A $50 bet led to the first coast-to-coast road trip

The 1950s saw the rise of the modern American road trip

Guaranteed time off and the ability to travel more affordably offered Americans the opportunity to hit the road for their vacations. The country's expanding interstate network of highways made those trips more convenient, especially for those looking to visit a site in the country's nascent National Parks System.

How America became a nation of gamblers

For thousands of years, humans have liked to gamble. What started as dice games and betting on chariot races became a way for states to generate revenue here in America. This article explores how states have been using gambling to pay for infrastructure and capital projects–and the cost it’s had on the citizens.

That time two journalists raced around the world in 80 days

In 1889, Journalist Nellie Bly, née Elizabeth Jane Cochran, set sail on a journey around the world to compete with Phileas Fogg, the protagonist of the 1872 fiction novel "Around the World in Eighty Days." This short video explains how competing...

One of Henry Ford's early vehicle prototypes broke an all-time speed record and got him the money to start Ford Motor Company

In 1904, Henry Ford raced the "999" across a frozen lake and reached an average speed of more than 90 miles per hour, beating the then-record for fastest land speed. Ford's success attracted the eyes of the earliest investors in the Henry Ford Company, Ford's company before he started Ford Motor Company.

Mass transit in America began with horse-drawn omnibuses in New York City in 1827

The omnibus, a large horse-drawn stagecoach that ran a fixed route and carried a dozen riders at an affordable fare, was different from a private carriage because it carried everyone, not just the wealthy.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

The expedition purchased more than 260 separate items to supply their journey

Preparing for two years in the wilderness, Lewis acquired hundreds of supplies, including medicine, food, weapons, and 63 lbs of pigtail tobacco. The total bill was estimated to be around $2,324 (around $60,000 today).

The attack at Pearl Harbor led to the world's first around-the-world commercial flight

A World War II-era commercial flight was forced to change course when Pearl Harbor was bombed, leading the 12-member crew on the world's first commercial flight to circumnavigate the globe. The Boeing 314 crossed the equator four times during the journey, which totaled more than 30,000 miles and required the crew to strip the plane of any identifying marks.

Before the Panama Canal, there was the Panama railroad

The first ship to cross the isthmus of Panama went not by sea but by land: The paddlewheel steamship Explorer was taken apart and transported by rail, an effort that generated “more trouble than profit,” according to one account.

Why country singer Zach Bryan purchased the original 'On the Road' manuscript

The superstar paid $12.1M for the original draft of Kerouac's novel, which was written on a 120-foot typescript scroll so the text could be read without stopping. Bryan recently purchased a church in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, with plans to turn it into the Jack Kerouac Center. The scroll will likely be housed there.

Estimate the costs of an ancient Roman vacation

Thanks to a sophisticated system of roads, Romans could travel great distances for their Roman holidays. This interactive resource from Stanford allows you to create fictional journeys around the empire, seeing approximate routes, costs, and time.

August A. Busch, Sr. was gifted a six-horse Clydesdale hitch to celebrate Prohibition’s end

This helped reveal the marketing power of a horse-drawn beer wagon, so it invested in a second six-horse Clydesdale hitch. The Clydesdales soon went to New York, where they drew a crowd of thousands en route to the Empire State Building. Anheuser-Busch even gifted a case of Budweiser to New York Governor Alfred E. Smith in thanks for his help in the fight against Prohibition.

Famed American investor Jesse Livermore made millions when the stock market crashed in 1929

Livermore made his first major short against rail company Union Pacific in 1906, coincidentally before an earthquake in San Francisco, which ultimately tanked share prices. During a financial panic the next year, JP Morgan reportedly asked Livermore to increase his long-term investments to restore hope and restabilize the market—which Livermore did. However, Livermore began betting against the market in 1929, sensing that stocks were too hot, and was one of the few people to benefit from the 1929 stock crash.

The 'Where's George?' project tracked a trail of $1 bills across the US

Over a decade ago, a group dedicated its time to tracking $1 bills in the US. They would stamp single bills with the phrases “currency tracking project” and “Track me at WheresGeorge.com” in a practice they dubbed “Georging.”

In 2001, a $20M ticket officially kicked off space tourism

On that day, American businessman Dennis Tito became the first paying passenger to visit space, spending a week aboard the International Space Station. Since then, space participants have been members of suborbital flights, which do not require intensive training to prepare for.

The 1904 Olympic marathon was a bizarre spectacle

When the Olympics first came to the US, the race was still a fringe event with few established rules. That led to an absurd comedy, with competitors ingesting poison, hitchhiking 11 miles of the course, and occasionally sipping brandy.

In 2023, self-driving cars drove 3.3 million miles on California's roads

According to the state's DMV, the mileage represented a fivefold increase from the previous year. General Motors' Cruise and Alphabet's Waymo accounted for the bulk of miles, though 38 companies have received permits to test autonomous vehicles in the state.

See where Americans spend the most on gas

Drivers in Wyoming spend the most on gas per month at about $279, while New York drivers pay the least at $132. Longer driving distances have a significant impact on how much American drivers spend on gas.

Using scientific bets, Hawking challenged and highlighted major physics ideas

Hawking famously placed wagers on high-stakes questions in theoretical physics—such as the Higgs boson—for fun and to draw attention to science. When Hawking lost a bet about Cygnus X-1 being a black hole, he paid up with a magazine subscription.

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.

The first fantasy football league began in Oakland, California

Winkenbach organized the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League, the first fantasy football league. The game allowed team owners to draft players from both the NFL and the AFL, then separate leagues, and create an impossibly epic roster.

Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak cost him a sponsorship deal with Heinz

The ketchup company promised the Yankees player $10,000 if he reached 57 hits to match the number on its iconic labels. When he snapped the streak, it was just one hit shy, at 56.

Roosevelt left a White House dinner to fly over Washington with Amelia Earhart

In April 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart flew on a round trip from Washington to Baltimore in their evening gowns. Roosevelt, who had a long-standing interest in flying, had recently earned her student pilot's license.

'Vox Pop' gave ordinary contestants the chance to win quick cash

The radio show began in 1932 with man-on-the-street interviews in Houston, but soon began traveling to different locations around the country. The show became known for its quiz feature, which offered $1 for each question randomly picked people answered correctly. The show was a hit, not only because audiences could imagine themselves in the contestants’ shoes, but also because it was relatively inexpensive for the network to produce.

He was one of the first writers to cover surfing

For his 1872 travelogue “Roughing It”, Mark Twain visited Hawaii and described a then-peculiar sport: surfing. He even recalls his own attempts to catch a wave, writing, “I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three-quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me.”

The US senator who found a city in the sky

Dr. Hiram Bingham, a Yale graduate and explorer, is credited with rediscovering Machu Picchu in 1911. Financially supported by his marriage to the Tiffany jewelry heiress, Bingham ventured into the Peruvian Andes in search of the lost Inca city of Vilcabamba. Instead, guided by local farmer Melchor Arteaga, he stumbled upon the awe-inspiring ruins of Machu Picchu.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

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.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

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

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

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

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

Venture capital is a form of funding provided to early-stage companies with high growth potential, typically in exchange for an equity (or ownership) stake

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

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

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

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

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.