and stupid” and complained that it “makes the Senate look like a bunch of crooks.”
Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom (and patriarch of the Kennedy clan) sent a cable to Harry Cohn and Capra claiming, according to Capra, that Mr. Smith “ridiculed democracy” and would “do untold harm to America’s prestige in Europe.” He begged them to withdraw it from distribution in Europe. The two mailed Kennedy favorable reviews of the film, which appeased the ambassador enough that he backed off.
November 8, 2016 – 10:00am