People & Mind

In 1997, a 23-year-old French con artist convinced a Texas family he was their missing teenage son — despite having brown eyes instead of blue, a heavy French accent, and being a completely different person. He lived with them for months before a private investigator uncovered the truth.

In 2013, a man named Frane Selak survived a train derailment, a plane door explosion, a bus crash, and four car wrecks. He then won the lottery, gave most of it away, and said he was finally happy.

Your brain can't distinguish between vividly imagined practice and real action. Mental rehearsal physically strengthens neural pathways.

Hearing your own name activates your brain's reward center the same way money or food does, even when you're asleep.

Muhammad has been the most popular baby boy's name in England for two years running.

During WWII, Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara defied his government to save 6,000 Jewish refugees. He wrote visas by hand for 29 days straight, even throwing them from his train window as he was forced to leave.

The inventor of the Pringles can is buried in one. Fredric Baur was so proud of his creation that he requested part of his ashes be stored in a Pringles container after his death in 2008.

Some people can taste words - a rare phenomenon called lexical-gustatory synesthesia, where hearing or reading certain words triggers unique flavors in their mouths.

The inventor of the first successful electric hearing aid, Miller Reese Hutchison, also designed some of the earliest car horns—helping people be heard in two very different ways.

Some tech CEOs intentionally use the same outfit every day—like Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck—not out of laziness, but to minimize decision fatigue and boost creativity.

Research shows that verbal intelligence is positively correlated with worry and rumination. Brain scans reveal that both high intelligence and excessive worrying share similar patterns of neural activity in the brain's white matter.

Taking a nap after learning something can help your retention of it.

Happiness and stress are contagious; surrounding yourself with happier people will make you happier too.

Research has found that you're more likely to have a creative epiphany when you're doing something monotonous, like fishing, exercising, or showering.

Money can buy happiness, but researchers have found that its emotional well-being benefits max out at a salary of about 75K a year.

Listening to music while working can boost mood and productivity, but the effect depends on the type of task and music—lyrics can interfere with reading or writing, while instrumental music often helps with repetitive tasks.

The fear of being tickled by feathers is known as Pteronophobia.

There's an Iranian man who hasn't washed for over 60 years and smokes animal faeces.

When you wake up with a jolt, it's called a hypnic jerk. This usually happens during the lightest stages of sleep, and can occur as a natural reaction when you fall asleep in a car or airplane.

Singing exercises your heart, lungs, and releases endorphins which make you feel good.