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Belgian painter René Magritte forged a reputation for wit and whimsy, but none of his works captured the world’s imagination as intensely as Le Fils de l’Homme (The Son of Man). Even viewers who don’t know it by name instantly recognize the surrealist landmark, but there’s much more to know about this famous painting and how it fits into Magritte’s art as a whole.

The man behind that floating apple and beneath that bowler hat is none other than Magritte. If you look closely, you can see his eyes peeking out between the apple and its leaves.

Apples appeared in many of Magritte’s works, including Ceci n’est pas une pomme (1964), Le prêtre marié (1961), The Listening Room (1952), and The Postcard (1960).

The oil painting is often grouped with two other works that were also created in 1964. The first is Magritte’s Man in the Bowler Hat, which has a similar figure whose face is obscured by a passing bird. The second is The Great War of the Facades, which depicts an elegantly dressed woman in a similar seaside setting with blossoming flowers blocking her face. Juxtaposing ordinary elements in unusual ways was a key theme in Magritte’s works.

Another painting from 1964, The Taste of the Invisible, contains the same dapper, bowler-topped gent, complete with red tie, black coat, and green apple. But this variation is less well known, and not generally mentioned in connection with its apparent related pieces.

This distinctive chapeau can also be found in Golconda (1953), Decalcomania (1966), Le Chef d’Oeuvre (1955), The Spirit of Adventure (1962), and Le Bouquet tout fait (1957).

Though the imagery of a modern man and a floating apple near the sea doesn’t immediately suggest religious iconography, the title The Son of Man does. In the Christian faith, the phrase son of man refers to Jesus, so some analysts view Magritte’s painting as a surrealist depiction of Jesus’s transfiguration.

In a 1965 radio interview, Magritte said:

“At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It’s something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”

Norman Rockwell’s signature style was anything but surreal, but in 1970 he tried his hand at Magritte’s look and composed Mr. Apple, an illustration of a person whose entire head was a red (not green) apple. When this painting was put up for auction in 2011, the artist’s letters about its creation went on the block as well.

“I must tell you that I got the two apples, and I haven’t eaten them, but I have put them in the refrigerator so they will keep bright and shiny,” Rockwell wrote in part. “It will be fun doing such a unique painting.”

Allusions or copies of Magritte’s most iconic piece have popped up in movies like Stranger Than Fiction (2006), Bronson (2008), and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968); books such as The Magicians by Lev Grossman and The Starry Starry Night by Jimmy Liao; TV shows like The Simpsons, and even music videos, including those for Michael Jackson’s “Scream” and Yes’s “Astral Traveller.”

Although prints of the piece are popular and readily available, the original painting is privately owned and rarely goes on public display. The Son Of Man was last sighted in the U.S. in SFMOMA’s 2018 exhibition René Magritte: The Fifth Season.

A version of this article was originally published in 2015 and has been updated for 2023.

Over the course of his time in the public eye, Theodore Roosevelt gave a number of moving, influential, highly quotable public addresses—but none of them has the legacy of the speech he delivered in Paris on April 23, 1910, which would become one of the most widely quoted orations of his career.

The former president—who left office in 1909—had spent a year hunting in Central Africa before embarking on a tour of Northern Africa and Europe in 1910, attending events and giving speeches in places like Cairo, Berlin, Naples, and Oxford. He stopped in Paris on April 23 and made his way to the Sorbonne, where “fully 25,000 persons packed the streets,” in the words of the newspapers. At 3 p.m., before a crowd that included “ministers in court dress, army and navy officers in full uniform, nine hundred students, and an audience of two thousand ticket holders,” according to the Edmund Morris biography Colonel Roosevelt, Roosevelt delivered a speech called “Citizenship in a Republic,” which would come to be known as “The Man in the Arena.”

In addition to touching on his own family history, war, human and property rights, the responsibilities of citizenship, and France’s falling birthrate, Roosevelt railed against cynics who looked down at men who were trying to make the world a better place. “The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer,” he said. “A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not … of superiority but of weakness.”

Then he delivered an inspirational and impassioned message that drew huge applause:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The speech was a wild success. “Several times the applause lasted two minutes and was probably the greatest demonstration ever given a foreign lecturer,” one newspaper noted. “So eager was every one [outside] to get a glimpse of Roosevelt that frequent clashes with the police occurred.”

“Citizenship in a Republic”—which Morris called “one of [Roosevelt’s] greatest rhetorical triumphs”—made headlines around the world. It ran in the Journal des Debats as a Sunday supplement, got sent to the teachers of France by Le Temps, was printed by Librairie Hachette on Japanese vellum, was turned into a pocket book that sold 5000 copies in five days, and was translated across Europe.

Roosevelt himself, however, was apparently shocked by how his speech was received, “admitting to Henry Cabot Lodge that the reaction of the French was ‘a little difficult for me to understand,’” Morris wrote.

Roosevelt might be even more surprised to learn that the most famous section of his speech still resonates and inspires, even today.

It was quoted by Nixon in his resignation speech (“Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena … ”). Author, researcher, and professor Dr. Brené Brown paraphrased it in a TED Talk and used Roosevelt’s phrase daring greatly as the title of one of her books. “The first time I read this quote,” Brown writes in the introduction to Daring Greatly, “I thought, This is vulnerability. Everything I’ve learned from over a decade of research on vulnerability has taught me this exact lesson. Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.”

“The Man in the Arena” has a place in sports history, too: Before the 1995 World Cup, Nelson Mandela gave a copy of the passage to Francois Pienaar, captain of the South African rugby team—and they won, defeating the favored All Blacks of New Zealand. Washington Nationals player Mark DeRosa would read it to himself before big games, and before the Nationals faced the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 4 of the National League Division Series in 2012, DeRosa read it aloud to his teammates. “That’s a quote I’ve always gone back to,” he told the Washington Times. “I go to that a lot, I really do. I’ve done it since college. I like it because people think they know, but they have no idea what we’re thinking from pitch to pitch. With our backs against the wall I wanted to say something that brought us together, a little band of brothers. Go out and fight. See what happens. I felt it was fitting. It fires me up when I read it.” The team was victorious.

More recently, LeBron James wrote a quote from the speech on his shoes, and Tom Brady used Man in the Arena as the title of a documentary series about his time with the New England Patriots. In a tweet announcing the series, Brady wrote that “I have quoted Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Man in the Arena’ speech since I saw it painted on our weight room wall at UM in 1995. It’s a constant reminder to ignore the noise, buckle my chinstrap, and battle through whatever comes my way.”

The speech has its cultural touchstones as well: One wonders what TR would have made of his words being tattooed on Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth’s arms and used in a Cadillac commercial.

You already know Pablo Picasso’s 1937 painting Guernica is among his most revered works, but do you know how and why he created the anti-war masterpiece?

As the 1937 World’s Fair approached, members of Spain’s democratic government wanted the Spanish Pavilion at Paris’s International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life to feature a mural that would expose the atrocities of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his allies. Naturally, the organizers set their sights on one of Spain’s most celebrated painters, Pablo Picasso, who had gained recognition in the 1910s with his works of Cubism, and approached him with the commission in January. Picasso was persuaded by poet Juan Larrea to take the job, but he made no progress beyond some sketches for months.

Picasso didn’t have to go far to work on a piece for the Paris exhibition—he had lived in France since 1904. An expat who was vocal about his opposition to the militant autocracy of his home country, Picasso crafted the tribute to the war-torn Spanish city without having set foot within the nation’s borders since 1934. He would never return to Spain.

Picasso’s painting depicts the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937. Franco’s German and Italian allies in the Spanish Civil War carpet-bombed Guernica, a stronghold of Republican opposition to Franco’s Nationalists, for hours. Casualty estimates vary from 200 to more than 1000 deaths. Franco and his allies blamed the horrific attack on Republican forces.

According to painter José Maria Ucelay, Picasso found out about the bombing from Larrea, who suggested the artist make it the subject of his mural. Picasso was reportedly hesitant, but he was deeply moved by a report of the event written by South African-British journalist George Steer for The Times. The article, titled, “The Tragedy of Guernica: A Town Destroyed in Air Attack: Eye-Witness’s Account,” was attributed in print to “Our Special Correspondent.”

Picasso was so affected by Steer’s Guernica story that he scrapped his previous plans for the mural and began work on what would be one of his earliest politically inclined pieces on May 1, 1937, approximately three weeks before the scheduled launch of the exhibit. Guernica was not completed until early June, about two weeks after the pavilion opened.

