Origin
The magazine was co-founded by William E. Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur while they were students at Duke University. According to the Mental Floss website, the idea came from conversations at the Duke cafeteria about the need for an educational magazine that was funny and entertaining. According to Hattikudur, they wanted to emulate the lectures from some of their favorite professors while maintaining their enthusiasm on a regular basis.
Later Will Pearson met with the president of Duke University, who loved the idea, but disliked the name. The first published issue was known as the "Campus Edition" published in spring of 2000, distributing 3,000 issues.
The founders spent much of their first year looking for investors and staff members while raising funds to publish the first issue, which was released in May 2001. Over the following summer, 8,000 copies were distributed, and 60% sold out on newsstands.
Read more about this topic: Mental Floss
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