For ten years, the knowledge seekers at mental_floss have been hunting and trapping the world's rarest facts, locking them into captivating lists for the world to admire. Thanks to their tireless efforts, Mental Floss: The Book is packed with a decade's worth of the smartest, quirkiest stories around, including:Five Presidential Fashion FlubsSeven Shameless Abuses of Diplomatic ImmunityFive Units of Measurement Weirder Than the Metr...

"An admirable job of covering 60,000 years of human history in one volume. . . . fascinating stories, hilarious oddities, and plenty of fun." — School Library JournalThe Mental Floss History of the World is an amazingly entertaining joyride through sixty millennia of human civilization. As audacious as it is edifying, here is a hilarious and irreverent—yet always historically accurate—overview of the ascent (or descent) of humankind, courtesy of th...

Be amazingWho says you can't? It's time to get off the couch and take your life to the next level.Step one: stand on the shoulders of geniusesWhat good are the world's greatest geniuses if you can't muddy their shoulder pads and use their accomplishments as a step stool? mental_floss has combed through every success story in history to deliver this ultimate how-to guide for climbing your way to greatness.Step two: bask in the glow of admiring fansWhe...

Laugh and learn with this humorous compendium that sets the historical record straight—and "manages to educate and entertain simultaneously" ( Seattle Post-Intelligencer).Smarter than your old history teacher, funnier than the founding fathers, and more American than apple pie, The Mental Floss History of the United States is an almost (but not entirely) comprehensive primer on American history (or at least, the good stuff). From the editors of the...

The first comprehensive account of the storming of the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980.GO! GO! GO! tells the action-packed story of the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege. It is a comprehensive, detailed and gripping account of an unforgettable six-day drama that shook Britain -- and the wider world -- to the core. Drawing on original and unseen source material from ex-SAS soldier Rusty Firmin, the police and the British Government, GO! GO! GO! takes us to the heart of t...

How were the hunter-gatherers of Göbekli Tepe able to build a series of stunning stone monuments six thousand years before Stonehenge?Was the so-called 'Wow!' Signal a radio transmission from deep space, or the ambient resonating frequency of a passing comet?What happened mid-Atlantic to the passengers and crew of the Mary Celeste, leaving the abandoned ship to sail on by itself?Wonderful and weird, here are twenty incredible mysteries that continue to enth...

Everybody loves a good mystery, and an unsolved mystery is even better. Sometimes, the questions can be more interesting than the answers. The Search in Extraterrestrial Intelligence [SETI] has recently hotted up, with a whole new wave of research going to show that we will always be fascinated by what we don't understand. Was 'The Wow Signal' a radio transmission from deep space? Or was it the resonating frequency of a passing comet?Often, it can feel as if professional explainers ...

The real story that inspired the BBC drama, The GoldOn Saturday, 26 November 1983, an armed gang stole gold bullion worth almost £26 million from the Brink's-Mat security depot near London's Heathrow Airport. It was the largest robbery in world history, and only the start of an extraordinary story. For forty years, myths and legends have grown around the Brink's-Mat heist and the events that followed.The heist led to a wave of international money l...

The definitive history of the self-destruction of the autocratic Romanov dynasty.**“Filled with revelations and fresh insights and rich with observations.” —**The Wall Street JournalIn 1917, Imperial Russia faced a series of overlapping crises, from war to social unrest, that culminated in Tsar Nicholas II’s dramatic fall from power. Though Nicholas’s life is often described as tragic, a trove of new archival discoveries confirms t...

“A delightful romp, chock-full of wonderfully bonkers ideas.” C.K. (Caimh) McDonnell, author of The Stranger Times and the Bunny McGarry series."If Spike Milligan and Terry Pratchett had ever got round to a collaboration it might read like OverLondon.” Heide Goody, author of the Oddjobs and Sam Applewhite series.“The most fun you can have in the safety of a book. A rollicking good read!” Kaaron Wa...

A fact-filled, illustrated exhibit of four billion years of history in 133 objects—from Pangaea to ancient Rome to Dracula's home to the iPhone.This amazing book tells the story of our planet as you've never seen it before. The Mini Museum is a collection of treasures gathered from across space and time and shared by tens of thousands of people in more than 120 countries. Each item in the collection is inspired by a childhood dream of sharing all the wonders the uni...

A social history that pulls back the covers on the most intimate piece of furniture in our lives: "Entertaining . . . will keep you awake long into the night." —Paul Chrystal, author of The History of SweetsLouis XIV ruled France from his bedchamber. Winston Churchill governed Britain from his during World War II. Travelers routinely used to bed down with complete strangers, and whole families shared beds in many preindustrial households. Beds were expensi...