The fact that Picasso cranked out what is now one of the most famous paintings of the 20th century in just over a month is impressive enough in its own right, but Guernica wasn’t even the sole focus of the artist’s attention during this time. In January 1937, Picasso had published a set of etching and aquatint prints, collectively titled The Dream and Lie of Franco. On June 7 of the same year, around the same time that he delivered Guernica to the Spanish pavilion, Picasso added a second batch of images to The Dream and Lie of Franco.

Unsurprisingly, Guernica evolved between its inception and completion. One of Picasso’s earliest drafts of the painting included a raised fist, a universal symbol of solidarity in resistance to oppression. Opponents of Franco’s reign had embraced the emblem during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso depicted the fist empty-handed at first, then grasping a sheaf of grain. Ultimately, he deleted the image altogether.

Guernica is one of history’s most recognizable grayscale paintings, but at one point during the piece’s development, Picasso entertained the idea of adding color to the project. He included a red teardrop coming from a crying woman’s eye, as well as swatches of colored wallpaper. None of these elements made the final cut.

Scholars have long tried to decode the significance of the symbols in Guernica, especially the horse and bull figures. Naturally, Picasso was asked to explain the use of these creatures in his painting. He never offered anything more revelatory than “This bull is a bull and this horse is a horse,” adding, “If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”

Today, Guernica is celebrated as one of Picasso’s premiere achievements—but it wasn’t always hailed as a masterpiece. When it debuted at the Exposition, an architect reviewing the murals wrote that it “saw only the backs of visitors, for they were repelled by it.” Among the piece’s leading detractors were American critic Clement Greenberg—who called Guernica “jerky” and “compressed,” adding that it “aims at the epic and falls into the declamatory”—as well as French painter and communist Edouard Pignon, French philosopher Paul Nizan (who called Guernica a product of the bourgeoisie mentality), and American abstract painter Walter Darby Bannard. Ucelay, who claimed his friend Larrea gave Picasso the idea, said of Guernica, “as a work of art, it’s one of the poorest things produced in the world … it’s just 7 x 3 meters of pornography.” According to Gijs van Hensbergen in Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon, not even the Basque government liked the painting, which apparently greatly upset Picasso. The work barely appeared in the papers at the time.

Due to Guernica’s antifascist message and Adolf Hitler’s personal aversions to modern art, the official German guidebook for Paris’s International Exposition recommended against visiting Picasso’s piece, which it called “a hodgepodge of body parts that any four-year-old could have painted.”

Apparently misunderstanding the nature of Guernica and its antiwar stance, the German military used the painting in an ill-conceived recruiting advertisement in 1990. The ad featured the slogan, “Hostile images of the enemy are the fathers of war.”

Almost as famous for his biting wit as he was for his artistic prowess, Picasso once treated a German Gestapo officer to a sharp rejoinder in reference to the painting’s depiction of the atrocities of fascism and war. When asked by an officer about a photo of the painting, “Did you do that?” Picasso is said to have replied, “No, you did.”

After the Paris Expo, Guernica went on a tour of Europe before heading to the United States, where it was part of an effort to drum up funds for Spanish refugees and toured several major U.S. cities under the oversight of New York City‘s Museum of Modern Art. According to the website of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (where the painting now resides), Picasso asked that Guernica stay at MoMA when World War II broke out, and later “extended the loan of the painting to MoMA for an indefinite period, until such time that democracy had been restored in Spain.” The painting didn’t go back to Spain until 1981.

At one point its long residency at MoMA, Guernica suffered an act of politically charged defacement. In 1974, Tony Shafrazi—who would later become a respected art dealer—spray-painted the words KILL ALL LIES over the painting. When he was apprehended by museum security, Shafrazi famously shouted, “Call the curator. I am an artist.”

From 1985 to 2009, the United Nations adorned the entrance of its Security Council with a tapestry reproduction of Guernica. In February 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered a televised speech on site at the UN, testifying in favor of America’s imminent declaration of war on Iraq. A large blue curtain covered the tapestry during Powell’s speech.

Conflicting reports attributed the decision to obscure Guernica to journalists thinking the violent imagery would be unpleasant for viewers of the broadcast, as well as to the Bush Administration deeming the display of such a recognizable antiwar painting inappropriate for the backdrop of Powell’s promotion of military action.

With big branch-like gills, lizard-like limbs, and a cute perma-smile, it’s hard not to fall in love with the axolotl. Also known as Mexican walking fish (although they’re not actually fish), these aquatic-dwelling amphibians are famous for their ability to regrow limbs and organs, including parts of their brains—but that’s not the only reason they’re so fascinating. Discover more interesting facts about these adorable salamanders down below.

Stumped over how to pronounce axolotl? It sounds like “ACK-suh-LAH-tuhl.” The name has an interesting history, too. Atl comes from Nahuatl, the Uto-Aztec language that’s still widely spoken in Mexico, and means “water,” while xolotl is associated with dogs. Because of that, axolotl is sometimes translated as “water dog.”

Xolotl also relates to the Aztec god of the same name. In Aztec mythology, the dog-headed deity was believed to rule over fire and lightning, and led the souls of the dead to the underworld. As with all mythology, there are a lot of mixed accounts about what happened next, but some believe that Xolotl was fearful of being sacrificed and transformed into an axolotl to hide. The salamander is trapped in the streams around Xochimilco, unable to transform and walk on land.

While you might see plenty of white or pink axolotls in captivity, the animal is normally dark brown or black in the wild. White and pink axolotls are known as “leucistic” and descend from a mutant male that was shipped to Paris in 1863. They were then specially bred to have black eyes (different from albinos, which generally have red eyes).

While you can find axolotls in aquariums and laboratories all over the world, it’s much harder to spot them in the wild. The animals can only be found in the lakes and canals of Xochimilco, Mexico, a borough of Mexico City. The axolotl eats small fish, worms, and anything else it can find that will fit in its mouth—even other salamanders.

The impossibly silly branches that grow from the axolotl’s head might not seem practical, but they’re actually the salamander’s gills. The filaments attached to the long gills help them breathe underwater.

Neoteny means that a creature can reach maturity without going through metamorphosis. In less extreme cases, it’s simply exhibiting juvenile traits after reaching adulthood. Axolotls are a great example of neoteny because as they grow bigger, they never mature. Unlike tadpoles or similar animals, axolotls hold on to their gills and stay in the water, despite actually growing lungs.

“The one thing that neotenic species have as an advantage is that if you don’t undergo this metamorphosis, you’re more likely to reproduce sooner. You’re already one step ahead,” biologist Randal Voss told WIRED in 2014.

Sometimes as a result of a mutation, or a shot of iodine from a scientist, axolotls can be forced out of their safe watery home. The shot gives the animal a rush of hormones that leads to a sudden maturation. The axolotls become strikingly similar to their close relative, the tiger salamander, but they continue to only breed with their own kind.

Transforming your aquatic friend into a land-dweller might seem cool, but leave it to the professionals. Experts strongly urge owners to never interfere with the biology of their pets, because it will likely be fatal.

Thanks to TikTok and Minecraft, axolotls are more popular than ever online. Some reports claim there are as many as 1 million in captivity worldwide. Not only that, but they’re among the most in-demand pets in the U.S. (although they are illegal to own in multiple states, including California). Despite all this, axolotls are actually considered critically endangered in the wild and are on the verge of extinction, all as a result of habitat loss, pollution, and the introduction of invasive species like tilapia and carp.

In an attempt to revive the species, researchers have built “shelters” made from reeds and rocks to filter the water and create a more desirable living space. Unfortunately, the numbers continue to decline. There were about 6000 wild axolotls documented in a 1998 study, but by 2008, there were only about 100. For a brief amount of time in 2014, biologists failed to find a single water dog, and feared the salamanders had gone extinct in the wild. Luckily, some have since been found roaming the water. Still, in 2017, Scientific American reported that there were fewer than 35 of these amphibians per square kilometer in their native Mexico City. 

Before the axolotl was an endangered species, Xochimilco natives would chow down on the salamanders. Axolotl tamales were a favorite, served whole with cornmeal and corn leaves. In 1787, Francesco Clavigero wrote that “the axolotl is wholesome to eat, and is of much the same taste with an eel. It is thought to be particularly useful in cases of consumption.”

Today, you can still taste one of these creatures—but you might have to travel to Japan to do it. When deep-fried, they apparently taste like white fish meat, but with a crunch.

The city held an official emoji contest back in 2017, asking residents to come up with 20 small symbols that best represented the megalopolis. The winning package was from designer Itzel Oropeza Castillo and featured axolotl, which speaks to how iconic these little salamanders truly are within Mexico City.

