The longest word in English is 189,819 letters long

How muscles get their names

There are more than 600 muscles that crisscross the human body, and each has a name that's more than a simple label. Muscle names also typically communicate the muscle's size, behavior, length, location, appearance, direction, and attachments to bone. These names usually have Greek or Latin roots, such as in the case of the deltoid muscles, which are named in reference to the Greek letter delta (𐤃).

South American lungfish has the largest animal genome, with 91 billion base pairs

This genome is 30 times larger than a human's due to significant amounts of "junk DNA" and jumping genes, or transposons. Transposons can jump or copy over to other parts of a genome and may aid adaptation.

As of January 2026, 500 new articles are added to the English Wikipedia daily

The largest Wikipedia language edition features over 7 million articles, followed by the Cebuano edition (over 6 million) and the German edition (over 3 million). The longest article is the "2025 in women's road cycling" page, and the most edited is the list of personnel from World Wrestling Entertainment.

The longest official chess game lasted 269 moves and over 20 hours

In 1989, Ivan Nikolić and Goran Arsović played a marathon 269-move match in Belgrade. Lasting more than 20 hours, the game ended in a draw.

EOS and maximum length tokens tell an LLM when to stop generating a response

Tokens are words or subwords (e.g., prefixes) that a large language model processes to generate a response. During training, the model is taught that if it ever generates a special token called end-of-sequence, its response is complete.

'Viscoelasticity' allows muscles to be elongated briefly after stretching

The protective tissues around skeletal muscles consist of elastic proteins like collagen. Stretching them expands their length while retaining strength, ideal for athletes.

The MLB consist of 30 teams

The league is home to the National and American leagues, which include 780 active players. The MLB season is the longest in professional sports, with 162 games played during the regular season, typically from April through September, ending with the World Series championship in October.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

What was the longest year in history?

In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar declared the year would last 445 days. This four-minute podcast and accompanying article explain why. Caesar wanted to make the following year start after the winter solstice, an achievement attainable due to his tinkering with the Roman calendar. But to start the year right, Caesar had to stretch the transitional year, leading to the creation of Caesar's Year of Confusion, the longest year in history.

The band 'The Bangles' was initially named 'The Bangs'

Legal troubles forced the band to change their name. See a slew of other music facts, like how Taylor Swift's "All Too Well (Taylor's Version) is the longest song to reach number one on the US singles chart. The song is over 10 minutes long, and surpassed Don McLean's "American Pie."

Why English is so difficult to learn

As a language, English is a hodgepodge—a Germanic language heavily influenced by French and Latin. These combinatorial roots have left the language full of irregularities and inconsistencies, with complexities such as varying verb forms for...

'A word after a word after a word is power.'

- Author Margaret Atwood (1939-present)

The most bizarre numbers in the universe

Even for math-y types, some numbers are incomprehensible. This article dives into several kinds of numbers more complicated than even irrational numbers with endless decimals like "pi" or Euler's number: Noncomputable numbers. Read the bizarre...

Various types of tornadoes are distinguished by their shape, size, and location

Waterspouts form over water as long, thin columns of mist and air, while elephant trunks are tornadoes that elongate vertically as they become tilted during their formation, resembling the mammal's appendage. Wedge tornadoes are among the most powerful, often spanning a mile or more in width.

An ‘ultramarathon’ is any race longer than a marathon

The event is a catchall for any event longer than a marathon, with some races hundreds of miles long. Despite the inherent risks, including death, the sport has exploded in recent years.

Ticks survived 27 years in a lab, including eight without food

Research published in 2022 set a new record for tick longevity. A group of adult African ticks that are normally found in eastern and southern Africa lived in a laboratory for 27 years, including eight without food. What's more, one of the females laid eggs at least four years after the last male died. Most ticks, on average, reportedly live for six months to three years.

The Harlem Hellfighters, WWI's longest-serving US regiment

The nickname was given to the 369th Infantry Regiment, an all-Black fighting force of Americans attached to the French Army during World War I. The group fought for 191 days, longer than any other regiment in the United States Army, and lost more men (1,500) than any other.

The first circular particle accelerator was narrower than the average cereal bowl

The 1939 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Ernest Lawrence for inventing the cyclotron. By comparison, the Large Hadron Collider is 5 miles in diameter and is the largest cryogenic system in the world, cooling its electromagnets to temperatures colder than those found in outer space.

Take a virtual tour of the International Space Station

The ISS is the largest human-made object in space. Its modules were meticulously connected by robotic arms and astronauts during slow, careful spacewalks, creating a structure with over eight miles of electrical wire.

The world's longest-burning fire

This coal fire in New South Wales, Australia, a common occurrence at coal mines, has been burning for at least 5,500 years, and shows no signs of stopping.

A look at historical ciphers, from the Spartan 'scytale' to the Navajo Code Talkers

From the Greek word for "hidden writing," cryptography in Ancient Greece took the form of batons around which a long strip of leather or parchment was wrapped, after which messages were written. Recipients needed a scytale of the correct width to encircle received ribbons and reveal the message. Members of the Navajo Nation created a code that remained unbroken throughout its use in World War II.

20 of the world's most iconic big rock wall climbs

Big wall climbs are tall rock faces that require climbers to "pitch" multiple times during the ascent—that is, reuse a rope. They also often portaledge, or sleep, at least once during the climb. Topping the list is California's El Capitan.

Inflation was a word before deflation was

The word inflation has Latin roots and technically means an influx of air, first appearing in the English language in the 1890s to describe bike tires. Deflation's first known mention in an economic text was in 1919.

Typists are among the fastest shrinking jobs in the US

Typists and word processors have a projected employment change of roughly negative 36.1% between 2024 and 2034, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Telephone operators, data entry keyers, and other occupations will likely see reduced employment opportunities as well.

Pub crawl generator: In the United Kingdom, a lot of pubs have the same name

For instance, the UK’s most popular pub name is Red Lion—if you wanted to have a drink at every Red Lion in the UK area, you’d have to finish 339 drinks. (For the record, we don’t advise this!) This fun resource plots the shortest route between all the pubs with the same name in the UK, in case you’re up for visiting all 339 Red Lions in a row.

Stacking nucleotide molecules like toy blocks helps build DNA's structure

Each nucleotide is made up of a sugar—deoxyribose—a phosphate group, and one of four bases that contain nitrogen. Like building a two-tone, spiral staircase from the ground up, nucleotides are linked one on top of another so that sugars and phosphates alternate. The twisted strands are held together by hydrogen bonds between base pairs.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

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

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

Larger animals like giraffes, elephants, and blue whales have developed a unique defense against cancer, a phenomenon known as Peto's Paradox

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

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

To reduce wrinkles in clothing, research recommends gentle wash cycles with more water and tumble drying with smaller loads and longer times.

View the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

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.'

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

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.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

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.

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

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.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.