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Idioms Like Mandarin’s ‘Take Your Pants Off To Fart’ Make No Sense To English Speakers—At Least, Not To English Speakers Who Haven’t Read This List.

— By Lorna Wallace | April 16, 2024

Languages around the world have their own strange idioms. Bubaone/Digital Vision Vectors/Getty Images

Idioms are by definition non-literal, but native speakers of a language rarely think about just how nonsensical these sayings can sometimes be. For instance, using the cat’s pajamas—a phrase popularized by flappers during the Roaring Twenties—to describe something as amazing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But English isn’t alone in having idioms that sound delightfully bizarre; here are 20 examples from languages around the word.

To slide in on a shrimp sandwich // Swedish

Thinking about the immortality of the crab // Spanish

Take your pants off to fart // Mandarin

In the whale’s ass // Italian

No one becomes an unbeaten bishop // Icelandic

One’s shoes are thrown to the rooftop // Turkish

Don’t push granny into the nettles // French

You don’t know the letter ‘giyeok’ even after putting down a sickle // Korean

Chase away fright with a bladder of peas // Afrikaans

There are owls in the bog // Danish

Lid shut, monkey dead // German

Throw your rifle in the rye // Czech

A handful of shit is better than a handful of fart // Thai

Take the little horse out of the rain // Portuguese

The fence is not made of sausage // Hungarian

Should I sniff my nails? // Greek

I’m neither the top of the onion nor the bottom // Persian

Don’t let your daughter-in-law eat fall eggplants // Japanese

You are a radish from which field? // Hindi

To show someone where the crayfish are wintering // Ukrainian

1. To slide in on a Shrimp Sandwich//Swedish 🇸🇪

In Sweden, one popular idiom references a shrimp sandwich. Bortonia/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images

Meatballs are probably Sweden’s best-known cuisine around the globe (thanks, IKEA!), but this Swedish expression involves a slightly higher-class food. Att glida in på en räkmacka is used to describe someone who hasn’t worked hard for the things they have or what they’ve accomplished. So, for example, some nepo babies could be said to have slid in on a shrimp sandwich.

2. Thinking About the Immortality of the Crab//Spanish 🇪🇸

In Spanish, one idiom considers a crab’s lifespan. Redlio Designs/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images

In Spanish, pensando en la inmortalidad del cangrejo is a poetic way to say that someone is daydreaming. Crabs aren’t immortal, of course, which simply adds to the whimsical quality of the phrase. Other languages have their own versions of this mind-wandering idiom: In Polish, the expression is myśleć o niebieskich migdałach, which means “you are thinking about blue almonds.”

3. Take Your Pants Off to Fart//Mandarin 🇨🇳

One Mandarin idiom references flatulence. Borisz/Digital Vision Vectors/Getty Images

Although this Chinese idiom about flatulence is probably best left unsaid in polite company, it’s a hilariously evocative way to describe someone doing something pointlessly over the top. Tuō kùzi fangpì (脱裤子放屁) is what’s known as a xiehouyu (歇后语), a shortened witticism. There are two parts to the saying, with the first being idiomatic and the second providing an explanation. In the case of taking your pants off to fart, the rationale is that it’s an unnecessary action, which in Mandarin is duōcǐyījǔ (多此一举). As with English equivalents—for example, speak of the devil and he shall appear—it’s usually not necessary to say the second part.

4. In the Whale’s Ass//Italian 🇮🇹

An Italian idiom considers a whale’s posterior. Malte Mueller/fStop/Getty Images

Another butt-related idiom that comes in two parts is Italy’s in culo alla balena, which literally translates to “in the whale’s ass” and is comparable to saying “break a leg” in English to wish someone good luck. The respondent must then reply “speriamo che non caghi,” “let’s hope it doesn’t shit”—otherwise it’s bad luck. A less vulgar alternative is in bocca al lupo, “into the wolf’s mouth,” which is most commonly answered with crepi, “may it die.”

5. No one becomes an unbeaten bishop // Icelandic

Looking to say “no pain, no gain” the Icelandic way? You’ll want to use enginn verður óbarinn biskup, which means “no one becomes an unbeaten bishop.” This idiom is supposedly a reference to the medieval-era Icelandic Bishop Guðmundur Arason, who is said to have faced a lot of hardship on the road to his religious position.