It’s not unusual for amphibians to be able to regenerate, but axolotls take it to the next level. On top of being able to regenerate limbs, the animal can also rebuild their jaws, spines, and even brains without any scarring. Professor Stephane Roy of University of Montreal broke it down to Scientific American in 2011:

“You can cut the spinal cord, crush it, remove a segment, and it will regenerate. You can cut the limbs at any level—the wrist, the elbow, the upper arm—and it will regenerate, and it’s perfect. There is nothing missing, there’s no scarring on the skin at the site of amputation, every tissue is replaced. They can regenerate the same limb 50, 60, 100 times. And every time: perfect.”

Scientists have even transplanted organs from one axolotl to another successfully.

Thanks to their unique biology and regenerative abilities, axolotls have been studied for a long time. In the 20th century, they helped scientists uncover the causes of spina bifida in humans, and were also used in embryonic cell and cancer research (the axolotl is highly resistant to cancer, more so than mammals).

Given all this, the amphibians are still a focal point in scientific research to this day. Various studies—including two released in 2012 by the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and another headed by Voss in 2015, among others—have sought to better understand the axolotl genome which controls regeneration, with the hope that we can eventually recreate the phenomenon in human beings.

Unfortunately, results so far have shown that the process might be even more complicated than expected. But still, the little salamander remains enormously important in the field of regenerative medicine.

A version of this article was published in 2015; it has been updated for 2023.

You’re on a plane. You’re bored. You stare out the window at the clouds. You wonder what would happen if you couldn’t resist the urge to open the emergency exit and plummet to the earth below. Is death certain? Or would you pick yourself up, set a broken bone or two, and proceed directly to a mental institution with a great story?

Let’s first toss out some variables that often bog down this fair—albeit morbid—question. Forget Felix Baumgartner, the man who filmed himself jumping from 128,100 feet. He had a cool pressurized suit and a parachute. And let’s set aside what free-fall experts have coined “wreckage riders,” those who have fallen while trapped inside a portion of broken aircraft. (The larger surface area increases air drag, slowing their descent. Still likely fatal, but the odds improve somewhat: Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulović fell 33,000 feet this way in 1972 and lived to tell her tale—once she woke up from her coma.)

Let’s instead restrict the question to a single individual without any equipment, encasement, or premeditation. You’ve ripped the exit door open. You begin to fall. What now?

We know for certain a person can survive a fall of at least 20,000 feet. That’s how far up World War II pilot Alan Magee was when he had to abandon his plane without a parachute. He crashed through a glass roof that likely helped spread out the impact. According to James Kakalios, a professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota, how and where you land is one of the major factors in whether you get up from the ground or go 6 feet further into it.

“If you can make the time [landing] longer, the force needed to stop you is smaller,” he told Mental Floss in 2015. “Think of punching a wall or a mattress. The wall is rigid and the time of interaction is short so the force is large. People who have survived falls, they’ve managed to increase that time, even if it’s in milliseconds. From one millisecond to three, that’s three times longer, three times less force needed for the same change in momentum.” Magee’s glass landing likely reduced the impact; other survivors have plummeted into snow, trees, or something that can better absorb your landing than, say, concrete.

The other major factor? Slowing your descent. Increasing surface area means more energy is required to push air out of your way, slowing you down. The “flying squirrel” position, body splayed out, is preferred over falling feet or head first. “Increasing that drag is the biggest factor in keeping you alive,” Kakalios said. A parachute’s large surface area is best, obviously. Without one, fall belly down or try tumbling. “Drop a pen off the Empire State Building straight down and it might kill someone. But if it drops sideways, spinning end over end, it probably wouldn’t.”

You’re increasing air drag. You’re trying to land in snow or something absorbent. If you’ve passed out from lack of oxygen at high altitudes, you’ve woken up in time to orient yourself. Magee traveled 20,000 feet—nearly four miles—so you know survival is possible from there. What about going higher?

Kakalios stopped short of offering a prediction, citing the numerous variables involved. (“Even how much clothing is fluttering behind you can affect surface profile,” he said.) So we pestered someone else: Paul Doherty, a former physicist and co-director of the Exploratorium, a learning center in San Francisco, California. (He passed away in 2017.)

“As you get higher up, the air gets thinner and thinner,” he told Mental Floss in 2015. “You can spin so fast the blood can rush into your head and kill you. Or the friction with the elevation will burn you up. That’s why space shuttles have heat insulating tiles.”

Once terminal velocity (a.k.a. maximum acceleration, usually 120 miles per hour for average-sized humans) is reached, Doherty said, it doesn’t really matter whether you throw another 5000 or 10,000 feet on top of Magee’s 20,000: You’re not going to fall any faster. But start too high up and the lower atmospheric pressure means your blood might start to boil. That’s believed to happen around 63,000 feet [PDF], though data is obviously limited, and Doherty thought it might be as high as 100,000. (NASA mandates pressure suits starting at 50,000 feet just to be on the safe side [PDF].)

So falling just under 63,000 feet is survivable, in theory? “Let’s say 60,000,” Doherty said. “Up to 100,000 if you wake up after passing out. And if your blood doesn’t boil. And if you can impact something.”

A version of this story originally ran in 2015; it has been updated for 2023.

“I’ll see you again in 25 years,” Laura Palmer tells Agent Dale Cooper in the last episode of David Lynch’s surreal series. While that may or may not happen, why not pour yourself a cup of coffee and revisit these 10 damn fine terms?

Blue Rose cases are strange and unsolved, sort of like the X-files. While the term isn’t used in the television show, it appears in the movie prequel, : “Not only has Agent Chester Desmond disappeared,” Cooper says to “Diane,” “but this is one of Cole’s Blue Rose cases.” Blue Rose cases may be so named because they, like blue roses, are odd and unnatural.

BOB, also known as Killer BOB, is an evil spirit that possesses people and turns them into homicidal maniacs. BOB has an ex-partner named MIKE, also known as the One-Armed Man. BOB and MIKE have the same names as teenage partners-in-crime Bobby and Mike, although the connection seems to go no further than that.

The Bookhouse Boys are a do-good secret society. Members include the town sheriff and deputy, as well as Cooper as an honorary member. The group is named for their meeting place, the Bookhouse—a bar that’s full of books.

“Mike, can you hear me?” says Killer BOB. “Catch you… with my death bag!”

As with many things David Lynch, a death bag sounds pretty scary, although it’s not clear what it is. BOB could simply be speaking metaphorically, or he could be referring to a body bag. (A suicide bag, by the way, is what’s used in assisted suicide.)

BOB’s death bag is not to be confused with the smiling bag the Giant tells Cooper about, which refers to a body bag hanging on the hospital wall in the shape of a smile.

Twin Peaks is an apt name for a place full of doubles. Borrowed from German, the word doppelganger refers to the apparition of a living person, an evil twin, a regular twin, or a monster that takes the form of someone it’s killed. When possessed by Killer BOB, Leland and Cooper become, in a way, their own evil twins. Laura Palmer is her own doppelganger, living a double life of the squeaky clean homecoming queen and a drug-addicted prostitute. Laura also has an actual double: her cousin Maddy Ferguson, played by the same actress. Moments before Maddy arrives, we see the opening credits of the show within a show, Invitation of Love, which stars “Selena Swift” as a set of twins, Emerald and Jade.

“Where does creamed corn figure into the workings of the universe?” asks the Log Lady. “What really is creamed corn? Is it a symbol for something else?” We’re guessing yes.

When Donna brings a Meals on Wheels delivery to an elderly lady, the lady says, “Do you see creamed corn on that plate? … I requested no creamed corn.” When she asks again if Donna sees creamed corn, the corn has disappeared. The old woman’s creepy grandson (played by Lynch’s look-alike son, a miniature doppelganger if you ever saw one) is holding the corn, which promptly disappears again.

In Fire Walk with Me, the creamed corn is called garmonbozia, which is defined as pain and sorrow, and which Killer BOB, MIKE, and other evil entities need to survive. The origin of the word garmonbozia is unclear; it’s probably a nonsense word although it sounds a bit like garbanzo, otherwise known as the chick pea.

Without the context of the movie, creamed corn might act as a MacGuffin, a film device “used to catch the audience’s attention and maintain suspense, but whose exact nature has fairly little influence over the storyline.” Or maybe Lynch just really hates creamed corn.

The Log Lady is the town weirdo-slash-psychic who carries around a clairvoyant log. In Twin Peaks, wood seems to be a conductor of spirits. Josie Packard’s soul gets trapped in a wooden drawer knob (you heard us), and a ring of 12 sycamore trees leads into the Red Room of Cooper’s dream.

