The head of MGM Studios created the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to combat unionization efforts

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

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

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.

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.

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

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

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

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

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

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

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

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

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

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

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.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

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

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

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.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

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

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

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

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.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

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

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Learn how monoclonal antibodies, which mimic the body's antibodies, can fight diseases like Ebola.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

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.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

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.

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.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.