6. One’s Shoes are Thrown to the Rooftop//Turkish 🇹🇷

One Turkish idiom involves shoes on a roof. Bortonia/Digital Vision Vectors/Getty Images

If you want to say that someone has fallen out of favor in Turkish, use the idiom pabucu dama atılmak. The story goes that during the Ottoman Empire, if a shoemaker was judged to have crafted an inferior product, the shoes they had made would be thrown onto the roof of their shop to serve as a warning sign to other potential customers—hence the connection between declining popularity and shoes on roofs.

7. Don’t Push Granny into the Nettles//French 🇫🇷

Depending on the context, faut pas pousser mémé dans les orties either means “don’t exaggerate” or “don’t push it.” For instance, say you offer to bring a bottle of expensive champagne to a party—when the host asks if you can bring three instead, you’d be justified in saying “don’t push granny into the nettles!”

8. You Don’t Know the Letter ‘Giyeok’ Even After Putting Down a Sickle//Korean 🇰🇷 🇰🇵

A colorful way to call someone “foolish” in Korean is nat noko giyeokjado moreunda (낫놓고기역자도모른다). Although this idiom may seem nonsensical in translation, to anyone familiar with Hangul, the Korean alphabet, it makes perfect sense. The first letter in the alphabet is giyeok (ㄱ), so it’s considered the most basic letter because it’s the first one that children learn. It also happens to be shaped like a sickle, so if someone doesn’t know giyeok, even when looking at the blade, then they aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

9. Chase away fright with a bladder of Peas//Afrikaans

Peas are part of an Afrikaans idiom. JakeOlimb/Digital Vision Viectors/Getty Images

In English, people who scare easily—like Scooby-Doo and Shaggy, for instance—are said to be “afraid of their own shadow.” In Afrikaans, the expression is jy kan hom met ń blaas ertjies die skrik op die lyf jag, or “chase away fright with a bladder of peas.” That’s also not the only Afrikaans idiom to describe scaredy-cats though; another is skrik vir koue pampoen, which means they’re “afraid of cold pumpkin.”

10. There are Owls in the Bog//Danish 🇩🇰

Owls are a part of one Danish idiom. Bubaone/Digital Vision Vectors/Getty Images

The Danish idiom for describing something as suspicious or fishy, der er ugler i mosen, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, likely thanks to a corruption of the original phrase. It’s thought that this expression started out with a reference to ulve, “wolves,” but that at some point the Jutlandic dialect of this word, uller, was misunderstood as ugler, meaning “owls.” To be fair, although there’s more reason to be cautious of wolves than owls, the canines were actually extinct in Denmark between 1813 and 2012. This phrase has also crossed over into Swedish (att ana ugglor i mossen, “owls in the moss”) and Norwegian (which is the same as in Danish).

11. Lid Shut, Monkey Dead//German 🇩🇪

To say “end of story” in German, simply use the idiom klappe zu, affe tot, meaning “lid shut, monkey dead.” Although klappe can also be slang for “shut up,” in the context of this phrase it means “the story is done” or “that’s that,” rather than being a rude way of telling someone to stop speaking.

12. Throw Your Rifle in the Rye//Czech 🇨🇿

Rocky Balboa would never give up and throw in the towel—a phrase that came from the boxing convention of literally throwing a towel into the ring to admit defeat. In Czech, the saying is hodit flintu do žita, or “throw your rifle in the rye.” The origins of the Czech version of the phrase are less clear than the English version, but Slovenians also say something similar: vržemo puško v koruzo, “throw a rifle into the corn.”

13. A Handful of Shit is Better Than a Handful of Fart//Thai 🇹🇭

This proverb is along the same lines as the English saying “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” which advises being content with what you have and not risking it for more. The Thai version, kam khi di kwa kam tot (กำขี้ดีกว่ากำตด), is slightly different, asserting that it’s better to get something—even poop—than nothing. Having said that, if this adage were taken literally, most people would surly prefer a handful of fart (although there are always exceptions!).

14. Take the Little Horse 🐎 Out of the Rain//Portuguese 🇵🇹

One Portuguese idiom involves a horse in the rain. CSA Images/Getty Images

When telling someone to give up on an idea in Portuguese, it’s common to say “tirar o cavalinho da chuva,” similar to the way “don’t hold your breath” is used in English. The origins of this phrase possibly come from when horses were the main mode of transportation. If a guest was invited to stay at their host’s house for a while, they would be told to stable their horse, rather than leaving it out in the elements. These days, the idiom is used ironically to shut people down: If a kid asks to see a scary horror movie, for example, their guardian might reply “take your little horse out of the rain!”