While his moniker is widely accepted, no one on the show ever seems to actually call him the Man from Another Place. Cooper calls him “a midget in a red suit” and “the little man.” In Fire Walk with Me, the Man calls himself the Arm, referring to the arm that MIKE cut off.

Former FBI agent Windom Earle describes “a place of great goodness” (the White Lodge), and also “another place, its opposite, of almost unimaginable power, chock full of dark forces and vicious secrets” (emphasis mine). This other place is known as the Black Lodge, the residence of the crimson-suited little man.

MIKE, Killer BOB’s ex-partner, cut off his left arm to rid himself of the devil’s touch as symbolized by the tattoo, “Fire Walk With Me.” His doppelganger is Phillip Michael Gerard, a one-armed shoe salesman with a suitcase full of right shoes.

MIKE, through Gerard, seems to want to help Cooper. Like MIKE, Gerard has a best friend named Bob, and while this Bob isn’t Killer BOB’s double, he indirectly leads Cooper to one of Laura’s killers.

Also known as the Waiting Room, the Red Room is a kind of limbo between the Black and White Lodges, and where Cooper encounters the Man from Another Place, Twin Peaks residents’ cloudy-eyed doppelgangers, and other eerie figures.

In the Red Room, everyone except Cooper engages in reverse-speak and reverse movement. This was achieved by filming the actors speaking and moving backwards, and playing the film in reverse. The effect is incredibly creepy (and was memorably parodied in The Simpsons). Reverse-speak shouldn’t be confused with reverse speech, a pseudoscience which claims that subconscious messages can be found in people’s recorded speech when played backwards.

BOB, by the way, is the same backwards or forwards. Why is this creepy? We’re not sure, but it is.

With its seductive swirls, intoxicating composition, and enchanting color palette, Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night is one of the world’s most beloved and recognizable works of art. But there’s much more to this Starry Night than you might have known.

After experiencing a mental breakdown in the winter of 1888, Van Gogh checked himself in to the Saint-Paul de Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the south of France. The view became the basis of his most iconic work. Van Gogh wrote in one of his many letters to his brother Theo, “this morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big.”

Art historians have determined that Van Gogh took some liberties with the view from his second-story bedroom window, a theory supported by the fact that the studio in which he painted was on the building’s first floor. He also left out the window’s less-than-welcoming bars, a detail he included in another letter to Theo. In May 1889, he wrote, “through the iron-barred window I can see an enclosed square of wheat, a prospect like a Van Goyen, above which, in the morning, I watch the sun rise in all its glory.”

From his window, Van Gogh wouldn’t have been able to see Saint-Rémy. However, art historians differ on whether the village presented in The Starry Night is pulled from one of Van Gogh’s charcoal sketches of the Provençal town or if it is actually inspired by his homeland, the Netherlands.

The dark spires in the foreground are cypress trees, a type often associated with cemeteries and death. This connection gives a special significance to this Van Gogh quote: “Looking at the stars always makes me dream. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.”

The Starry Night that is world-renowned was painted in 1889. But the year before, Van Gogh created his original Starry Night, sometimes known as Starry Night Over The Rhone. After his arrival in Arles, France, in 1888, Van Gogh became a bit obsessed with capturing the lights of the night sky. He dabbled in its depiction with Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, before daring to make his first Starry Night draft with the view of the Rhone River.

Surveying the works that would become known as his Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Remy series, the artist wrote to Theo, “All in all the only things I consider a little good in it are the Wheatfield, the Mountain, the Orchard, the Olive trees with the blue hills and the Portrait and the Entrance to the quarry, and the rest says nothing to me.”

In 1985, UCLA art historian Albert Boime compared Starry Night to a planetarium recreation of how the night sky would have appeared on June 19, 1889. The similarities were striking, and suggested that Van Gogh’s “morning star,” described in his letter to his brother, was the planet Venus.

Belgian artist and collector Anna Boch purchased the far lesser-known The Red Vineyard at Arles for 400 francs at the Les XX exhibition in 1890. Van Gogh had completed it in November 1888, before the breakdown that sent him to the asylum. Today this historic painting is on display at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. But there is evidence that Van Gogh sold a second painting. In his biography of the artist, historian Marc Edo Tralbaut mentioned a letter from Theo saying one of Van Gogh’s self portraits had found its way to a London art dealer.

Following Van Gogh’s death in 1890, Theo inherited all of his brother’s works. But when he died in the fall of 1891, his wife Johanna Gezina van Gogh-Bonger became the owner of The Starry Night and scads of other paintings. It was Van Gogh-Bonger who collected and edited the brothers’ correspondence for publication, and she is credited with building Van Gogh’s posthumous fame, thanks to her tireless promotions of his work and exhibitions.

In 1900, Van Gogh-Bonger sold The Starry Night to French poet Julien Leclerq, who soon sold it to Post-Impressionist artist Émile Schuffenecker. Six years later, she bought the painting back from Schuffenecker so she could pass it along to the Oldenzeel Gallery in Rotterdam.

Bliss was the daughter of a textile merchant who used her grand wealth to become one of the foremost collectors of modern art in the early 20th century. Alongside Mary Quinn Sullivan and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, she helped found Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art. Following her death in 1931, the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest turned much of her collection over to MoMA, creating the nucleus of the museum’s collection in the midst of the Great Depression. In 1941, three pieces from Bliss’s impressive collection were sold so that MoMA could acquire Starry Night.

In this Avi Ofer-animated TED-Ed video, Natalya St. Clair explains how Van Gogh’s painting is an accurate depiction of turbulence, “one of the most supremely difficult concepts” for physics to explain.

A version of this story was published in 2015; it has been updated for 2023.

The Mona Lisa’s tricky smile and timeless allure have inspired academic study and artistic emulation for more than five centuries—but the story of Leonardo da Vinci’s perplexing portrait is even richer than it looks.

The painting’s subject is commonly thought to be Lisa Gherardini, whose wealthy—and presumably adoring—husband Francesco del Giocondo commissioned the work in Florence, Italy, around 1503. This explains the less prevalent title for the painting, La Gioconda, or La Joconde in French. The name Mona Lisa (or Monna Lisa, as the Italians prefer) roughly translates to “My Lady Lisa.”

When Leonardo died in 1519, it’s thought that the unfinished Mona Lisa was bequeathed to his assistant. Some have speculated the artist might have left the painting undone because of some type of paralysis that impeded his dexterity.

The French emperor once had Mona Lisa hanging in his bedroom in the Tuileries Palace for about four years, beginning in 1800. It’s said his fascination with the painting inspired his affection for a pretty Italian woman named Teresa Guadagni, who was actually a descendant of Lisa Gherardini.

Mona Lisa’s influence on culture is massive, but the oil-on-wood panel painting measures just 30 inches by 21 inches and weighs 18 pounds.

Some claim the subject’s lack of eyebrows is representative of high-class fashion of the time. Others insist her AWOL eyebrows are proof that Mona Lisa is an unfinished masterpiece. But in 2007, ultra-detailed digital scans of the painting revealed Leonardo had once painted on eyebrows and bolder eyelashes. Both had simply faded over time or had fallen victim to years of restoration work.

The portrait was first put on public display in the Louvre in 1815, inspiring admiration, as a string of “suitors bearing flowers, poems, and impassioned notes climbed the grand staircase of the Louvre to gaze into her ‘limpid and burning eyes,’” journalist Dianne Hales writes in Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered.

According to author R. A. Scotti in Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa, the painting “often made men do strange things. There were more than one million artworks in the Louvre collection; she alone received her own mail. Mona Lisa received many love letters, and for a time they were so ardent that she was placed under police protection.” The painting has its own mailbox at the Louvre because of all the love letters its subject receives. (Some men have allegedly been so enamored with the painting that they have chosen to die by suicide—one of them in front of it.)

In the 1960s, the painting went on a tour where it was given an insurance valuation of $100 million (factoring in inflation, a 2014 assessment estimated it was worth $2.5 billion). But the policy was never taken out because the premiums were more than the cost of the best security.

Mona Lisa is the star of the Louvre’s Grand Gallery, where it is climate-controlled to keep the painting in the ideal environment. (According to the Associated Press, the system that cools the Louvre is part of 55 miles of underground pipes that transport water cooled by renewable energy sources to keep more than 700 sites nice and frosty.) Additionally, the work is encased in bulletproof glass to prevent threat and injury.

If you look closely at the subject’s left elbow, you might notice the damage done by Ugo Ungaza Villegas, a Bolivian man who chucked a rock at the portrait in 1956. A few months before, another art attacker pitched acid at the painting, which hit the lower section. These attacks inspired the bulletproof glass, which in 2009 successfully rebuffed a ceramic mug hurled by an enraged Russian woman who had been denied French citizenship. Most recently, the glass also protected the Mona Lisa when a man wearing a wig lobbed cake at the painting in 2022, screaming “think of the earth, people are destroying the earth!” as he was subdued by guards.

