The agricultural origins of paintball guns

Why do people play farming simulation video games?

This article is an anthropological dive into farming simulation video games. Humans began experimenting with agriculture and farming about 12,000 years ago, though it would be another 8,000 years before the practice became a common approach across...

The pickleball market is expected to hit $4.4B by 2033

In 2023, the global pickleball market was $1.5B. By 2023, it's expected to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 11.3%.

Pigments in paint can come from rocks, plants, insects or synthetic sources

Paint's composition is varied through the combination of pigments with binding agents. In the past, artists created their own paints by mixing pigments with water, oils or egg yolks to bind the colors together.

How billiard balls catalyzed the 'Plastics Century'

For centuries, billiard balls were made of ivory from elephant tusks. But when excessive hunting caused elephant populations to decline, they began to look for alternatives: celluloid, which would become known as the first plastic.

The story behind the PGA's civil war

In the 1960s, there was a war brewing within the PGA between the golf pros and the touring pros. Eventually, tensions boiled over into courtrooms, leading to the creation of a new league. This Golf.com article provides a deep history of the war, with in-depth interviews with key players in the negotiations.

The evolution of the baseball bat

Torpedo bats may be the latest, most powerful kind of baseball bat, but the instrument's history is long. This Smithsonian resource traces the bat's evolution from handmade objects forged by the players to mass-produced marvels of physics designed by companies like Louisville Slugger. Along the way, you'll see some interesting takes on the form, including bats referred to as "mushrooms" and "bananas."

Explaining the rise in adult sports leagues

Community sports leagues shifted from publicly supported entities to privatized ones in the 1990s, as tech advances streamlined registration processes. Millennial interest drove significant growth in social sports leagues for adults, growing much faster than other kinds of sports. A few industry leaders have benefited from this shift.

The long history of alcohol and sports

Spectators have long enjoyed alcohol at sporting events, dating back at least to ancient Rome. This article unpacks how companies leveraged this history to make beer a central part of sporting events and masculine culture.

Athletes in Mexico are reviving a 3,000-year-old sacred sport

A modern team is working to revive Juego de Pelota, an ancient Mesoamerican team sport played by the Maya, Aztecs, and neighboring cultures. Once central to ritual and community life, the game was outlawed by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century.

Exploring World War I technology on the battlefield

Industrialization brought massive changes to warfare during the Great War. Newly-invented killing machines begat novel defense mechanisms, which, in turn spurred the development of even deadlier technologies. Nearly every aspect of what we would consider modern warfare debuted on World War I battlefields. Starting with soldiers on horseback carrying lances and ending in poison gas, machine guns, and aerial battles, this gallery shows the first tools of modern warfare.

Fantasy football is now a $10B industry

Curious about how fantasy football grew into a global empire? This video breaks down how a losing Oakland Raiders team led to the first form of fantasy football, long before the internet and smartphones made it a worldwide phenomenon.

What happens to golf balls after they're used?

With over 1 billion golf balls produced annually, an estimated 300 million to 1.5 billion are lost worldwide. On average, thousands of balls are left behind on each course, often ending up in ponds, forests, and beaches. While many golf courses recover and reuse some of these balls, studies suggest countless remain unretrieved.

Bubbles can exist in markets for collectibles, not just industries and technology

This podcast tells how "Magic: The Gathering" faced its own speculative bubble as rare cards surged in resale value—risking a Beanie Baby-style crash. It follows how the game’s creators tried to engineer a system to keep a collectibles market from collapsing.

Christmas trees are a $6B global industry

In the US, the real tree industry is valued at $2B, the reflection of nearly 30 million trees sold annually at an average profit of about $10 per tree. While each tree takes about 8 years to mature, their artificial counterparts can be made much more quickly, mostly in China, valued at over $1B as of 2020.

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

The science (and scams) behind essential oils

Essential oils are a big business, with industry estimates pegging its market size at $10B last year—a number expected to double by 2030. These distilled plant compounds have a long history of both legitimate and exaggerated uses, and many marketed oils are, as the author of this long read claims, just selling wish fulfillment. Revisit some of the history and contemporary use of essential oils with this piece.

Every MLB baseball needs to be rubbed with mud

When baseballs are done being hand-sewn and shipped to an MLB ballpark, they don't go straight to the field. Every ball that is put in play–an average of 100 per game–has to be rubbed with mud to give the ball a better grip. This video introduces the only family licensed to sell mud to MLB and shows what's special about this particular mud.

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

When bamboo in China was tossed into fire in 200 BCE, there was an explosion. About 1000 years later, around 800 CE, an alchemist searching for secrets to immortality mixed sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate together, leading to gunpowder. That mixture was then packed into bamboo or paper tubes, leading to fireworks.

Roughly 80% of US antibiotics sold each year go to agricultural use

Antibiotics have long been used in agriculture to treat diseases in animals and plants. However, antibiotics are also often misused, to treat non-bacterial diseases, to encourage growth in animals, and more. This expansive use of antibiotics has become one of the primary sources of the emergence of new superbugs.

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

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

The global defense industry in one chart

The world's most valuable defense companies (for example, Lockheed Martin) make up much of the global defense industry. As of 2025, RTX led the pack with a roughly $183B market cap.

Play an incremental game that teaches the history of particle physics

Developed during the CERN Summer Student Webfest 2014, this game tasks you with building the reputation of your particle accelerator as you discover particles and hire staff to collect data. A historical breakdown accompanies each discovery, allowing you to recreate the timeline of the field.

Gambling funded America's early expansion

In the colonial era, lotteries were viewed as a voluntary tax to help fund infrastructure and capital projects. The idea came from Europe, which had used lotteries dating back to the 16th century. The image below is from a Massachusetts lottery in 1758.

F1 is a billion-dollar industry

...but that money doesn't come easily. Team principals have to constantly ensure money is coming in to fund their million-dollar cars every weekend. This CNBC video explores all the costs of running a team. It also shows how team principals woo sponsors and find ways to maximize their technology with a cost cap.

Mapping where pumpkins are harvested in the US

Roughly 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkin are sold in the US every year, with 80% of that available in the month of October. See which states are the biggest producers in acres, starting in Illinois where over 16,000 acres of the gourd are harvested...

The bestselling visual art mediums, visualized

Fine art is a particularly appealing alternative investment for many—but it's also a pretty broad term. This data visualization shows which fine art mediums sold the best in 2024. For instance, paintings accounted for about 59% of all fine art dealer sales that year, whereas sculptures accounted for roughly 15%. See the full picture here.

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.

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

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

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.

Experimental hantavirus vaccines and therapies, still under development, have long been funded by the US military.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Poison ivy's characteristic rash is caused by an allergic response to an oily compound in the plant called urushiol.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

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

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

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

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.

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.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.