15. The Fence is Not Made of Sausage//Hungarian 🇭🇺

This Hungarian idiom assumes a love of sausage, which is a staple food in Hungary. Nem kolbászból van a kerítés essentially means that something or somewhere isn’t as good as you think it is.

16. Should I Sniff My Nails?//Greek 🇬🇷

In Greek, asking “should I sniff my nails?” has nothing to do with actual nail smelling. CSA Images/Getty Images (Left) One Japanese idiom involves eggplants ... and daughters-in-law. Digital Vision Vectors/Getty Images (Right)

If a Greek person is asked a question that they couldn’t possibly know the answer to, they’ll reply with the expression prépi na miríso ta níhia mu (πρέπει να μυρίσω τα νύχια μου). It literally translates to “should I sniff my nails?” but it basically means “how would I know?” The idiom supposedly comes from Ancient Greek oracles dipping their fingertips into hallucinogenic oil and then sniffing them in order to enter a trance-like state that would apparently enable them to predict the future.

17. I’m Neither the Top of the Onion Nor the Bottom//Persian 🇮🇷

Persians don’t simply say that something has nothing to do with them—instead, they say that they’re man na sar-e piâzam na tah-e piâz (تو سر پیازی یا ته پیاز). Both the top of an onion (the leafy greens) and the bottom (the round bulb) are edible, hence why saying you’re neither means that you’re no use in a situation. The expression can also be turned around on someone else to tell them to stop meddling in something that isn’t their business.

18. Don’t Let Your Daughter-in-Law Eat Fall Eggplants//Japanese 🇯🇵

One story behind the idiom akinasu wa yome ni kuwasuna (秋茄子は嫁に食わすな)—meaning “don’t allow yourself to be taken advantage of”—is that eggplants are particularly good in the fall season, and so such a delicacy shouldn’t be wasted on daughters-in-law, who historically ranked fairly low in the traditional Japanese family hierarchy. The alternative explanation is less cruel: Eggplants are thought to cool the body, which allegedly makes it harder to get pregnant.

19. You are a Radish From Which Field?//Hindi and Urdu 🇮🇳 🇵🇰

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the Hindi and Urdu saying tuu kis khet kii muulii hai (तुमकिसखेतकीमूलीहो)/تُو کس کھیت کی مُولِی ہو is really about where a radish took root. It’s actually used as a derogatory response to someone, along the same lines as “what makes you so special?” or “who do you think you are?”

20. To Show Someone Where the Crayfish are Wintering//Ukrainian 🇺🇦

— By Sam Hindman | May 19, 2025

It Doesn’t Get Much More Suburban Than This. Nano/GettyImages

If you were born between 1985 and 2005, chances are you spent a solid portion of your childhood squished into the third row of a Dodge Caravan, eating Goldfish crackers off the floor mats. Back then, minivans were everywhere.

But now, they’ve all but vanished. You’ll still spot the occasional minivan out on the road. But they’re a scarce sight in today’s school drop-off lines, replaced instead by the ever-ubiquitous SUV. What happened to this quintessential family vehicle as we knew it?

A Brief History of the Minivan

A Mini Comeback

A Brief History of The Minivan

The minivan got its start in the age of shoulder pads and Satanic panic. Chrysler came up with an idea for a vehicle built around the American suburbanite in the 1980s. It was the minivan, a spacious vehicle complete with sliding doors, cupholders, and enough cargo storage for your kids and their soccer buddies.

By the early 2000s, the minivan had hit its peak, with 1.3 million sold in a single year. But that peak was also the beginning of the end. Because while the minivan was useful, it was never cool: the cars were even rudely dubbed “mom-mobiles” and “loser cruisers.”

The rise of Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) in the ‘90s and early 2000s didn’t help the minivan’s popularity. While the SUV was basically just a less practical, more expensive version of its older counterpart, there was a key difference in branding that brought in the consumer crowds. Suddenly, everyone wanted to embody that very SUV feeling of adventure, freedom, and a less stuck-in-the-suburbs version of parenthood.

A Mini Comeback

The minivan’s fall from grace was partially about aesthetics, but it was also about something deeper: the changing American family.