On August 21, 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre. The New York Times retroactively compared the public display of grief to that seen in the wake of Princess Diana’s death in 1997: Thousands came to the Louvre to stare in shock at the blank wall where the painting once hung, leaving behind flowers, notes, and other remembrances.

Because he’d been caught buying stolen Louvre pieces before, Pablo Picasso was brought in for questioning. But the true thief would not be caught until 1913.

Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia was a proud Italian nationalist who smuggled the painting out under his smock because he felt it belonged to his and Leonardo’s homeland, not France. After hiding it for two years, Peruggia was busted trying to sell the Mona Lisa to a Florence art dealer. However, he did briefly get his wish: After the painting was recovered, it toured Italy before returning to Paris.

Though Peruggia was the only one prosecuted for stealing the Mona Lisa, it’s unlikely he acted alone. At the time of the theft, the painting was encased in a heavy wood backing and glass case that would have weighed almost 200 pounds, making it highly unlikely Perugia could have pulled it down from the wall on his own.

Years later, a man who called himself the Marquis of the Vale of Hell confessed to American reporter Karl Decker that he was the true mastermind behind the theft of the Mona Lisa. On the condition his story be kept secret until his death, he revealed Peruggia was one of three men paid handsomely to snatch her. This way, the Marquis could sell multiple forgeries of the masterpiece to collectors for exorbitant sums. The beauty of the scam was that each buyer would believe they owned the authentic missing Mona Lisa. Whether the Marquis was telling the truth or not is still a hotly debated topic around the theft.

Hales writes in Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered that “Society women adopted the ‘La Joconde look’ [named for the painting’s French title], dusting yellow powder on their faces and necks to suggest her golden complexion and immobilizing their facial muscles to mimic her smile. In Parisian cabarets, dancers dressed as La Joconde performed a saucy can-can … Something beyond the painting’s wild popularity had changed. The Mona Lisa had left the Louvre a work of art; she returned as a public property, the first mass art icon.”

That is-she-or-isn’t-she smile has long fascinated artists and historians. But in 2000, Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Margaret Livingstone applied a scientific method to why the Mona Lisa’s smile seems to shift: It’s all about where your focus is and how your brain responds.

There are those who, upon conjuring up a mental image of the Mona Lisa, see the famous painting’s subject wearing an expression that’s more like a frown than a smirk. It’s an example of a shared false memory, otherwise known as the Mandela Effect. Other famous examples include a monocle-wearing Monopoly man and Jiffy Peanut Butter.

To determine whether the subject of the Mona Lisa was giving off more happiness or more sadness, scientists at the University of Freiburg showed 12 people nine photos of the painting: One was the original, while the other eight had been digitally manipulated around the mouth to show the subject as either happier or sadder. The photos were shuffled and shown to every participant 30 times; 97 percent of the time, they said the original painting appeared happy.

A version of this story ran in 2015; it has been updated for 2023.

Just as a carbonated beverage is referred to as soda in some areas of the U.S. and pop in others, the scattered and isolated survivors of The Walking Dead zombie apocalypse have different names for wandering corpses. While the wider Walking Dead universe has even more zombie-monikers, here are 13 ways of saying “walker” on the show.

Used by citizens of Woodbury, GA, a seeming utopia headed by a man only known as the Governor, biter might be a more accurate moniker than walker since zombies will continue to want to bite even if they don’t have legs. A biter is also a deceiver, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), like the Governor himself whose pleasant facade hides a sociopath.

Said by Terminus native Martin in the episode “No Sanctuary.” Cold bodies may be opposed to warm bodies, or non-zombie humans, which Terminusians like to serve up as barbecue.

“Got us a creeper,” Merle tells the Governor in “Walk with Me.” In the Walking Dead universe, zombies are of the slow, creeping variety, while in movies like World War Z (although not the book) and 28 Days Later, they’re the quick, wall-climbing type.

Nickname preferred by the posse headed by Abraham Ford. Rosita says she and her group were “fighting off some dead ones” when Abraham showed up out of nowhere in a tank. Later, Eugene “Mullet” Porter says, “I sure as hell can’t take a dead one down with sharp buttons and hella confidence.”

The most famous floater zombie is the one that’s found stuck in a well on the Greene Family Farm. Because it’s been in the water so long, it’s grotesquely swollen and rips apart when the survivors try to pull it out. Dale calls this well walker a “swimmer.”

While floater seems to be the accepted term for a water-logged zombie, no one on the show actually ever says it (at least not according to the transcripts). However, floater might be used in the comics, video games, or other Walking Dead formats.

A term that was used in the beginning of the show but not recently. In season two, Darryl says, “Look at him. Hanging up there like a big piñata. The other geeks came and ate all the flesh off his legs.”

A geek is a circus performer who, like zombies, will eat anything. American Horror Story’s Meep the Geek prefers live chickens, while in The X-Files’ “Humbug,” Conundrum the Geek’s diet consisted of live fish, cockroaches, and evil parasitic twins.

Used in “Nebraska” by Dave and Tony, two minor yet menacing characters. “Walkers?” Dave says to Rick. “That’s what you call them? I like that better than lamebrains.” Lame-brained was coined by P.G. Wodehouse in 1929, says the OED, while lame-brain came later, around 1945.

In “Walk With Me,” the Governor describes lurkers as “docile” zombies, that is those that have had their arms and jaws removed. Unable to grab or bite, they simply lurk. However, in the wider Walking Dead universe, a lurker is also a zombie that “plays dead,” lying in wait until a warm body comes by.

“When they turn,” Andrea says, “they become monsters … Whoever they once were is gone.” While she uses “monster” to refer to zombies, Andrea could very well be talking about the sadistic Governor, the cannibalistic Terminus residents, the horrific Marauders, or any humans that have been “turned” by grief, terror, or simply the will to survive.

The word monster ultimately comes from the Latin monere, “warn,” and originally referred to a mythical creature that was part human and part animal.

This is the term of choice for Aaron and the other members of the Alexandria settlement. When asked how long he has been following Rick’s group, Aaron answers, “Long enough to see that you practically ignore a pack of roamers on your trail.” In the comic and novel series, packs of zombies are also referred to as herds and hordes.

In Slabtown, also known as the Grady Memorial Hospital, the walking dead are rotters, a fitting term for a place that has a pile of corpses (and non-corpses) rotting at the bottom of its elevator shaft. A rotter is also someone who’s morally corrupt, much like Slabtown leader Dawn Lerner, who runs the hospital like a police state, forcing female residents to be “comfort women” for the police officers and refusing to release those she’s “helped.”

This term is used by minor characters Ana and Sam, who quickly meet their demise. Zombies eat more than skin, but that’s how they usually start, tearing at the epidermis with their teeth. Another skin-eater is a type of insect that preys on prepared furs or hides.

Used by Rick and his group, walker is the zombie nickname we hear most. A walker is also anyone who travels by foot, as Rick’s group does when they’re vehicle-less, wandering from settlement to settlement, looking for a place to stay.

Sometimes musicians reach for inspiration from their bookshelves. Here are 20 bands named after classic literature.

Issaquah, Washington’s Modest Mouse named their band after a passage from the novel The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf. “I chose the name when I was fifteen,” explains lead singer Isaac Brock. “I wanted something that was completely ambiguous, but it’s really candyesque sounding. But it meant something to me. And I could identify with that.”

“I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.”

Alternative rock band Veruca Salt is named after the spoiled rich girl who wins one of the Golden Tickets from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.

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Bassist Mikey Way was working at a Barnes & Noble when he was taken with the title Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance from Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh. His older brother and co-founder Gerard Way suggested the word “My” at the beginning of the band name.

The New Jersey punk band named themselves after the William Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus, one of the playwright’s most bloody and violent.

“I have found that when a person wants to be in a band, he or she spends a lot of time accumulating a mental file of words or phrases that would be cool band names. “‘Titus Andronicus’ was, to my mind, the best one that I’d come across,” vocalist/guitarist Patrick Stickles explained to Exclaim.ca. “I wanted our band to straddle that line between the more cerebral, thoughtful elements of the human condition and the part of us that just wants to see blood and brutality.”

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The Doors took their band name from Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, which was itself taken from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from English poet William Blake:

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

Co-founders Caithlin De Marrais and Kyle Fischer named their indie rock band after Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. The pair first met at a writing workshop in Madison, Wisconsin.

