In the 1930s, how would a middle-class Baltimore divorcee become romantically involved with the man who would be King of England? It all comes down to who you know, and Wallis Simpson knew how to climb the social ladder very effectively.She started at a y...
school
On August 12, 2014, video footage emerged out of Ferguson, Missouri: American citizens were facing off against a small-town police department that looked more like an army unit launching a combat mission overseas. Following several days of unrest in the w...
This article contains affiliate links to products selected by our editors. Mental Floss may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.Another school year is drawing to a close, which means graduation season is about to begin. If you know...
Born in Paris in 1908, Simone de Beauvoir was a feminist philosopher, writer, and teacher. She won the Prix Goncourt, France’s prestigious literary award, for her 1954 novel The Mandarins. But her best-known work, The Second Sex, set off a feminist bombsh...
If the only thing Jeff Buckley ever did was record his 1994 cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” he would still have a permanent spot in music history. Buckley’s stark and sensual rendition of the song has arguably become the definitive version, and it’...
If you're shouting at some kids to get off your lawn, it's likely they're part of Generation Z—that emergent generation of idealists and doomscrollers who are still busy defining themselves. What we do know is that they are tech-tethered free ...
Charlotte Brontë was born in England to an Irish father and Cornish mother on April 21, 1816. Though much of her life was marked by tragedy, she wrote novels and poems that found great success in her lifetime and are still popular nearly 200 years later. ...
Angie Werner got a lot more than she bargained for on January 24, when she sat down to help her 8-year-old daughter, Ayla, with her math homework. As Pop Sugar reported in 2018, the confusion began when they got to the following word problem:“There are 49...
Everyone has a story to tell about when they got an undeserved or uncomfortable punishment from a teacher, but are they as ridiculous as these? From six-year-old kids being arrested to being placed in a mental facility, with these stories, you may even fe...
Starting with his first professional recordings and appearances on the Dr. Demento radio show decades ago, "Weird Al" Yankovic—who was born in Downey, California, on October 23, 1959—has managed to stay on the pop culture map and change with the t...
Years after she founded Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis was dining at the Tea Room at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia. She saw they were offering a "Mother’s Day Salad." She ordered the salad and when it was served, she stood up, dumped it ...
Everyone from authors and politicians to a former first lady and a comic book character once worked among the bookshelves at a library.1. Mao ZedongBefore he led the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong worked as a librarian's assistant at Peking Univ...
The school system is a bastion of education and enlightenment, a fortress of higher learning where our children can safely discover the facts about the way our world works. Through this system we have the opportunity to grow and mature into responsible ad...
The current core curricula of public schools in the US are comprised of the following subjects: (sciences) biology, physics, chemistry; (mathematics) arithmetic, algebra, pre-calculus, basic statistics; (language) literature, humanities, composition, fore...
For many teens, exercise is limited to after-school sports and gym class. That means their physical activity levels often drop to zero once school lets out for the summer. Planet Fitness has a plan to combat this trend: free membership for high school stu...
With a filmography that includes such films as Ex Machina, Inside Llewyn Davis, Dune, the newest Star Wars trilogy, and Moon Knight, the latest MCU TV series streaming on Disney+, actor Oscar Isaac is a bona fide Hollywood A-lister. But the Golden Globe w...
Today, education is highly regulated in many countries. Theres standardized testing, certain milestones that students have to achieve, and requirements that they have to fulfill. It certainly wasnt always like that, though, and some snapshots of education...
Since the 1990s, schools have been implanting zero-tolerance policies concerning a variety of behaviors. The policies cover such things as medication, weapons, and more in an attempt to protect students. While some say that the policies are needed, others...
Lets face itschools could do a much better job of making history fascinating for students. Teachers seem obsessed with getting us to remember dates of wars and reigns and often forego the juicy bits that make history so much more captivating. Admittedly, ...
It must be difficult for history teachers; it cant be easy teaching classic mythology to middle schoolers and trying to find artful ways to skip ahead every time Zeus looks at a particularly attractive animal.Early civilizations didnt share our prudishnes...