Birth rates in the U.S. have been steadily declining for years, with the CDC reporting a historic low in 2023. Meanwhile, a growing number of young adults aren’t sure they want kids at all. The classic image of two parents shuttling around their horde of kids just doesn’t represent most households anymore. With fewer children to lug around, the demand for a vehicle that could fit a large family has simply declined.

A Volkswagen Caddy Maxi Minivan on Display at the 101st Brussels Motor Show, 2025. Sjoerd van der Wal/GettyImages

Sugar Rushes Might Be A Myth, According To Scientists—But The Science Behind Why Sugar Crashes Happen Is All Too Real.

— By Jeanette Beebe | Mar 31, 2025

Just Watch Out For The Sugar Crash. Bebe Istrate, 500px Collection, Getty Images

We’ve all heard of the so-called “sugar rush.” It’s a vision that prompts parents and even teachers to snatch candy away from kids, fearing they’ll soon be bouncing off the walls, wired and hyperactive. It’s a myth American culture has clung to for decades—and these days, it’s not just a kid thing. Adults are wary of sugar, too.

Some of this fear is warranted—diabetes, the obesity epidemic—but the truth is, sugar doesn’t cause hyperactivity. Its impact on the body isn’t an up-and-down thing. The science is clear: There is no “sugar rush.”

To find out how and why the myth started, we need to go back to well before the first World War—then pay a visit to the 1970s.

America’s Complicated Relationship With Sugar

The Origins of the Sugar Rush Myth

The Science of the Sugar Crash

America’s Complicated Relationship With Sugar

According to cultural historian Samira Kawash, America has had a long, complex, love-hate relationship with sugar. In Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure, Kawash traces the turn from candy-as-treat to candy-as-food in the early 20th century. At that time, the dietary recommendations from scientists included a mix of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, with sugar as essential for energy.

Not everyone was on board: The temperance movement, for example, pushed the idea that sugar caused an intoxication similar to alcohol, making candy-eaters sluggish, loopy, and overstimulated. In 1907, the chief of the Philadelphia Bureau of Health estimated that the “appetite” for candy and alcohol were “one and the same,” Kawash writes. On the flip side, other scientists suggested that sugar from candy could stave off cravings for alcohol—a suggestion that candymakers then used in their advertisements.

Candy Shops Go Way Back—And Were Always Bustling. Historical/GettyImages

While the debate about sugar as an energy source raged in America, militaries around the world were also exploring sugar as energy for soldiers. In 1898, the Prussian war office became the first to commission a study on the sweet stuff—with promising results: “Sugar in small doses is well-adapted to help men to perform extraordinary muscular labor,” early researchers wrote. German military experiments introduced candy and chocolate cakes as fortification for the troops, and the U.S. military added sugary foods to soldiers’ diets soon after. When American soldiers returned from World War I, they craved sweets, which “propelled an enormous boom” in candy sales that has lasted to this day, Kawash wrote on her blog, The Candy Professor. American advertisers framed candy as a quick, easy source of energy for busy adults during their workday.

As artificial sweeteners moved into kitchens in the 1950s, candymakers struggled to make their products appeal to women who were watching their waistlines. One industry group, Sugar Information Inc., produced a tiny “Memo to Dieters” pamphlet in 1954 designed to fit inside chocolate boxes. “Sugar before meals raises your blood sugar level and reduces your appetite,” it claimed. But by the 1970s, the sugar-positivity heyday had started to wane.

The Origins of The Sugar Rush Myth

The idea that sugar causes hyperactivity gained traction in the early 1970s, when more attention was being paid to how diet might affect behavior. One of the major figures studying the possible connection between diet and behavior was an allergist named Benjamin Feingold, who hypothesized that certain food additives, including dyes and artificial flavorings, might lead to hyperactivity.

He formalized this into a popular—yet controversial—elimination diet program. Though certain sugary foods were banned from the program for containing dyes and flavorings, sugar itself was never formally prohibited. Still, thanks in part of the Feingold diet, sugar started to become the poster child for diet and hyperactivity.

It wasn’t until the late 1980s that serious doubts about sugar’s connection to hyperactivity began to be raised by scientists. As FDA historian Suzanne White Junod wrote in 2003 [PDF], the 1988 Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health concluded that “alleged links between sugar consumption and hyperactivity/attention deficit disorders in children had not been scientifically supported.” Despite “mothers’ mantra of no sweets before dinner,” she noted, “more serious allegations of adverse pediatric consequences … have not withstood scientific scrutiny.”