The band’s original name was The Sparrow, but founder John Kay renamed it Steppenwolf based on a suggestion from record producer Gabriel Mekler, who had just finished reading Hermann Hesse’s novel.

California-based Metalcore band Of Mice & Men got their name from John Steinbeck’s famous work.

“The book Of Mice and Men says, ‘the well laid plans of mice and men often falter,’” frontman Austin Carlile explained. “You make plans, and they get screwed up. [Bassist Jaxin Hall] and I both had plans for life, and they both got screwed up, so now we’re making the most of what we can.”

Joy Division with Sam Riley

Originally, the name of the band was Warsaw, but they changed it to Joy Division so people wouldn’t confuse them with another punk band from London called Warsaw Pakt. The name Joy Division comes from a novella entitled House of Dolls from a Jewish writer named Yehiel Feiner, who wrote under the pen name Ka-tzetnik 135633, which was his number in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The novella describes Jewish Joy Divisions as a group of women being used as sex slaves for Nazi soldiers and officers during World War II.

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Singer/songwriter Eef Barzelay named his alt-country band Clem Snide after a character who frequently appears in the novels of William S. Burroughs, including Naked Lunch, Exterminator!, and The Ticket That Exploded.

The San Diego-based metalcore band got their name from William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying. While lead singer Tim Lambesis liked the name of the book, he believes that its themes and story don’t reflect the band’s identity.

“We got the idea from the name. I wouldn’t say that there is a correlation in the meaning of the book and the meaning of the band. We stole the name from there,” Lambesis explained to Metal Underground. “It’s kind of depressing but I guess it’s well-written. It’s not my style of novel.”

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Lead singer and founder Stuart Murdoch named his indie pop band after a French children’s book called Belle et Sébastien by Cécile Aubry. It was adapted into a TV series during the ’70s and was made into a Japanese anime series in the ’80s.

Originally, the Australian alternative band was called Innocent Criminals, but the trio was later renamed Silverchair after the C.S. Lewis novel The Silver Chair when they signed with Sony Music in 1994. The Silver Chair is the fourth novel in “The Chronicles of Narnia” book series.

The Scottish post-punk band took their name from the protagonist featured in Franz Kafka’s novels The Trial and The Castle. The character Josef K also appears in the short story “A Dream.”

British garage band The Artful Dodger was named after the leader of the juvenile pickpocket gang in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Founders Mark Hill and Pete Devereux took the name because of all the bootleg songs they made when they first got started in the music industry.

This name comes from the mysterious Boo Radley of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. According to the band’s MySpace page, “The name comes from the shady character in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, but was chosen (in a pub) just because they liked the sound of it.”

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Sixpence None The Richer took their name from a passage in C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity. The section from Lewis’ book is about a son asking his father for a sixpence to buy him a gift.

“When the father received the present, he was none the richer because he originally gave the sixpence to his son,” lead singer Leigh Nash said on The Late Show with David Letterman. “The analogy is to God who gives gifts for us to glorify him. He is not richer because of our presentation since he originally gave the gift.”

Okkervil River lead singer Will Sheff named his indie rock band after a short story by Russian novelist Tatyana Tolstaya.

“There’s a lot of writing in the second person, a lot of jumping around in terms of what she was talking about, and it just felt very intuitive to me,” Will Sheff told MTV. “A lot [of] how those experiences might feel to me, where you’re waking up from a dream and you’re jostled around. I was just really impressed by her writing.”

Okkervil is also the name of a muddy river in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

The Los Angeles-based indie rock band based their name on a section from the novel White Noise by Don DeLillo.

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Born Richard Hall, the electronic songwriter got his middle name “Melville” and the nickname “Moby” from his parents, who told him at a young age that Moby Dick author Herman Melville was in their family lineage. “The basis for Richard Melville Hall—and for Moby—is that supposedly Herman Melville was my great-great-great-granduncle,” he told CNN.

With a show as beloved and long-lasting as The Simpsons, fans are naturally going to let their imaginations run wild with the vast amount of information they are given. The following theories were made by fans and explain some of the show’s more inexplicable aspects—and some do it more convincingly than others…

In the 1993 episode “So It’s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show,” Homer is crushed by a vending machine and falls into a coma. Everything is fine again at the end of the episode, but a recent fan theory argues that Homer never actually woke up from the coma. The original poster, Redditor /u/Hardtopickaname, cites a shift in the show’s tone after this episode. Before the episode, plots usually centered around mundane events like “Bart cheats on an IQ test” and “Lisa has a crush on her teacher,” but after the episode plots started to get more surreal and outlandish. Even more compelling, an earlier episode, “Homer The Heretic,” ends with the following exchange between Homer and God:

Homer: God, I gotta ask you something. What’s the meaning of life?
God: Homer, I can’t tell you that.
Homer: C’mon!
God: You’ll find out when you die.
Homer: I can’t wait that long!
God: You can’t wait six months?

“So It’s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show” (April 1, 1993) aired six months after “Homer the Heretic” (October 8, 1992). Producer Al Jean has dismissed the theory.

A fan theory from Reddit hypothesizes that every member of the Simpsons is a genius, but only Lisa chooses to embrace it. Marge was shown to be an excellent student, but ultimately chose Homer and a family over a career. In the episode “HOMR,” Homer became a genius after having a crayon removed from his brain, but chose to have the crayon re-inserted to avoid being ostracized by his friends. Even Bart is a genius (he’s shown a natural aptitude for languages and complex schemes), but chose a life of debauchery, because, like Homer, he found it more satisfying. Lisa chooses to embrace her intelligence, while all the other Simpsons choose happiness.

How are the Simpsons able to afford a large home, two nice cars, and hundreds of adventures and trips on Homer’s salary? A theory from Reddit postulates that Homer still receives royalties from The Be Sharps, his Beatles-esque barbershop quartet from the episode “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet.” This theory is supported by the fact that the other members of the band (Barney, Apu, and Principal Skinner) also have unexplained wealth. Barney has a bar tab so high that only NASA can calculate it, Apu drives a nice sports car, and Principal Skinner lives in a nice house in an affluent area.

According to a fan theory that first appeared on the No Homers fansite, Maude Flanders was a sociopath. The poster, Diversity Pumpkin, points to several scenes that suggest Maude hated Ned and wanted to kill her husband before her death in season 11. On several occasions—be it during a bear attack, imminent comet, or rooftop danger—Maude either left Ned for dead or showed no concern for him. After she passes away, the imprint on her bed is facing away from Ned, meaning that she spent every night facing away from her husband.

Over The Simpsons‘ long run, Hans Moleman suffers repeated fatal injuries as a running joke. A theory, originally posted by the Redditor /u/arin3, suggests that each of the these Molemen is actually a different person. A commenter expands on this theory, writing, “They are a race of human-mole hybrids that live under Springfield. In their gradual attempts to take over the world they are taking up jobs one by one in Springfield. Luckily though, Homer’s shenanigans kills them off as fast as they can come to the surface.” The theory is further supported by the season 11 episode “Hello Gudder, Hello Fadder,” where Homer encounters a race of underground Molemen.

In what state do the Simpsons live? This is one of the longest running mysteries of the show, but one dedicated internet detective believes they have found the correct answer. Using clues from the show and the process of elimination, the theory narrows down the Simpsons’ home state to Maine. You can read the full explanation here.

Another fan theory argues that Springfield isn’t in any state, but actually exists outside of time and space. Known as the “Tesseract Theory,” it states that Springfield exists within a tesseract and is constantly changing location. According to the poster, “This allows it to be much bigger than the space it takes up (West Springfield is three times the size of Texas) as well as shift location as needed. The town has been observed to shift its location anywhere in the lower 48 states.” This also explains why landmarks like the Murderhorn can exist in one episode and be absent the next, and why the characters never age.

You may hear an Erin go bragh and a sláinte or two this St. Patrick’s Day, or try your luck at pronouncing some Irish names, but even on the most Irish of holidays, we don’t hear much of the Irish language—which is a shame: Irish is so different from English or any of the languages we usually study in school, and so much about it is rather interesting and cool. Here are a few fun facts about Irish you should know.

Gaeilge is the name of the language in Irish, and Irish is the name of the language in English. Sometimes people will call it Irish Gaelic in order to make sure they aren’t misunderstood to mean “Irish English” for Irish. They may also say Irish Gaelic to distinguish it from Gaelic, which means Scottish Gaelic, a related but different language.

There are no words for “yes” or “no” in Irish, but that doesn’t mean there’s no way to answer a question. You communicate “yes” and “no” with a verb form. The answer to “did they sell the house?” would be “(they) sold” or “(they) didn’t sell.” In Irish:

“Ar dhíol sian an teach?”
“Dhíol.”
“Níor dhíol.”

