Weird, Wonderful World
These products were once household names, until they slowly faded from public consciousness…except that they still exist. Encyclopedias For a kid writing a school report, their research options were limited: encyclopedias were the best bet. These attractively bound, multiple-volume sets of world knowledge were a fixture of libraries, schools, and the homes of families who […]
Tired of baseball, basketball, and football? Your worries are over—we’ve found some unusual alternatives for you.
Lots of movies have inspired their own fan conventions. Let’s see, there’s Star Trek and Star Wars and…The Big Lebowski?
Think you’ve ever had a bad hair day? Just be glad you never had one like these folks.
It’s hard to enjoy the finer things in life when the finer things are so expensive. We’ll skip the caviar and stick to our good ol’ beef jerky. Wait, that’s expensive, too?! What’s going on here?
Real questions asked by people on vacation.
Beauty is in the eye of the person with the weirdest beauty treatment.
Powerful corporations often set up fake “institutes” and programs that sound like independent foundations promoting the public good—when in fact they’re just the opposite. Here are four examples.
You can remove that tag on the mattress—it’s okay. Really. Lots of products have tags on them—clothes, sheets, towels, for example. Most people have no problem tearing them off if they feel like it. But then there’s the matter of that tag on the mattress. That little strip of waxy paper could so easily be […]
Each of the 50 states has its own “official state” tree, gemstone, fish, animal, dance…you name it! Here is a look at some of them. State Outdoor Drama of Alabama William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker, about the early life of Alabama native Helen Keller, was produced for the first time in 1962 at Ivy Green […]
Here’s the story behind two of the best-known names in America.
The treatment and disposal of a dead body is a sacred ritual in every culture, but each one does it a little bit differently.
Stuff your brain with some stories about these snacks that are great for stuffing in your face.
Cold, hard facts about the cold, hard continent.
What comes before success? Preparation, practice…and rejection. Here are some people who went on to do big things despite some early roadblocks.
Quitters never win…or do they?
We’ve been making Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader for 30 years now, and to think, before we came along, people had to read magazines in the bathroom. Magazines?! They’re so unreliable! They can just up and fold at any time—like these ones did. Dynamite Scholastic publishes children’s books—including Harry Potter in the U.S. But before that, […]
Some dinosaurs are extinct…and others we only wish were extinct—like Barney. You have to wonder why anyone thought the Barney blitz would succeed…and then you have to wonder why it did. Here’s one version, written by Jack Mingo, the author of How the Cadillac Got Its Fins.