A 1994 paper found that aspartame—an artificial sweetener that had also been accused of inducing hyperactivity in children—had no effect on 15 children with ADHD, even though they had consumed 10 times more than the typical amount.

A year later, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a meta-analysis of the effect of sugar on children’s behavior and cognition. It examined data from 23 studies that were conducted under controlled conditions: In every study, some children were given sugar, and others were given an artificial sweetener placebo like aspartame. Neither researchers nor children knew who received the real thing. The studies recruited neurotypical children, kids with ADHD, and a group who were “sensitive” to sugar, according to their parents.

Not All Forms of Sugar Are Equal, Either. Justin Sullivan/GettyImages

The analysis found that “sugar does not affect the behavior or cognitive performance of children.” (The authors did note that “a small effect of sugar or effects on subsets of children cannot be ruled out.”)

“So far, all the well-controlled scientific studies examining the relationship between sugar and behavior in children have not been able to demonstrate it,” Mark Wolraich, an emeritus professor of pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center who has worked with children with ADHD for more than 30 years and the co-author of that 1995 paper, told Mental Floss in 2018.

Yet the myth that consuming sugar causes hyperactivity hasn’t really gone away. One major reason is the placebo effect, which can have powerful results. The idea that you or your children might feel a sugar rush from too much candy isn’t unlike the boost you hope to feel from an energy drink or a meal replacement shake or bar (which can contain several teaspoons of sugar). The same is true for parents who claim that their kids seem hyperactive at a party. Peer pressure and excitement seem to be to blame—not sugar.

“The strong belief of parents [in sugar’s effects on children’s behavior] may be due to expectancy and common association,” Wolraich wrote in the JAMA paper.

It works the other way, too: Some parents say they’ve noticed a difference in their kids’ behavior once they take out most sugars from their diets. This strategy, like the Feingold diet, continues to attract interest and followers because believing it works has an impact on whether it actually works or not.

Which isn’t to say there are absolutely no links between sugar consumption and poor health outcomes. A 2006 paper found that drinking a lot of sugary soft drinks was associated with mental health issues, including hyperactivity, but the study’s design relied on self-reported questionnaires that were filled out by more than 5000 10th-graders in Oslo, Norway. The authors also noted that caffeine is common in colas, which might have a confounding effect.

In another study, conducted by University of Vermont professor of economics Sara Solnick and Harvard health policy professor David Hemenway, the researchers investigated the so-called “Twinkie defense,” in which sugar is said to contribute to an “altered state of mind.” (The phrase Twinkie defense comes from the 1979 trial of Dan White for killing San Francisco city district supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. His lawyers argued that White had “diminished capacity and was unable to premeditate his crime,” as evidenced in part by his sudden adoption of a junk-food diet in the months before the murders. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.)

In their survey of nearly 1900 Boston public high schoolers, Solnick and Hemenway found “a significant and strong association between soft drinks and violence.” Adolescents who drank more than five cans of soft drinks per week—nearly 30 percent of the group—were significantly more likely to have carried a weapon.

All That Soda Might Be Partly To Blame. Scott Olson/GettyImages

But Solnick told Mental Floss the study isn’t evidence of a “sugar rush.”

“Even if sugar did cause aggression—which we did not prove—we have no way of knowing whether the effect is immediate (and perhaps short-lived) as the phrase ‘sugar rush’ implies, or whether it’s a longer-term process,” she said. Sugar could, for example, increase irritability, which might sometimes flare up into aggression—but not as an immediate reaction to consuming sugar.

Harvard researchers are looking into the long-term effects of sugar using data from Project Viva, a large observational study of pregnant women, mothers, and their children. A 2018 paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine studied more than 1200 mother-child pairs from Project Viva, assessing mothers’ self-reported diets during pregnancy as well as their children’s health during early childhood.

“Sugar consumption, especially from [sugar-sweetened beverages], during pregnancy and childhood, and maternal diet soda consumption may adversely impact child cognition,” the authors concluded, though they noted that other factors could explain the association.

