Watch Billie Holiday's screen debut in 1935's 'Symphony in Black'

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

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

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

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

Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

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.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

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

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

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

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.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

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.'

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 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

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

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.

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.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

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.

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

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.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

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

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

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.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

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

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

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

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

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.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

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

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.

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

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

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

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

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