Sentences have Verb Subject Object order. So “I saw a bird” would be “Saw I a bird.” “I always speak Irish” would be “Speak I Irish always.” This word order is relatively rare—only 9 percent of the world’s languages use it.

In addition to one set of numbers for doing arithmetic or referring to dates and times, Irish has a second set for counting humans and a third set for counting non-humans. Five children is cúigear páiste, but five horses is cúig chapall. (Irish animal names are also pretty descriptive.)

What’s the word for “woman”? Either bean, bhean, or mbean, depending whether it comes after certain possessive pronouns (my, your, his), or certain prepositions (under, before, on), or certain numbers, or a whole range of other conditions that determine which form of the word is correct. Most languages people study require them to learn different word endings, not beginnings. Irish requires both. It’s a bit of a challenge!

English has a lot more. More than 80, and that’s just counting the commonly used ones.

English phrases in many parts of Ireland show a parallel structure with their counterparts in Irish. “I’m after eating my breakfast” (I just ate my breakfast), “I gave out about the terrible service” (I complained/told them off about the terrible service), and in some places, “He does be working every day.”

Filmmaker and native Irish speaker Manchán Magan made a documentary No Béarla (No English) in which he traveled through Ireland only speaking Irish, even when people demanded he switch to English. Shopkeepers told him to get lost, officials refused to help him, people on the street ignored him, but he kept at it and found willing speakers here and there. In any case, he survived the trip. Watch it above.

A version of this story appeared in 2013; it has been updated for 2023.

Besides being the greatest writer in the history of the English language, William Shakespeare was the master of the pithy put-down. So the nervous servant who tells Macbeth his castle is under attack is dismissed as a “cream-faced loon.” Oswald in King Lear isn’t just a useless idiot, he’s a “whoreson zed,” an “unnecessary letter.” Lear’s ungrateful daughter Goneril is “a plague-sore,” an “embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood.” And when Falstaff doubts something Mistress Quickly has said in Henry IV: Part 1, he claims, “there’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.” (And there’s a good chance he didn’t intend “stewed prune” to mean dried fruit.) But you don’t have to rely just on Shakespeare to spice up your vocabulary. Next time someone winds you up or you need to win an argument in fine style, why not try dropping one of these old-fashioned insults into your conversation?

An adulterer. This appears to be another of Shakespeare’s inventions that became popular in Victorian slang.

An old Tudor English word for a fool that was coined by the 15th-16th century poet John Skelton, one of Henry VIII’s schoolteachers.

Also called a cumberground—someone who is so useless, they just serve to take up space.

Cop is an old word for the head, making a dalcop (literally a “dull-head”) a particularly stupid person. You can also be a harecop, or a “hare-brained” person.

Abydos was a city in Ancient Egypt whose inhabitants, according to one 19th-century dictionary, “were famous for inventing slanders and boasting of them.” Whether that’s true or not, the name Abydos is the origin of abydocomist—a liar who brags about their lies.

As well as being another name for a nincompoop, a dorbel is a petty, nit-picking teacher. It’s derived from the name of an old French scholar named Nicolas d’Orbellis, who was well known as a supporter of the much-derided philosopher John Duns Scotus (whose followers were the original “dunces”).

An old English dialect word for someone who drawls or speaks indistinctly.

An untidy woman.

An insignificant or foolish man.

To bespawl means to spit or dribble. A bespawler is a slobbering person, who spits when he talks.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this term for “a woman of gross or corpulent habit” is derived from fusty, in the sense of something that’s gone off or gone stale.

Another of Shakespeare’s best put-downs, coined in Henry IV, Part 2: “Away, you scullion! You rampallion! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe,” Falstaff exclaims. If not just a variation of fustilugs, he likely meant it to mean someone who stubbornly wastes time on worthless things.

An old Scots word for a swindling businessman, or someone who gets into debt and then flees.

An 18th-century northern English word for someone who only ever seems to complain.

An 18th-century word for an especially large shoe, and consequently a clumsy or awkward person.

An old Irish word for a nosy, prying person who likes to interfere in other people’s business.

A gowpen is the bowl formed by cupping your hands together, while a gowpenful-o’-anything is “a contemptuous term applied to one who is a medley of everything absurd,” according to the English Dialect Dictionary.

A leasing is an old word for an untruth or falsehood, making a or a leasing-maker a liar.

Someone who only seems able to speak by shouting.

In the 16th century, lubberwort was the name of an imaginary plant that was supposed to cause sluggishness or stupidity, and ultimately came to be used as a nickname for a lethargic, fuzzy-minded person.

A dialect word for someone who not only talks a lot, but who seems to constantly swear.

Derived from the name of a stock character in medieval theatrical farces, a mumblecrust is a toothless beggar.

In Victorian English, doing quisby meant shirking from work or lazing around. A quisby was someone who did just that.

A visitor who outstays his or her welcome. Originally, someone who stays so late the dying coals in the fireplace would need to be raked over just to keep it burning.

A disorganized or grubby person.

Someone who lives beyond their means, or seems to spend extravagantly.

Probably derived from scopperloit, an old English dialect word for a vacation or a break from work, a scobberlotcher is someone who never works hard.

Saddling geese is a proverbially pointless exercise, so anyone who wastes their time doing it—namely, a saddle-goose—must be an imbecile.

Someone who turns up uninvited at a meal or party and expects to be fed.

When Laurence Sterne (author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy) met the Scottish writer Tobias Smollett (author of The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle) in Italy in 1764, he was amazed by how critical Smollett was of all the places he had visited. Smollett returned home and published his Travels Through France and Italy in 1766, and in response Sterne published his Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy two years later. Part-novel, part-travelogue, Sterne’s book featured a grumblingly quarrelsome character called Smelfungus, who was modeled on Smollett. The name soon came to be used of any buzz-killing faultfinder—an in particular someone who always finds fault in the places they visit.

Someone who constantly interrupts a conversation, typically only to contradict or correct someone else.

Sorning was the 16th century equivalent of mooching or sponging, and so a sorner is someone who unappreciatively lives off other people.

A heavy-footed, clumsy person.

A badly-behaved child. Coined by the Scottish poet Robert Burns from the old Scots word skelpie, meaning “misbehaving” or “deserving punishment.”

In Greek mythology, one of The Twelve Labors of Hercules was to destroy the Stymphalian birds, a flock of monstrous, man-eating birds with metal beaks and feathers, who produced a stinking and highly toxic guano. A Stymphalist is someone who smells just as unpleasant.

Another of Shakespeare’s inventions directed at the gross, womanizing knight Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1. It’s probably derived from “tallow ketch,” literally “a barrel of fat.”

A finicky, fault-finding pedant.

This is a 17th-century term for a slacker. An idling, lazy good-for-nothing. Literally, someone who seems to spend all day in bed.

A weak and ineffectual man. (Wandoughty is an old word for impotence. Say no more.)

An indecisive, time-wasting ditherer.

A 15th-century word meaning “the son of a prostitute.”

Zoilus was a Greek grammarian who became known as one of the most vitriolic critics of Homer, author of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Consequently, a zoilist is an overly-critical and judgmental nitpicker.

A version of this story ran in 2015; it has been updated for 2023.

If you’ve thought about the frog versus toad question at all, you’ve probably assumed that these amphibians are two very different animals. But the real answer might surprise you: Toads belong to the order Anura, and are actually a subset of frogs. “All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads,” Christopher Raxworthy, now curator of herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History, told Mental Floss in 2015. “In popular use, toad seems to be used to refer to any frog that has a dry warty skin and short legs.”

Here’s how you can tell the difference between frogs and toads—and how true toads fit into the equation.

Frogs and toads have different kinds of skin. If you see an animal that has dry and pebbly skin, you’re looking at a toad. (Don’t worry—touching a toad won’t give you warts. That’s a myth.) Frog skin is moist and smooth.

Frogs have slim bodies and long legs—which are better for long leaps and fast swimming—whereas toads have short forelimbs and hop or walk. Toads also have big glands behind their eyes, called “paratoid glands,” which produce poison.

The amphibians also prefer different habitats: Frogs like to be in water to keep their skin moist. Toads, on the other hand, are most often seen on land; they have skin that’s better at retaining moisture, so they can wander farther from bodies of water.

Both frogs and toads breed in water, but their spawn looks different: Frogs lay their eggs in clusters, and toads (generally) lay their eggs in long chains. According to Discover Wildlife, frogs are capable of breeding and spawning in colder temperatures than toads.

