After alcohol prohibition was repealed in 1933, many American distillers had a problem: they didn’t have enough old booze lying around. It’s possible to churn out a barrel of whiskey in just a few days, but you need at least 3 years of aging for many people to consider it any good. The "time traveling" scientists of the Great Depression were going to fix all that.
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Websploitation videos of the 1990s had it all: sex, violence, and crudely animated viruses chasing you in a Tron-like hellscape from which you’ll never escape.
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Football and jetpacks have a long history together
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Sometimes the most accurate visions of the future are also the most terrifying. Like this employee-tracking system imagined in a 2003 concept video by Accenture.
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In 1922 Hobart Reese enjoyed a brief period of fame for his portraits of famous people. What made his work so special? Reese created his art using nothing but a typewriter.
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Can you spot the fakes? Hundreds of amazing images wash over our greedy eyeballs each and every day, clogging our Twitter timelines and Facebook feeds. Many of them are fakes, lies, or both. Like these!
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Actor Russell Johnson died yesterday at the age of 89. He was best known for his role as The Professor on the hit TV show Gilligan’s Island from 1964 until 1967. In honor of the actor, Mental Floss has compiled a list of the good Professor’s greatest inventions —greatest inventions that never were.
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Need to put out a forest fire? Why not bomb it with chemical-filled missiles? At least that was the plan in 1961.
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In the 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II, the food of 2015 looks incredibly familiar — it’s just prepared a bit differently. Toss a miniature Pizza Hut pizza onto a pan, stick it into your Black & Decker Hydrator, tell the machine how you want it cooked, and three seconds later your pizza is ready. The appliance even slices it for you.
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The tech industry is riddled with vaporware — those products that get a big public announcement, but never actually find their way to stores. And it’s always been this way. Just ask investors who were throwing tons of money at airship companies at the turn of the 20th century.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
