A tiny uninhabited island in the Pacific called Disappointment Island hosted 16 sailors for eight months after a shipwreck in 1907.

After a Japanese pilot crash-landed on the Hawaiian island of Niʻihau, residents first sheltered him. Once news of the Pearl Harbor attack arrived, two locals tried to help him escape, leading to a violent struggle in which Native Hawaiians ultimately stopped and killed him.

On Aug. 9, 1942, a larger, radar-equipped Allied fleet lost four heavy cruisers off Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater without sinking a single Japanese ship. The Navy kept the humiliating rout secret from the public for years. Experts argued failure resulted from fractured command, not inferior arms or ships.

Point Nemo is located in the South Pacific Ocean at coordinates 48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W, approximately 2,688 kilometers (1,670 miles) from Ducie Island, Motu Nui, and Maher Island. The location has served as an underwater graveyard for hundreds of satellites and is expected to be harbor the International Space Station in 2030.

When a 26-year-old American missionary set out for a lush island in the Indian Ocean last year, it was with one objective in mind: to convert the uncontacted Sentinelese tribe, who had lived for centuries in isolation, free from modern technology, disease, and religion. John Chau's mission had ambitions for a great awakening, but what awaited instead was tragedy.

This four-part video series explains the massive effort to raise, repair, and refloat the Pacific Fleet—detailing the engineering challenges, diving operations, and months of around-the-clock work that restored all but three damaged ships to active service.

A 292-foot Whaleback ship, Barge 129, was found in Lake Superior 120 years after a storm sank it, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society said.

This article explores Null Island, which can be found on most maps at exactly 0° latitude and 0° longitude. If someone were to paddle out to those coordinates, they'd find themselves in front of a buoy named Soul off the west coast of Africa. User...

Centuries of maps include islands and isles that appear to only exist on atlases. This article explores the discovery and "undiscovery" of such landscapes, which still persist despite modern technology. As recently as 2012, Google Maps showed an...

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, roughly 10,000 American civilians were stranded in Japanese-occupied territory. Tense diplomatic negotiations eventually secured two prisoner exchanges conducted via ship across 20,000 nautical miles to return nearly 3,000 Allied civilians, while Japanese Americans in North and South America were sent in the opposite direction, many to a country they had never called home.

In 1943, engineers spent three months using 21 giant winches and an intricate cable system to right the capsized USS Oklahoma. It was the largest naval salvage effort ever attempted at the time and remains one of the most complex in history.

As tens of thousands of Irish emigrated to North America to escape the Great Famine in the mid-19th century, many port cities set up quarantine areas amid an epidemic of cholera. In Quebec City on the St. Lawrence River, one island became a mass graveyard where over 3,000 Irish immigrants died over a decade as they waited in quarantine. Listen to the history here.

A buoy denotes the fictional island where the Prime Meridian intersects with the equator in the Atlantic Ocean. Nations had disagreed on where the "origin" of world maps should be located until the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time were established in 1884.

When the USS Oklahoma capsized amid the attacks, hundreds of sailors were buried within the ship's hull. Officials have used advances in forensic science to analyze DNA and dental evidence to help identify nearly 400 sailors decades after the fact.

What Ellis Island was to the East Coast, Angel Island was to the West. Just off the coast of San Francisco, this processing center became a detention center for those targeted by exclusionary immigration laws. Click here to read some of the stories left by the detained.

Ancient Polynesian navigators used the sun, moon, stars, clouds, currents, and more to sail the seas. People of Southeast Asia began their voyages to the region now known as Polynesia in roughly 1500 BCE. They would settle a vast area of 15 million square miles, including hundreds of islands, moving from islands due to overpopulation or war. Such voyages dwindled in 1300 CE as societies became more rooted.

After removing 1.5 million invasive coconut palm trees and eradicating the black rats that fed on them, as well as seabirds and crabs, conservationists working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service identified areas where fungi could be transplanted to provide nutrients to native trees. These trees serve as nesting sites for seabirds whose guano nourishes coral reefs.

Three days before the tragedy unfolded, this photo was taken by an Irish Jesuit priest who sailed with the ship for the first part of its journey from England to Ireland.

The pod rammed the boat’s rudder for about 45 minutes. Authorities were able to get crew members to land safely, but their yacht was irreparably damaged. Check out the story and photos here.

From The Portland—known as New England's "Titanic"—to the Civil War's USS Monitor, this archive from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides overviews of some of the most well-known shipwrecks in US history.

IN 1959, archaeologists found a human femur jutting out from a rock face on Santa Rosa Island. Using the then-new technology of radiocarbon dating, they measured the age of the remains at 13,000 years—the oldest in the continent.

The US adopted a two-pronged "island hopping" campaign across the Central and Southwest Pacific from 1943–44, deliberately targeting strategically crucial but less-defended islands. This allowed forces to bypass heavily fortified Japanese strongholds and build airfields for bombers aimed at Japan, drastically accelerating the path toward Tokyo while conserving manpower and resources.

A team of scientists—with the help of an uncrewed boat remotely controlled from the UK—join forces to produce one of the clearest pictures to date of what took place underneath the water as an enormous volcano erupted near the Tongan mainland.

A deadly 1912 scientific expedition to the Antarctic took a turn for the worse when the expedition team's leader turned to man's best friend to fuel their journey. This 21-minute podcast episode provides a glimpse into the real-life dangers of...

Long before Champagne existed, people performed good-luck rituals before setting sail. But since animal sacrifice is generally frowned upon these days, a new tradition developed before a ship’s maiden voyage: smashing a bottle of Champagne against the hull.

Japan’s air assault sank or damaged 18 warships (including eight battleships) and destroyed 188 aircraft, killing 2,403 Americans, yet all three Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers were absent and survived, and vital infrastructure like oil depots and repair yards remained intact—preserving core US naval power and enabling a rapid recovery. Watch original reporting here.

The British HMS Challenger research vessel identified metal-rich seafloor rocks between Hawaii and Mexico in the 1870s, but rules governing which nations control which parts of the ocean were not established until 1958 by the UN. It later established the ISA to oversee mineral-related operations in international waters.

Assembled from case information from state and health agencies, this detailed mapping includes the last known locations of each confirmed, deceased, and suspected case and their status.

Using over 700,000 images captured by underwater robots, researchers created a highly detailed 3D "digital twin" of the Titanic. The analysis gives us new insights into the life of the ship that lays 3,800m down in the icy waters of the Atlantic. Emerging details from close-up images, such as a smashed porthole likely caused by the iceberg, match the eye-witness accounts of what happened. Read for more insights into the devastating wreck.

In early 1941, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto ordered detailed planning for a surprise carrier strike on Pearl Harbor. Japanese teams spent months refining torpedo modifications, training pilots, and rehearsing the complex attack.

It took scientists 375 years to discover the eighth continent of the world, which had been hiding in plain sight all along. But mysteries still remain.

Accounts preserved by the Kalaupapa National Historical Park describe how residents felt about being sent to live in this remote location and knowing they would never be allowed to leave. In 2012, 20 residents with the disease continued to voluntarily live in the area.