What Kitty Hawk looks like today, including a 60-foot memorial to the brothers

Kitty Hawk’s wide space, isolation and winds were ideal for flight experiments

North Carolina’s Outer Banks at the turn of the 20th century were not the summer resort destinations they are today. The brothers sought privacy as they toyed with their aviation designs, camping in Kill Devil Hills and using its sand dunes as launch points for early glider designs.

Watch an amateur fly a 1902 Wright glider at the Kitty Hawk dunes

Billy Vaughan recreates the test flights of the Wright gliders in the exact location the brothers conducted them. He argues an October 1902 glider flight—not the December 1903 one—was the key innovative moment, implementing three-axis control. Host Baratunde rides a glider in perfect windy conditions in this re-creation.

See a timeline of early flights, patent approvals and the birth of the Wright Company

The brothers’ most intense period of creativity and progress came between 1901 and 1910, when their work at Kitty Hawk culminated in the first powered flight. The pair, however, were not the most business-savvy, and they struggled to take financial advantage of their pioneering work in the field.

See shots of the Wright Flyer intact at the National Air and Space Museum

Since the museum’s opening in 1976, the wood-and-muslin plane has been available for public viewing with a model of Orville, the younger brother, lying on the plane’s mid-section.

Watch a North Carolina house collapse into the ocean

While the Outer Banks experiences beach erosion, rip currents and overwash from a nor’easter along the coast, a seaside house in Rodanthe collapsed Tuesday.

Exploring bird skulls

Birds inspire us to fly—but what about bird skulls? This collection of various birds' preserved skulls offers a peculiar "bird's-eye" view. See the many surprising shapes of beaks and eyeholes, from mockingbirds to turkeys, in this fascinating visual collection.

See images of shipwrecks from WWII's Battle of Midway

Deep-sea explorers have captured detailed images of three iconic shipwrecks from World War II's Battle of Midway, including the first up-close photos of the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi since its sinking in 1942.

Inside the architecture of Pyongyang's Kim dynasty

Since the bombings during the Korean War wiped out much of Pyongyang in the 1950s, three leaders of the Kim dynasty of North Korea have remade the ancient capital from the bottom-up, designing workers monuments, vast streets, and collectivized living spaces. Take a look inside the reclusive city with this architectural analysis accompanied by photographs.

In 2022, a piece of Challenger was discovered on the ocean floor

While searching for World War II wreckage near Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a documentary, divers discovered debris on the seafloor that NASA later confirmed to be a piece of Space Shuttle Challenger wreckage. The piece is at least 15-by-15 feet in size and partially buried under sand.

Photographing abandoned structures in the southeastern US

Leland Kent is a photographer and historian who has captured hundreds of buildings across the southeast United States over the last 10 years in order to preserve the past before it's too late. His subjects include decommissioned power plants, closed youth jails, vacant plantation homes, and more, and he has published several city-focused books. Get lost in Kent's dramatic portrayals of once-lively structures in this extensive and gripping gallery.

Window collisions and cats kill more birds than wind turbine farms

Researchers are developing solutions to reduce bird fatalities due to wind turbine farms, including radar systems integrating AI to detect birds and shut down systems. Painting blades with various patterns is also being tested, which may reduce bird strikes by 70%.

Hear Pearl Harbor survivors reflect on the attack 80 years later

This anniversary video features some of the last living witnesses to the Pearl Harbor attack. Their firsthand memories—shared eight decades later—offer a rare perspective on the day that changed their lives and the world.

Take a virtual tour of Val-Kill, Eleanor Roosevelt's home and retreat

Two miles from the Roosevelt family estate in upstate New York, Val-Kill was built as a furniture factory that Eleanor Roosevelt helped create to employ rural workers and craftspeople. It later became her private home and political hub. World leaders and civil rights activists visited her there, and she called it the place where she "became an individual in her own right."

Take a virtual tour inside Stonehenge

Prehistoric visitors approached Stonehenge along a processional route known as the Avenue, where the sunrise of the summer solstice aligns with the sarsen stones. This interactive 3D tour recreates that experience with explainer videos and detailed sidebars.

Disappointment Island

A shipwreck. A freezing island. No trees. No help. Just 16 sailors, stranded for 8 months on Disappointment Island in 1907.

Veteran pilot guides 21-year-old pilot through emergency landing

Soothing words from Chris Yates helped guide Taylor Hash, 21, through an emergency landing after he learned she shared the same first name as his daughter.

The unbuilt monuments of Washington, DC

The capital city of the United States famously was built in a swampy area, with dozens of memorials, monuments, and more spanning its vast and complex design. This video explores five monuments that were either built or were rejected as alternatives in the sprawling District of Columbia on the banks of the Potomac River.

The Rockefellers funded the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg

John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife spent millions of dollars restoring Colonial Williamsburg and turning it into the tourist attraction it is today. You can go back in time via video footage from before and after the restoration.

Revisiting the short-lived 1960s space race theme park in Alabama

In 1964, a Huntsville, Alabama, entrepreneur announced a $5M space-themed park amid the burgeoning space race—just as Walt Disney was quietly planning a similar futuristic park outside Orlando. Space City USA collapsed by 1966, leaving only concrete ruins in a housing development.

Meet a 90-year-old who built his own hobbit-inspired house

A retired carpenter built himself a kind-of Hobbit house, and is living comfortably off the grid at 90 years old, tourists notwithstanding. Learn how he did it with this video.

The legacy of America's most remarkable kid

The short life and legacy of Kevin Cooper, a 14-year-old entrepreneur from Utah with big dreams for his family and rural America, and whose accomplishments most adults don’t pull off in a lifetime.

See the plot of land where Thoreau built his Walden cabin

Harvard's Lawrence Buell takes viewers down to Walden Pond to show them the spot in the woods where Thoreau constructed his modest cabin. Along the way, he reads from "Walden" and explains why Thoreau's text still matters 170 years after its publication.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

The NASCAR championship trophy has evolved for decades

From the Winston Cup’s reign from 1971 to 2003, to the Nextel/Sprint Cup awarded from 2004 to 2016, this NASCAR video shows the evolution to the new Bill France Trophy with every track outlined.

Nikola Tesla's original laboratory was recognized as a historical site in 2018

Beginning in 1901, the Wardenclyffe Tower was built on Long Island, New York to transmit electrical power through Earth's atmosphere. The project was abandoned before becoming operational due to limited funding, and was demolished for scrap in 1917 to help pay off Tesla's debts.

Unitarian Frank Lloyd Wright made Unity Temple to honor his own faith

In 1905, a Unitarian church in Frank Lloyd Wright's town was struck by lightning and destroyed. Wright, a Unitarian himself, was commissioned to build the replacement and constructed a simple yet radical concrete sanctuary known as Unity Temple.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.