“This study design can look at relationships, but it cannot determine cause and effect,” said Wolraich, who was not involved in the study. “It is equally possible that parents of children with lower cognition are likely to cause a greater consumption of sugar or diet drinks, or that there is a third factor that influences cognition and consumption.”

The Science of The Sugar Crash

Though the evidence against the sugar rush is strong, a “sugar crash” is real—but typically it only affects people with diabetes.

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, low blood sugar—or hypoglycemia—is a serious medical condition. When a lot of sugar enters the bloodstream, it can spike the blood sugar level, causing fluctuation, instability, and eventually a crash (a.k.a. reactive hypoglycemia). If a diabetic’s blood sugar levels are too low, a number of symptoms—including shakiness, fatigue, weakness, and more—can follow. Severe hypoglycemia can lead to seizures and even coma.

For most of us, though, it’s rare. Endocrinologist Dr. Natasa Janicic-Kahric told The Washington Post in 2013 that “about 5 percent of Americans experience sugar crash.”

You’re more likely to experience it if you do a tough workout on an empty stomach. “If one exercises vigorously and doesn’t have sufficient intake to supplement their use of calories, they can get lightheaded,” Wolraich said. “But in most cases, the body is good at regulating a person’s needs."

Go Horsey, Go! Westend61/Getty Images (Cowboy); Justin Dodd/Mental Floss (Background)

Why Do Cowboys Say “Yee-Haw?”

There Are Several Vocal Cues Riders Use To Spur Their Horses Into Action—And “Yee-Haw” Is Not Usually One of Them.

— By Sam Hindman | April 10, 2025

When you think of a Stereotypical Cowboy, there are a couple of images that’ll likely come to mind: A horse, some cows, and a comically large hat, to name a few. Now, picture that cowboy gearing up to gallop off into the sunset—you can practically hear him bellowing a hearty yee-haw as he swirls his lasso in the air.

Even though it’s a Classic Cowboy Trope, you have to wonder: Did Cowboys Actually Say That Popular Phrase?

The Origins of Yee-Haw

Did Cowboys Actually Say Yee-Haw?

The Origins of Yee-Haw

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines Yee-Haw as “An Expression of Enthusiasm, Typically Associated with Cowboys or Rural Inhabitants of the Southern U.S.” But how did it get there?

A Cowboy and His Horse, Circa the 1880s. | Buyenlarge/GettyImages

Some Folks trace Yee-Haw back to old horse commands, specifically Gee (“Go Right”) and Haw (“Go Left”). These were common calls for guiding oxen and horses, and they’ve been used as far back as the 1800s. Over time, those directional commands may have morphed into More Expressive Yells, Like Gee-Haw, and eventually Yee-Haw.

By the early 1900s, yee-haw (and other exuberant exclamations like Yippee or Yahoo) was cropping up in literature and everyday speech, especially in Western-themed books and films. The media loved it, and it stuck around for quite some time. But as it turns out, the phrase was more common in pop culture than it was out in the plains.

Did Cowboys Actually Say Yee-Haw?

The Image of a Cowboy Yelling Yee-Haw was more of a Hollywood Trope than a Historical Truth. Real-life Cowboys, especially those from the late-1800s cattle drive era, were far more likely to say things like Whoa, Git Along, or Come By.

It’s also important to note that a huge portion of the cowboy workforce wasn’t white. Up to one in three cowboys was Black, Mexican, or Indigenous—all groups whose expressions and languages were rarely represented in Old Western Films. Many spoke Spanish or were influenced by Mexican Vaqueros and used terms like Arriba, Vámonos, or Dale.

— By Jake Rossen | March 19, 2025

Looks Scientifically Accurate. CSA Images/Getty Images

Space programs have spent decades figuring out how terrestrial activities would work outside of Earth’s atmosphere. Will plants grow? Do muscles atrophy? Will astronauts ever be able to do laundry?

A less-researched but no less important question: Could you fire a gun in space? And has anyone ever tried?

Technically, it should work just fine. According to BBC Science Focus, guns don’t require oxygen to fire. That’s because they already have an oxidizing agent in the sealed ammunition cartridge that can ignite the gunpowder. Nor is gravity needed to chamber a bullet: a spring forces that.

It’s not a lack of gravity that poses the biggest problem. Instead, environmental factors might prevent a space shooting. Extreme temperatures could cause the weapon to overheat and malfunction. If the weapon gets too cold, the firing cap primer might not go off; metal gun parts could lose their structural integrity, leading to jamming.

