Jake Rossen

3 weeks ago | mentalfloss.com | Jake Rossen

Puzzles, riddles, and brainteasers abound online, and we’ve passed along several, including this entrance exam math problem from MIT circa 1876 and a baffling family tree riddle that’s confounded most who try it. Another entry in the most-people-won’t-solve-it genre: A recent puzzler courtesy of MindYourDecisons.com that the site claims stumps 80 percent of players.

3 weeks ago | mentalfloss.com | Jake Rossen

Praised for her fantasy novel debut at age 12, Follett went from a child prodigy to a grown woman who disappeared without explanation. Some think they know what happened. For months, Barbara Newhall Follett had been dreaming of a fantasy world full of forests and animals, meadows and mountains. Now she watched as it all went up in flames. It was October 1923, and Follett, age 9, stood as her family home in New Haven, Connecticut, slowly disappeared in a haze of fire and smoke.

3 weeks ago | mentalfloss.com | Jake Rossen

The disappearance of a Canadian tycoon led to lots of speculation, dead ends, and an eerie silence from a prime suspect. In a way, Theresa Small hoped the news wasn’t true. It was summer 1921, and her husband, Ambrose Small, had been missing for nearly two years. A man of means, wealth, and influence who was known across Canada, his disappearance had made for sensational headlines. Now, two men from all the way in Des Moines, Iowa, claimed that they had found Small.

3 weeks ago | mentalfloss.com | Jake Rossen

‘Conan: Red Nails’ was set to be a faithful—and brutal—depiction of the famed barbarian. It never saw the light of day. Dragons. Giant beasts sliced in half. Class warfare within the confines of a giant castle. In the mythology of fantasy icon Conan the Barbarian, “Red Nails” has a little bit of everything. The short story, originally published in Weird Tales magazine in 1936, was also the last Conan story that creator Robert E. Howard ever wrote—he died by suicide shortly after completing it.

3 weeks ago | mentalfloss.com | Jake Rossen

Billions in gold may be hidden in a New Mexico mountain peak. As “Doc” Noss discovered, talking about it could get you killed. At first, Milton Noss thought a rattlesnake was crawling up his leg. It was November 1937, and Noss, 32, was staking out a mountain top in the arid, dry heat of New Mexico in the hopes of catching a deer headed for the spring water nearby. But when Noss looked down, there was no snake. There was only a faint breeze drifting up from the ground.