Roger Bannister was the first person to break the 4-minute mile, a feat he accomplished while he was enrolled in medical school.

Understand distinctions between coffee types and other popular cafe beverages with this visual guide.

Light takes approximately eight minutes to travel from the sun's surface to Earth, but it takes thousands of years to reach the star's surface from its core—a distance more than 200 times shorter.

See Walt Disney's corporate strategy document from 1957, complete with a plethora of Mickey Mouse illustrations.

There are up to 100 trillion microbes in the gut, and maintaining the relative balance in this ecosystem is important for our health.

George Lucas used Joseph Campbell's 'hero's journey,' a narrative structure that encompasses the common characteristics of multiple cultures' mythologies, to revise 'Star Wars.'

See where the 100 million barrels of crude oil the world consumes daily end up.

The US has discontinued a variety of different currency denominations over the years—including a $100K bill.

The world's largest waterfall is in the ocean and is more than three times the height of Angel Falls, the largest waterfall on land.

Explore interactive maps from fictional journeys, including 'The Odyssey,' 'Moby-Dick,' and more.

While all other fish are cold-blooded—their body temperatures match their surroundings—the opah, or moonfish, is warm-blooded, with a body temperature about 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than its environment.

In 1962, the US detonated a nuclear weapon in space, which produced an electromagnetic pulse that disabled three low Earth orbit satellites and damaged electrical equipment in Hawaii.

On a cruise ship, the average person uses about 50 gallons of water a day, which is treated by bacteria and onboard filtration systems, then stored until the ship can legally discharge the wastewater.

The Panama Canal was the first to use a lock-and-lake system on a massive scale.

According to the International Energy Agency, hyperscale data centers consume about as much electricity annually as 400,000 electric vehicles to provide 24/7 access to online applications, services, and information.

'And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans:' Hear Robert Kennedy's famous 1968 speech criticizing gross domestic product as the primary benchmark for American growth.

Learn how 'real' and 'nominal' gross domestic product differ, with real GDP being adjusted for inflation and nominal GDP reflecting current monetary values.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, contends that children are losing the ability to pay attention as they spend half their lives perusing social media content designed to hook them.

Explore how the most commonly used words in the English language have changed from the 1950s to 2023.

As part of the up to 15 pounds of seafood they consume daily, sea otters eat urchins that feed on kelp forests—sources of shelter and food to over 800 species—thereby making the marine mammal a keystone species.

Prediction markets have been likened to the stock market—except instead of buying and selling shares of companies, users buy and sell "yes" or "no" on whether an event may happen.

A stroke occurs when blood flow to part of the brain is suddenly interrupted, either by a blockage (ischemic stroke) or bleeding when a blood vessel in the brain breaks and bleeds (hemorrhagic stroke).

A showdown between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in the 1979 NCAA final helped ignite the college basketball boom.

Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs' 'Stay' is the shortest song ever to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Humans can have brain damage after four minutes without blood flow.

On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, creating a social safety net that now covers more than 70 million Americans.

Consider the logistical implications if you literally had all the money in the world.

Here are some tips from Pew Research to help you distinguish between a good poll and an unreliable one.

Emanuel Leutze's painting 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' is one of the defining images of the Revolutionary War.

Future President Dwight D. Eisenhower's terrible experience on a cross-country road trip in 1919 helped inspire him to create the interstate highway system.

Streaming service Netflix's sound logo 'Tudum' was designed as a key sonic differentiator.

Watch the many different civilizations around the Mediterranean shift power from the year 2500 BCE to 0 BCE in this animated map.

Humans can have brain damage after four minutes without blood flow.

The tallest tsunami in recorded history was 524 meters (1,720 feet) high—taller than the Empire State Building—and occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska, in 1958 after an earthquake dislodged a rockface into the water.

In 1951, the small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit is believed to have been overtaken by the fungus containing the psychoactive ingredient used to make LSD.

The formal Japanese unconditional surrender that ended World War II took place on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945.

The canine family tree traces how foxes and wolves are related to our beloved household pets, like poodles and dachshunds.

The Berlin Wall physically separated East and West Berlin for nearly three decades, preventing East Germans from fleeing to the West and earning the nickname 'the Iron Curtain.'

'Tulip mania,' the 1630s Dutch craze where rare bulbs were briefly traded like luxury assets, may have been the first financial bubble—and it still shapes markets today.

Watch 'Last Week Tonight' explore the risks of 'forever chemicals,' a group of human-made chemicals used in everyday products to make them resistant to water, stains, grease, and heat. (Warning: language.)

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,' the novel that inspired the 1939 film 'The Wizard of Oz,' was itself inspired by a drought.

See a map of the world's 25 largest stock exchanges, which had a total market cap of $106T as of 2023.

Peter Tuchman, who has worked on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange for over four decades and ranks among the most famous traders in history, is known as the 'Einstein of Wall Street.'

Taxi and ambulance drivers appear to have the lowest risk of dying from Alzheimer's disease out of 443 occupations, which suggests that constant real-time navigation work strengthens the hippocampus and may help protect against the disease.

The Atlantic proclaimed that 'The End of Reading is Here,' which might be alarmist but is based on significant data.

See where your state ranked in an analysis of the best public school systems in the US.

In 1984, Bob Dylan reimagined himself as the front man of a punk band for a performance on David Letterman's late-night talk show.

Watch someone drive a Model T Ford, which feels like driving 'a tractor with the soul of a sewing machine'—and learn how to operate one.

Explore the full list of over 1,000 UNESCO World Heritage sites, broken down by country.

Our love of chocolate may have more to do with how it ferments than previously realized—with specific microbes associated with more fruity or acetic tastes.