Suppose those problems are resolved. If a gun can successfully fire, what would happen to the bullet? If it’s not hitting a target, the shooter may never find out. On Earth, a bullet that doesn't strike a target will eventually be pushed down by gravity. Depending on the caliber and environmental factors, it could travel for well over 1 mile. Because space lacks gravity and its drag, however, there’s nothing stopping the bullet from traveling indefinitely, or at least until it makes contact with a surface.

The shooter would also have to contend with recoil. On the ground, gravity and planted feet help absorb kickback. In space, the astronaut-slash-gunslinger would be propelled backward after firing. This wouldn’t be rapid—probably less than walking speed—but it would put the shooter in motion, and they would need a counteracting force (like thrusters) or the wall of their spacecraft to halt their movement.

So has NASA ever tried experimenting with galactic gunplay? No—but the Soviets did. Kind of. In the 1970s, amid the Cold War, Russia was concerned their satellites might be targeted by foreign adversaries. In 1975, they equipped their Salyut-3 space station with a R-23M rapid-fire cannon and scheduled a test shoot as the station was de-orbiting and after departure of the crew. Reportedly, the weapon fired 20 shells in total that burned up in the atmosphere.

Vice President of the United States Charles Gate Dawes (Born: August 27, 1865, Marietta, Ohio, USA — Died: April 23, 1951, Evanston, Illinois, USA). Hulton Deutsch/GettyImages

The Vice President Who Wrote a Hit Song! Charles Gates Dawes Wound Up Leaving An Unexpected Mark On Music History.

— By Stacy Conradt | Jul 22, 2024

History buffs might know the name Charles Gates Dawes, which probably sounds vaguely familiar but Can’t-Quite-Place-Him to the rest of us. Here’s a refresher: he was Calvin Coolidge’s vice president. They hated each other.

Long before he was Coolidge’s Second-in-command, however, Dawes was a pianist and composer. In fact, he was a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a fraternity for men with an interest in music.

Though Dawes obviously didn’t adopt music as a profession (unless he entertained Silent Cal by tickling the ivories in the Oval Office), he definitely made his mark on music in America. In 1912, besieged by a bit of music he couldn’t get out of his head, Dawes wrote a piano and violin piece called “Melody in A Major.” It became pretty popular, which Dawes, by then a banker, found amusing: “Few bankers have won renown as composers of music. I know that I will be the target of my punster friends. They will say that if all the notes in my bank are as bad as my musical ones, they are not worth the paper they were written on.”

After an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 1901, Dawes declared himself done with politics. But politics had other plans for him. In 1921, Dawes was appointed the first-ever Director of the Bureau of the Budget under Warren G. Harding. And in 1924, after going through at least three other possible vice president candidates (two declined the nomination and the third, Herbert Hoover, was too unpopular), Coolidge agreed to have Dawes as his running mate.

In the end, Dawes would have been quite glad if his bank notes had been as valuable as his musical ones. The song suddenly became a pop hit after songwriter Carl Sigman added some words to the tune in 1951 and renamed it “It’s All in the Game.” Tommy Edwards took the song to #38 on the Billboard charts that year, but it peaked at No. 1 seven years later when Edwards recorded it again in a rock ‘n’ roll style. Since then, the song has been covered by Elton John, Barry Manilow, Mama Cass, Nat King Cole, Van Morrison and many others.

— By Ellen Gutoskey | May 8, 2024

Only a baby could hold this. (Syrup) annick vanderschelden photography/Moment/Getty Images; (Thought bubble) Justin Dodd/Mental Floss

Ideally, you’d be able to hold the handle of a maple syrup container while you carry it and also while you pour the syrup onto pancakes, waffles, or whatever other foodstuff calls for it. But the typical handle on a glass bottle of maple syrup is way too small and positioned too far up the bottleneck to be functional in either respect.

So, why is it there?

What’s a Skeuomorph?

The most widely accepted explanation is that the tiny handle is a skeuomorph, meaning “an ornament or design representing a utensil or implement,” per Merriam-Webster. In other words, a given item has a design element—a skeuomorph—that might help you recognize what the item is or should be used for, but doesn’t necessarily have a purpose beyond that. The floppy disk icon in Microsoft Word is a great example: It’s what you select to save a file, evoking the bygone days of saving files on physical floppy disks. The fact that it looks like a floppy disk clues you in to what the button does (though the clue is likely lost on the kids of today), but the design doesn’t have anything to do with the actual saving capability of said button.

