Georges Méliès directed what many consider the first science fiction film

George Méliès' 'The Haunted Castle' is considered the first horror film

The 1896 film short uses a series of camera tricks to depict supernatural experiences, including a bird turning into a man and a woman being summoned from a smoking cauldron. Its subject matter and surprising visuals have led scholars to call it the first horror film.

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

How one silent movie came to define science fiction

Fritz Lang's 1927 epic "Metropolis" set the template for much of the science fiction that followed, establishing themes that would come to define the genre through films like "Star Wars" and novels like "Brave New World." This short documentary from DW digs into the history of the film and its long-lasting impact.

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

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

The 31 best science fiction films ever

This list refreshingly starts off with the best first—1968's "2001: A Space Odyssey," Stanley Kubrick's cerebral, futuristic icon. Coming in at 31st is Disney's "Wall-E."

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Watch Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's landmark surrealist short film

Made in 1929, the silent short film "Un Chien Andalou" ("An Andalusian Dog") marked Dalí's entrance into the surrealist movement. Dreamy and disturbing, the film projects images like a hand covered in ants and a razor slicing an eye, and follows no obvious structure. Watch it here.

Photography was invented by a romantic artist

The invention of photography changed the landscape of art forever. The first photographs were created by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, a romantic era printmaker, by using light and chemistry to expand upon images produced by the earlier camera obscura.

The inaugural Cannes Film Festival featured legendary directors

The festival’s first year was 1946. It featured 11 films from some of the world’s best filmmakers, including Jean Cocteau, Alfred Hitchcock, George Sydney, and Billy Wilder.

A young Spielberg was changed by DeMille’s ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’

The first movie Steven Spielberg saw was Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth.” The movie’s on-screen train wreck frightened yet fascinated the young Spielberg—illustrating the visceral impact movies have on their audiences.

'Tin Toy,' the predecessor to 'Toy Story,' was the first fully computer-generated film to win an Academy Award

Before it was acquired by Disney, Pixar was a small studio exploring the possibilities of computer animation. "Tin Toy," a 1988 short film that would inspire 1995's "Toy Story," was one of its most successful experiments, earning Pixar's first Academy Award for best animated short film and becoming the first fully computer-generated film to win an Oscar. Although you won't find Woody or Buzz, it's fascinating to observe the seeds for what would come later.

India has a century-old parallel form of science fiction

One of its earliest works was Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's 1905 feminist utopia "Sultana's Dream." This rich visual essay shows how the genre, while taking inspiration from its western counterpart, evolved from India's distinct cultural, social, and political realities.

The USSR launched the world's first satellite, Sputnik 1, into space in 1957

Sputnik, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957, became the world's first artificial satellite. While the technology itself was limited, the launch ignited the space race and signaled that intercontinental missiles and space technology had arrived faster than American leaders expected.

Watch a 1908 Wright Flyer demo with Wilbur and a passenger near Le Mans, France

One of the earliest filmed flights, this demonstration in France helped dispel doubts over the Wrights’ claims to powered, controlled flight. Such demos helped launch the pair to fame five years after their seminal flight in Kitty Hawk.

Thomas Edison captured the only known footage of Mark Twain

The inventor was a pioneer in the early film industry and made his own motion pictures. In 1909, he shot a short film featuring Twain at Stormfield, his property in Connecticut. In it, Twain wears his iconic white suit and drinks tea with his daughters.

The Antikythera mechanism: The oldest-known analog computer

A device now considered the world's oldest computer was pulled from a shipwreck more than 120 years ago. Known as the "Antikythera Mechanism," it is now believed to have allowed precise tracking of astronomical positions, and its sophistication overturned understanding of Ancient Greek capabilities.

A Belgian Catholic priest was the first to come up with the idea for the Big Bang

In 1931, Georges Lemaître presented his radical idea that the universe came from a “primeval atom,” challenging the long-held belief that the universe had always existed. Einstein initially dismissed Lemaître’s work as having “abominable” physical insight, only to accept it later.

The first glasshouse was constructed in 1931

The Maison de Verre in Paris was built to house a doctor's office on the ground level and an apartment upstairs. Unlike the typical model that would follow, this glass house exposed very little of the home's interior.

Optical illusions were a key component in animating the Muppets

Despite being fairly typical puppets, Jim Henson's Muppets often ventured out into the real world without any apparent humans controlling them. That's thanks to several ingenious optical illusions devised by Henson and his partners, including well-placed mirrors, platformed sets, and remote-controlled puppeting.

Explore a gallery of electric vehicles from before 1920

In 1884, Thomas Parker invented the first practical electric car in London. By the turn of the century, early EVs were seen on the streets of Washington, DC. Automaker promotional materials included photographs of cars on mountain roads and other terrains.

Watch the director's cut of the award-winning documentary about LIGO

Production on the film began in August 2015, shortly before the facilities detected gravitational waves for the first time on September 14. Those interviewed, including future Nobel Laureates Kip Thorne and Barry Barish, provide their accounts of the discovery as events unfold in real time.

Fantasy sports began in the 1860s

“Sebring Parlor Base Ball,” a tabletop board game in which players flicked a coin as if they were hitters is believed to be the first game that allowed players to imagine themselves as athletes without actually taking part in physical activities.

The disputed inventor of the radio

Guglielmo Marconi was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the wireless telegraph, which used radio waves to transmit Morse code. Nikola Tesla, however, was experimenting with radio waves in the 1890s, though much of his work was destroyed in a 1895 fire.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

The first compact cassette tape was introduced at IFA 1963

At IFA 1963 in Berlin, Philips introduced the compact cassette tape. This new standardized audio format replaced bulky reel-to-reel tape and would go on to dominate home recording and music listening for decades.

Jules Verne helped popularize the banana

In his 1872 book "Around the World in 80 Days," the sci-fi writer described the banana, then mostly a novelty, as "healthy as bread and as succulent as cream." That mention, along with an appearance at the 1876 World's Fair in Philadelphia, helped transform the fruit into a standard part of a healthy diet.

The first gelateria, a precursor to the ice cream parlor, opened in 1694

Francesco Procopia dei Coltelli, a restaurateur from Palermo, Sicily, opened the gelateria in Paris. Gelaterias serve gelato, which is similar to ice cream but uses milk rather than cream.

NYC's first subway was built largely in secret

In 1870, Alfred Ely Beach secretly tunneled under Broadway in 58 nights, disguising his pneumatic subway as a mail tube to fool Tammany Hall, the corrupt political machine that ran New York City. Nearly half a million New Yorkers rode it before politics, and a stock market crash killed the project.

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

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.

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

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

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

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

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.

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.

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.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

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

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.