Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge (11 page)

(of the Jell-O variety)

USEFUL FOR:
after-dinner conversation, making small talk at Starbucks, and anytime you see a Jell-O mold

KEYWORDS:
grande, jiggle, or Pudding Pops

THE FACT:
Just one of the many odd flavors they experimented with, in 1918, the makers of Jell-O introduced a new flavor: coffee. No one went wild for it.

Its release was ostensibly based on the logic that, since lots of people like to drink coffee with dessert, they’d be game for combining the two after-dinner treats. Not the case. The company soon realized if anyone wants dessert coffee, they’re going to have a cup of it. In fact, if anyone wants coffee
at all,
they’re going to have a cup of it. Not surprisingly, this realization came at about the time they yanked the product off the shelves. All in all, it hasn’t harmed the company too much. At least they learned their lesson, right? Wrong. Cola-flavored Jell-O was sold for about a year starting in 1942, and for a brief while the wiggly dessert was sold in celery and apple flavors, too.

(in the ancient Icelandic form)

USEFUL FOR:
barroom banter, chatting with Vikings fans (more the historical than the football kind)

KEYWORDS:
insults, Iceland, downsizing, or punishment

THE FACT:
What’s a poor farmer to do when his honor is insulted by three servants of a wealthy landowner? According to ancient Icelandic sagas, if you’re Thorstein Thorarinsson, you kill ’em.

Of course, then you’ve got to announce your actions after the fact in accordance with ancient Icelandic custom. Luckily for Thorstein, the three he killed were so worthless that their own boss didn’t particularly want to avenge them. Thorstein and the chieftain, a chap named Bjarni, fought a rather halfhearted duel, punctuated by frequent water breaks, pauses to examine one another’s weapons, and even stops to tie their shoes in mid-battle. Finally, they reached a settlement: Thorstein, who was strong enough to do the work of three men, became the perfect replacement for the three he had killed. Downsizing, Icelandic style.

(gone wild)

USEFUL FOR:
circus dates, safaris, discussions on single (elephant) parenting

KEYWORDS:
elephant, rage, teenage rebellion

THE FACT:
In 1995, rangers at South Africa’s Pilanesberg National Park began finding dead rhinos, brutally battered and mutilated. An investigation was launched, and it led them to a surprising realization: the raucous culprits were teenage elephants.

Many of the thuggish elephants were turning increasingly violent, and had added rhino murder to their rap sheets. But why all the charges? Apparently, the young bulls were entering a period known as
musth
, or heightened aggression related to mating, at a younger age and for longer periods than normal for teens. Wildlife biologists also realized that the youngsters in the park—populated by relocated animals—lacked the structure they needed. When a few older, and perhaps wiser, bulls were added to the park, it forced the young’uns to return to their place in the elephant hierarchy. But not only did the adult supervision give them a bit of social order; it actually repressed the teens’ testosterone levels, delaying and shortening musth. The elephant-on-rhino crimes stopped soon after.

USEFUL FOR:
academic gatherings, making friends at Mensa, and amusing anyone who finds fault with good old Webster’s

KEYWORDS:
pretentious, pompous, or arrogant

THE FACT:
Fed up with reading one boring dictionary after the other (who isn’t!), lexicographer Eugene Ehrlich decided to publish
The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate
. Clearly, the act of a modest man.

Reportedly uninterested in contributing to the “forces of linguistic darkness,” this freedom fighter of pretentiousness dedicates his pages to concentrating on unusual words that normal dictionaries may not take the time to fully explain. His companion to the book,
The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinarily Literate,
provides synonyms to the kinds of fancy words he covers in his dictionary, inadvertently offering the “extraordinarily literate” a list of words they probably learned in elementary school.

(almost)

USEFUL FOR:
putting some real fear into people who like
Fear Factor
, scaring anyone, and making a room go silent

KEYWORDS:
Suez Crisis, nuclear holocaust, or “look at those beautiful swans”

THE FACT:
On November 5, 1956, during the Suez Crisis, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) received warnings that indicated a large-scale Soviet attack was under way. Read wrong, it could have started a third world war.

Signs showed that a Soviet fleet was moving from the Black Sea to a more aggressive posture in the Aegean, 100 Soviet MiGs were flying over Syria, a British bomber had been shot down in Syria, and unidentified aircraft were in flight over Turkey, causing the Turkish air force to go on high alert. All signs pointed to the ominous, except that each of the four warnings was found to have a completely innocent explanation. The Soviet fleet was conducting routine exercises, the MiGs were part of an escort for the president of Syria, the British bomber had made an emergency landing after mechanical problems, and, last but not least, the unidentified planes over Turkey turned out to be a large flock of swans.