The board game Risk was created by an Academy Award-winning screenwriter.

Clue, the murder-mystery board game, was designed during World War II air raids.

Monopoly was based on the satirical Landlord's Game, which criticized the abilities Monopoly rewarded.

The man who created Settlers of Catan was inspired by Viking tales about the journey to Iceland.

Klaus Teuber invented the game when he was in his 30s, and had his wife and children act as early test players. Published in 1995, the game has now sold over 45 million units.

'Jeopardy!' was conceived as a way to earn back skeptical audiences' trust

In the wake of the ‘50s scandals, networks were reluctant to greenlight new quiz shows. Merv Griffin’s wife suggested he flip the formula on its head, providing contestants with the answers (the exact act that had led to the scandals) and asking them to provide the questions. “Jeopardy!” premiered in 1964, effectively reviving the genre. It eventually became the top-rated quiz show in history with 23 million viewers.

Between 2019 and 2025, sales of board games jumped more than 30% in the US.

A 1930s card game birthed modern fantasy sports

"National Pastime" used the statistics of real Major League Baseball players to determine a winner, creating the template for the modern fantasy sports model.

In 1914, the Financial Times asked readers to redraw Europe for cash prizes

Two months in World War I, the newspaper invited readers to sketch postwar borders and submit peace terms for cash prizes. The contest captured public attempts to predict a new world order and foreshadowed modern crowdsourced forecasting. It's a wild look at how uncertain Europe's future was at the time.

In 1938, 1.7 million people were fooled into believing a Martian invasion was underway because of a radio play

Orson Welles' realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth, called "The War of the Worlds," caused quite a stir with audiences. The broadcast resulted in panic, with some people in the area where the story took place attempting to flee. It also helped Welles secure a contract with a Hollywood studio, leading to the creation of "Citizen Kane."

'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.

The jump scare, a horror genre trope, was invented to keep costs low

RKO Pictures hired Val Lewton to produce horror films in the Universal model: small budgets, big spectacles. His first movie was 1942's "Cat People" and he used tension and offscreen terror to save money. A perfect example is the movie's jump scare, a misdirection technique that catches viewers off guard.

Richard Feynman exposed NASA's safety failures on the Rogers Commission

The Nobel Laureate served on the Rogers Commission investigating Challenger, famously demonstrating O-ring failure with ice water and eventually criticizing NASA's culture of risk normalization and management pressure in the final report.

A stolen Norman Rockwell painting was found in Stephen Spielberg's collection

In 1989, the famed director purchased "Russian Schoolroom" from a legitimate dealer. He remained unaware that it was looted years prior from a gallery in Missouri until his staff spotted the painting on an FBI list of stolen works of art. In 2007, the FBI confirmed its authenticity.

Watch Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 film noir, 'Rebecca'

"Rebecca" was Hitchcock's first American film and is the only Hitchcock film to win the Academy Award for best picture. The story, based on a 1938 novel by Daphne du Maurier, is about a widower (played by acting legend Laurence Olivier) and the haunting direction his life takes in her wake.

The first chess game in space ended in a draw in 1970

Soviet cosmonauts Andriyan Nikolayev and Vitaly Sevastyanov played a game of chess against mission control while orbiting Earth aboard Soyuz 9 in 1970. The match ended in a draw—the first recorded game in space.

The story of the Radium Girls, who exposed the dangers of radioactive paint

After radium was discovered in 1898, companies began using radium-based paints on watch and clock dials to create a glow-in-the-dark effect. Women who worked to apply the paint were encouraged to use their lips and tongues to help create the fine point needed to draw small numbers, unknowingly poisoning themselves.

'Rocky Road' was designed to help people cope with the stock market crash

In 1929, ice cream maker William Dreyer marketed Rocky Road as a sweet treat intended to distract consumers from the poor state of the economy. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Camus was a soccer goalie as a teenager

The writer played for Algiers Racing University but had to quit after contracting tuberculosis. He remained a fan, though, once suggesting that the game taught him important lessons about morality. In the 1957 interview below, he briefly reflects on his time as a goalie and speaks about his recent Nobel Prize.

How 'Star Wars' changed science fiction

The popularity of "Star Wars" shifted the market away from the more literary, and sometimes cynical, science fiction of the 1960s and '70s. In the wake of George Lucas' space opera, publishers and studios wanted similarly optimistic adventure stories. In time, though, writers like William Gibson would react against that and, in turn, create the "cyber punk" subgenre.

Every winner of the Cannes Palmes d’Or

It’s one of the most prestigious awards in all cinema. Winning not only guarantees significant buzz but also means you’re a part of film history, with past winners including “Pulp Fiction,” “Taxi Driver,” and “La Dolce Vita.”

The usual rules of fate do not apply': Race car driver-turned-ace WWI fighter pilot survives being lost at sea

Eddie Rickenbacker had an amazing career as a World War I hero, fighter pilot, and race care driver, among other accomplishments. This restored footage of an short 12-minute documentary about his early life, war stories, and survival at sea for 24 days provides amazing insight on a truly American character.

‘A Raisin in the Sun’ made history in 1959

The play was the first on Broadway written by a Black woman. Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright, was 29 when it debuted at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959.

Since the 1990s, banks have sold some of the credit risk of their accounts to external investors, known as SRTs, or synthetic risk transfers

This means if the account defaults, the outside investors assume most of the risk in return for some regular payments, freeing up the bank's ledger. It is a form of insurance used by banks to allow them to free up capital. In 2024, nearly $100B worth of SRT notes were sold.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 speech framed World War II as a global fight for universal rights

Eleven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt outlined four fundamental freedoms that, in his words, people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy—speech, worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

'Super Mario Bros.' was released in 1985

The game was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and published by Nintendo in Japan and North America in 1985. It’s seen as a landmark in the history of video games and minted the Mario character as a pop culture icon.

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.

Sartre wrote an 8-hour screenplay for a Freud biopic

Sartre was hired to write the screenplay for what would eventually become John Huston's 1962 film "Freud: The Secret Passion," about the life of the psychoanalyst. Sartre, however, had trouble sticking to the parameters of Hollywood. An early draft was estimated to be five hours long. Rather than shortening it, as Huston suggested, Sartre extended it to eight hours and was eventually removed from the production.

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

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

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

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.

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

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

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

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 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 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.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

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.

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.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

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

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.

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

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

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.

An Ebola vaccine was developed during the 2018 west African Ebola outbreak, but the 2026 Ebola outbreak is with a different species of the virus, not the one that the vaccine is approved to treat.