Smart devices are full of skeuomorphs that reflect the physical version of a piece of technology. Your email icon might look like an envelope; your trash folder might make the sound of crumpling paper when you empty it.

But there are plenty of skeuomorphs that don’t involve the transition from analog to digital life, and the useless handle of a maple syrup bottle is one of them.

How Maple Syrup Bottles Got Little Handles

Salt-glazed stoneware predated the United States: This is a German piece from 1602. Heritage Images/GettyImages

Here’s one popular version of the origin story: The little handle harks back to the days of storing liquids in salt-glazed stoneware that often featured handles large enough to actually hold. As maple syrup companies replaced big ceramic jugs with smaller glass ones, they tacked on a little handle as a callback to the former.

However, this story might give you the impression that North Americans had a long history of storing and selling maple syrup in stoneware (with handles)—to the point that people would associate elements of that kind of container specifically with maple syrup. That’s not exactly the case. For one thing, the stoneware was used for various liquids. For another, maple syrup didn’t really catch on as a consumer product until the very late 19th century, when white cane sugar shook off its import tax and started to overtake maple sugar in the market. New England’s maple sugar producers pivoted to making maple syrup, which, according to the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association, they usually sold in “cans and bottles.”

An advertisement from 1921. Library of the University of Toronto, Wikimedia Commons//Public Domain

Maple syrup manufacturers had started to add little handles to their glass bottles by the early 1930s. This, apparently, was a bit of a marketing tactic. “Maple syrup companies weren’t so much retaining an old pattern of a jug as reinventing it and wanting to market their product as something nostalgic,” Canada Museum of History curator Jean-François Lozier told Reader’s Digest Canada. “They were tying in the image of maple syrup with their product and the image that people still had of those crocks in the 19th-century.”

— By Jake Rossen | Apr 16, 2024

Minimum Wage Varies by State. PM Images/Stone via Getty Images

California disrupted the wage worker industry this year when it announced a new $20 minimum hourly rate for fast food workers. The move has prompted giants like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and others to cut positions and hike prices.

Corporations may not be happy, but state laws are increasingly bolstering minimum wage bumps to address longstanding misalignment between service-industry earnings and extreme cost of living increases. (At the federal level, minimum wage is just $7.25—the same as it was in 2009.)

Recently, finance hub Visual Capitalist collected the 11 states—plus one district—that can boast of the highest minimum wages. All of them virtually double the federal rate, paying workers at least $14 an hour. The breakdown:

District of Columbia // $17

Washington // $16.28

California // $16

Connecticut // $15.69

New Jersey // $15.13

Maryland // $15

New York // $15

Massachusetts // $15

Colorado // $14.42

Arizona // $14.35

Oregon // $14.20

Maine // $14.15

The District of Columbia mandates $17.50 an hour, the highest minimum wage in the country currently. (The minimum is set to take effect July 1, 2024. As of this writing, it’s $17.) The district is also looking out for tipped workers: They make a minimum $10 beginning in July, up from $8.

The state with the highest minimum is Washington at $16.28, followed closely by California at $16. Both may be outpaced come 2028, when Hawaii plans on raising the minimum from $14 to $18.

Just as states have the latitude to raise wages, so do cities. In the Portland, Oregon, metro area, workers earn $15.45. (In non-urban areas, it’s $13.20.) While Washington is the top state, it pays to be in a specific area: Seattle offers workers $19.97 per hour. In Tukwila, Washington, companies with 500 or more employees must pay $20.29 hourly—currently the highest in the country.

While many states are proactive in acknowledging affordability, some are not. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, five states—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee—have no state minimum wage, which means they default to the federal minimum. Two states, Wyoming and Georgia, set their minimum below $7.25. Again, federal law supersedes it. But in Georgia, an employee must be covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act. If not, their wage defaults to $5.15 hourly.

Naturally, wages only tell part of the story when it comes to cost of living. While these states are the most generous from a wage worker standpoint, they also tend to rank toward the top when it comes to cost of living. Only Arizona and Maine are middle-of-the-road, coming in at 29 and 30 on the U.S. News and World Report ranking of affordability. The most affordable state, Mississippi, sticks to the federal minimum.