There’s also a group scientists call true toads. They belong to the family Bufonidae, which consists of 50 genera and nearly 600 species, native to all continents except Antarctica and Australia (the cane toad, currently marching its way across Australia, was brought there in the 1930s). “They are recognized as a natural group based on DNA and skeletal characters,” Raxworthy said. For example, true toads don’t have any teeth, and the skin on the head is typically ossified to the skull.

But even in that group, the distinction between toad and frog isn’t necessarily clear. “Many have a dry warty skin, but not all,” Raxworthy said. If you saw a member of the genus Atelopus, you’d probably assume it was a regular frog—but these colorful amphibians, which hail from Central and South America, are also true toads.

And any number of frogs get called toads, even though they actually aren’t, like those in the Bombinatoridae family. Nature: It’s complicated!

Now that you know the difference between frogs and toads, read up on the difference between a cricket and a grasshopper, bison and buffalo, and pigeons and doves.

A version of this story ran in 2015; it has been updated for 2024.

The year was 1977, and French music producer Jacques Morali was writing songs for the third album by the Village People, a stereotype-satirizing disco ensemble he formed in New York City.

While walking down the street in the Chelsea neighborhood, Morali encountered something he’d never seen in Europe: the Young Men’s Christian Association. He visited the YMCA’s huge building on Manhattan’s 23rd Street, which offered inexpensive rooms to young men visiting the city. The idea was to give these impressionable lads a wholesome environment in the midst of the immoral metropolis. In reality, it was known as a place for hookups. And Morali thought he could turn the concept into a theme song for gay liberation.

“Jacques wrote ‘Y.M.C.A.’ in about 20 minutes—the melody, the chorus, the outline. Then he gave it to [lead singer] Victor Willis and said, ‘Fill in the rest,’” David Hodo, the band member known as the Construction Worker, recalled. “I was a bit skeptical about some of our hits, but the minute I heard ‘Y.M.C.A.,’ I knew we had something special. Because it sounded like a commercial. And everyone likes commercials.”

Morali’s upbeat song spent 26 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, reaching No. 2 in 1979. It was a gigantic hit with everyone—except the eponymous organization.

It wasn’t because the Young Men’s Christian Association took issue with the song’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics or the Village People’s gay references. YMCA executives were more concerned with copyright infringement.

Shortly after the single’s release, the YMCA announced its trademarked name had been used without permission and began pursuing an out-of-court settlement. Profit was not the point, though one attorney said, “in any negotiation, money is a factor.”

What happened next is unclear, but the YMCA seemed to recognize the popularity (and free publicity) associated with the song, and both parties eventually made peace [PDF]. “We at the YMCA celebrate the song,” media relations manager Leah Pouw told Spin in 2008. “It’s a positive statement about the YMCA and what we offer to people all around the world.”

A version of this story ran in 2015; it has been updated for 2023.

The only thing more rewarding than receiving a fine compliment is doling one out. Here are a few charming, cute, and kooky kudos from the days of yore dating back through the past seven centuries, all sure to land you in good favor with those on the receiving end. (And if you’re in need of old-timey insults, we have those too.)

Even 400 years ago there were instances of delicacy: Romantic knights, well-read royals, and love-struck troubadours all knew their way around some fancy words. For instance, we have bellibone, a delightful term for a lady rich in personality as well as physical beauty.

If you’re looking for a bit of Middle Ages jargon that feels a little more romantic, this phrase denoting unbeatable affection is the way to go.

During the 16th century, honesty became a characteristic of newfound acclaim in the English language. If you happen upon someone whose trustworthiness cannot go without commendation, try using truepenny or straight-up to compliment them.

While the Medieval and early Elizabethan periods boasted plenty of colorful colloquialisms, you’ll no doubt want to advance to the height of William Shakespeare’s career to get some of the really good stuff. This term for a gentleman of character and integrity, for instance, is pretty hard to beat.

If you spend your time among particularly humorous company, this diminutive designation will come in handy. After your funniest friend earns a particularly big laugh, champion him or her as the group’s beloved wag.

In the mid-17th century, someone—possibly English author John “J.G.” Gough—made a living off the art of niceties by publishing The Academy of Complements, in which he offers a wide variety of options for laying some charm on a romantic partner. Along with liquorous rolling eyes, Gough included compliments like “her breath doth sent of Amber” and “her lips are rubies of an infinite value.”

This is a bit of a confusing one, considering the word’s modern, negative connotation—but originally, bully was a 16th-century term of endearment. (According to the OED, it may be derived from the Dutch word boel, which was used for friends and companions.) You’ll probably want to explain to your friend that you’re intending to point out his good nature and strong moral fiber before calling him a ”bully.”

Say you just caught a glimpse of an attractive stranger across the room—this assessment of him or her as one brimming with physical allure should win you due favor.

The New Academy of Complements, published in the 18th century, offered some long-winded gems: “Your virtues have so strangely taken up my thoughts, that therein they encrease and multiply in abundant felicity,” and “As you are fair and beauteous, be generous and merciful to him that is your slave.”

Bricky is an adjective you can use to laud a friend for his or her reliability, likening the tough and unyielding nature of the party in question to—what else?—a brick.

Granted, it sounds a bit like a compliment you’d pay to a nice piece of toast, but this old slang superlative actually signifies “perfect young females.”

When pippin first popped up in the 17th century, it was a term for a young, naïve person; later, it came to be used as a term for a person of high esteem and admiration. Granted, it’s also a type of apple, but context clues should clear things up in conversational use.

It’s always appropriate to pay notice to a friend’s living quarters when stopping by, too. If a warm, cozy, or otherwise pleasant little abode wins your notice, make sure to remark on what a fine snuggery your chum has managed to land.

All of these words and phrases are great, but what need have you for any other compliment when you can tap into the wide variety of zoological possessive couplets that earned popularity in the 1920s? You’ve got your choice of caterpillar’s kimono, bullfrog’s beard, clam’s garter, eel’s ankle, sardine’s whiskers, and butterfly’s book—and our favorite, elephant’s adenoids.

Charles Dickens coined this term in 1838’s Oliver Twist to refer to someone who is smart and attractive.

A version of this story ran in 2015; it has been updated for 2023.

Are you a logophile? Do you want to learn unusual words and old-timey slang to make conversation more interesting, or discover fascinating tidbits about the origins of everyday phrases? Then get our new book, The Curious Compendium of Wonderful Words: A Miscellany of Obscure Terms, Bizarre Phrases, & Surprising Etymologies, out now! You can pick up your copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, or Bookshop.org.

On I Love Lucy, whenever Lucy or Ricky Ricardo gave out their phone number, they’d say it as “Murray Hill 5-9975.” Even though that may look and sound like gibberish to modern phone-users, it was perfectly normal at the time. Lucy, you got some ‘splaining to do.

Phone numbers looked like this in the middle of the 20th century because of telephone exchanges—the hubs through which an area’s calls would be routed. Phone subscribers were given a unique five-digit number within their service area. These would be preceded by two digits, which were identified by letters, that denoted the telephone exchange you were connected to. (Before the 1950s, some cities used three letters and four numbers, while others had two letters and three numbers. The two letter, five number format—or “2L-5N”—was eventually standardized throughout the country).

Because these telephone exchanges could only facilitate around 10,000 subscribers, many large cities had multiple hubs. The Ricardo’s MUrray Hill5-9975 meant their number was 685-9975 (“Hill” and its capital H served purely as a mnemonic), with the 68, or “MU,” representing the east side of Manhattan’s telephone exchange. This is also why phones still have letters over the numbers (three over 2 through 8, and four over 9).

Full words were used to help customers remember the telephone exchange name, and because they were easy to understand, especially for switchboard operators. Similar-sounding letters would cause confusion, so distinct names or phrases were preferred. The specific words used to identify the two-letter codes weren’t standardized, but rather recommended by AT&T/Bell in their Notes on Nationwide Dialing, 1955 [PDF], which was distributed around the country as people started to make more and more long-distance calls. You can see the list of names for each telephone exchange here.

Around this same time, area codes were introduced, but they were used mostly by operators and not customers. In the late 1950s and throughout the next two decades, U.S. phone systems began switching to all-number calling, which didn’t rely on archaic telephone exchanges and could exponentially add customers just by introducing new area codes.

The change didn’t happen without some resistance, however. People loved the literary charm of their old telephone exchange names, and groups like the Anti-Digit Dialing League and the Committee of Ten Million to Oppose All-Number Calling were formed to protest the switch.

Wild, right? People actually used to pick up the phone and make calls.

A version of this story ran in 2015; it has been updated for 2023.