The evolution of the baseball bat

The history of the tennis racket

Today's tennis rackets are made from lightweight composite materials, which is a big reason power, speed, and spin dominate today's game. But they weren't always built this way. This Top Sport Gear video shows the evolution of the tennis racket, from its start as medieval paddles, to the wood rackets of the early 1900s.

Every baseball used by the MLB lasts about seven pitches

Handmade in Costa Rica, the balls meet strict MLB specs: cork or rubber cores, wool yarn, Tennessee cowhide, and 108 stitches. Before play, they’re coated in Lena Blackburne mud from a secret New Jersey spot, ensuring grip and consistency for the big game.

Before 1920, a single baseball was used throughout a game

During the Deadball Era, pitchers doctored a baseball with spit, nail files, and licorice for a competitive edge, leading to discolored, mangled, and lopsided baseballs by the game's end. This concluded in 1920 when Cleveland Indians star shortstop Ray Chapman was hit in the head by a ball too dirty to see and died. The rules were changed to require an umpire to replace a dirty baseball and outlawed the spitball.

The physics of baseball pitches

To a nonfan, pitching a baseball may seem straightforward. Dive into the ridiculous physics of throwing a baseball at high speeds, from curveballs to sliders and more, and learn just how crucial those classic red seams of the baseball are in determining what the ball does in the air.

Some North American bats can glow in the dark

After examining 60 museum specimens from six different species, scientists found that all of them emitted light after being exposed to ultraviolet radiation. Researchers are perplexed by this natural phenomenon and are currently unable to deduce the reason behind it.

The top 100 players in baseball history

More than 20,000 players have played in Major League Baseball since the 1870s, many passing in and out of the memory of even die-hard fans. While necessarily subjective, these rankings based on votes from baseball writers ranks those whose greatness left a lasting impression. From Barry Larkin (No. 100) to Babe Ruth (No. 1), explore the top 100 baseball players over more than a century.

A guide to sabermetrics, the empirical analysis of baseball statistics

The science of baseball overturned a century of assumptions about which metrics matter most. The approach originated key categories like WAR (wins above replacement, which tries to summarize a player's total contribution by estimating how many more wins this player generated compared to a replacement-level player) and wOBA (or weight on-base average, which measures not only hits but also walks and their outcomes in the score).

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

A Boeing engineer created a next-generation pickleball paddle in the '80s

When Steve Paranto kept losing in the finals of his Pickleball tournaments, he told his dad Arlen the wooden paddles were holding him back. Then-Boeing engineer Arlen used spare composite floor panels to make the first fiberglass Pickleball paddle.

Dragon seismometers, Baghdad batteries, and more ancient artifacts

The ancients were behind us in many ways, but some inventions from the time have not been surpassed in the modern era in effectiveness, beauty, or cleverness. This quick list of bizarre ancient inventions includes a battery from Baghdad, a Molotov cocktail-like explosive in Greece, and more.

A historical tree of technological advancement

Starting from stone tools millions of years ago and culminating in today's cutting-edge tech, this thorough genealogy lays out how humanity has progressed in its use of tools over thousands of years. See descriptions, links to further info, and how each tech fits in the larger tree.

The agricultural origins of paintball guns

The paintball field industry—where players compete in pseudo-battle using the (minimally) harmless guns—is worth over $1 billion annually, and it continues to grow. This fun piece breaks down the relatively recent history of the industry by...

Some athletes warm up with equipment from other sports

Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani uses a cricket bat; his teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto throws a javelin. Quarterback CJ Stroud shoots free throws. The reasons are partially physical (it's good to exercise different parts of your body) and partially mental (it's nice to take the pressure off with someone else's game).

The Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested

In 1961, the Soviet Union detonated AN602—known as the Tsar Bomba—the largest nuclear explosion in history. Newly released Russian footage starkly illustrates the unmatched destructive power of this nuclear weapon.

'I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.'

- Baseball legend Babe Ruth (1895-1948)

Scientists have struggled to pin down Ebola's natural reservoir species for decades, but the available evidence suggests that it's very likely fruit and insect-eating bats found in Africa.

Modern bodybuilding evolved in the 19th century

The origins of modern progressive resistance exercise are traced to ancient Greece, where a repeat Olympic victor carried a calf every day until it grew into a full-sized ox. This 56-minute comedy and history podcast journeys through the rise of modern bodybuilding, which took off during the 19th century.

Explore a timeline of advancements in American aviation

From the Wright brothers' flight of the first powered plane in 1903 near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to SpaceX's debut of the Falcon 9 rocket in 2010 with reusable boosters, this interactive shows off the technological evolution of flight, from mechanical propulsion to ballistic spaceflight. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

'Harry Potter’ inspired a real-life version of Quidditch

Created by college students in 2005, the broomstick-based sport became an international phenomenon with organized leagues and World Cup tournaments. Now called Quadball, it’s played in more than 40 countries worldwide.

The evolution of the human brain

The human brain, in all its staggering complexity, is the product of millions of years of evolution. Read on to find out about brain size and intelligence, language and brain development, and more.

Lightning bolts are about as thick as a garden hose

The conductive filament ranges from about 2.5 to 5.0 centimeters (1 to 2 inches), though its extreme brightness makes it appear much thicker and visible from miles away. Scars on individuals who suffer a direct strike produce Lichtenberg figures with similar maximum thickness.

The NBA, explained

From humble beginnings in 1891, basketball transformed into the global juggernaut we know today. The NBA, established in 1949 and later revitalized by Commissioner David Stern in the 1980s, became a model for sports branding, player marketing, and international expansion.

The word 'barbecue' is thought to come from 'barbicu'

Modern barbecue originated in the precolonial Caribbean and Americas. The word is thought to come from the Indigenous term for wooden frames used to cook meat high above the fire.

Why bananas are in trouble

The average American eats over 25 pounds of bananas every year, but we won't for long if a deadly soil fungus continues to spread. Learn what scientists are doing to save the popular fruit.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

View the evolution of atomic models, with four successively overturned between 1900 and 1926

Originally thought to be indivisible spheres unique to each element, the discovery of the electron by J.J. Thomson revealed them to be made of smaller particles. Ernest Rutherford's gold foil experiment uncovered the existence of nuclei, which Niels Bohr suggested were surrounded by electrons in fixed orbits. By applying quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrödinger replaced orbits with probability clouds.

A collective effort from multiple scientists and inventors led to the light bulb

While Thomas Edison's thin carbon filament design made light bulbs commercially viable, prior contributions, such as Joseph Swan's development of the first successful incandescent filament electric lamp, made its eventual invention possible.

Small wooden tail fins modified torpedoes to operate in the harbor's shallow water

Japan's existing Type 91 torpedoes weighed two tons and slammed into the water at 200 mph, diving 150 feet before rising again. Pearl Harbor was only 40 feet deep, requiring engineers to modify the existing torpedoes for the attack.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Dirty lightning is a thunderstorm created from friction between rising and falling flows of ash and smoke during volcanic eruptions.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

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 chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.