The Channel Tunnel consists of an underwater network of over 200 kilometers in length

The wild, early history of the tunnel across the English Channel

Britain and France today are connected by the Chunnel—a tunnel bored roughly 120 feet under the seabed of the notoriously choppy English Channel, which opened in 1994. The dream of integrating Britain with the rest of the continent this way began much earlier, with daring, physically impossible plans proposed as early as the 19th century. Check out the earliest plans here.

The simplicity of immersed tube tunnels

Tunnels have traditionally bored holes through the earth below the water. On the other hand, immersed tube tunnels connect hollow, massive sections in trenches along the floor of the body of water. Each section is built on land, floated to the site, submerged, and connected. This method saves money by reducing expensive underground work, and it preserves an area's aesthetic appearance.

The archaeological sites uncovered through London's Crossrail Project

The Crossrail Project is an underground train system in London, which saw 26 miles of new tunnels created over more than a decade. The project provided unique access to long-buried layers of London's history, and a massive parallel archaeological excavation took place.

The 500 subsea cables that run the internet

Subsea cables carry the majority of data sent across the globe on the internet. An estimated 552 such cables—with more in development—lay on the ocean floor, their thickness similar to a garden hose, made up of optic fibers covered in copper.

Toronto's downtown has 18 miles of underground pedestrian tunnels

Known as the "Path," these tunnels have helped reduce pedestrian traffic on Toronto's busy downtown streets for over a century. They were first built by local business owners, prompting a network effect of add-on tunnels.

Essential pipes, sewers, and cables lie buried beneath New York City

The Department of Design and Construction offers a tour of its work sites, explaining the complex systems that exist underground. Gas, electrical, telecom pipes, and many others, sprawl out underneath the entire city, with dozens of maps that help workers know where they're placed. This layout is unusual compared to the rest of the country, where wires are often present and visible above ground.

How the underground maze below the Gaza Strip works

Hamas militants have constructed a web underneath the Gaza Strip filled with tunnels, residential areas, bunkers, and more. This article and illustrations explore the underground maze as detailed in photo and video evidence and witness accounts.

How deep is the Mariana Trench?

This five-minute video takes viewers to the depths of the Mariana Trench, emphasizing just how far below the bottom of the trench lies beneath our feet through comparisons to better-known objects and monuments, including the Eiffel Tower. The Statue...

A West Berlin student dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall—29 East Germans escaped

This podcast recounts how a young West Berlin student excavated a secret 135‑meter tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall in 1962. A total of 29 East Germans escaped to freedom, even as a Stasi mole threatened exposure.

Detailing the horrific conditions of life in the trenches

What was it like to live and fight in a trench during World War I? If you were on the German side you might have bunkers, electricity, and other basic comforts. If you were on the British and French side the conditions have been described as muddy and "horrific". Find out how unpleasant trench warfare was and how it affected WWI soldiers.

As of 2025, humans have only dug 0.2% the way to Earth's center

The Kola Superdeep Borehole revealed two billion-year-old fossils and underground water, but the immense temperature and pressure prevented further tunneling. Beyond those depths, scientists know of Earth's interior by analyzing how seismic waves move.

Container ships are just a fraction of total traffic via the canal

While more container ships traverse the canal than any other type of ship, vessels carrying dry bulk goods, vehicle carriers, chemical tankers, passenger ships, and more also pass through the Central American passageway.

Civilian 'little ships' saved Dunkirk: over 700 civilian boats joined the evacuation

Between May  26 and June 4, 1940, Operation Dynamo evacuated roughly 338,000 Allied soldiers from Dunkirk, France. Crucially, over 700 civilian “little ships”—yachts, fishing boats, pleasure craft—ferried troops from the shallow beaches to larger vessels, embodying a national rescue effort and preserving the core of Britain’s army for the war ahead.

Engineering the Overseas Highway connecting the Florida Keys

A 113-mile series of bridges called the Overseas Highway connects Key West—the southernmost point of the United States—to mainland Florida. The route originally served as a railroad but has required regular reconstruction due to major storms. This video traces the history of the project in fascinating detail.

As of 2025, CERN is the world's largest particle physics laboratory

Founded in 1954, the European Organization for Nuclear Research's laboratory is located near Geneva, Switzerland, and more than 10,000 scientists from more than 100 countries visit its facilities each year. Its largest tool is the Large Hadron Collider, a 27-kilometer-long tunnel that accelerates protons to near the speed of light.

The world’s largest waterfall is hidden underwater

The Denmark Strait cataract is an underwater waterfall in the ocean channel between Iceland and Greenland. It’s also the world’s largest waterfall. Standing 11,500 feet tall, the incredible natural landmark is more than three times the height of Angel Falls, the largest waterfall on land. Discover more about the features of this cataract, which, despite its massive size, is totally undetectable above water.

The most advanced 'bunker-buster' bomb can penetrate 200 feet below soil or concrete

The GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator is delivered exclusively by the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, which carries only two at a time. Using GPS-guided fins and a steel alloy casing, it burrows 200 feet underground before detonating.

See the world's longest glass-bottom bridge in China

China's Huangchuan Three Gorges Scenic Area sports the world's longest glass-bottom bridge, spanning over 1,700 feet. Designed by the Architectural Design & Research Institute of Zhejiang University, it stands 660 feet above the Lianjiang River. The bridge features bright red towers, an 29-foot-wide deck with three layers of thick glass, and can support 500 people. The bridge surpassed the previous record-holder, a 1,600-foot bridge in Hebei province.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

How long it takes to travel by train from various cities

This interactive allows users to see how long it would take to move from one city to another in Europe via trains.

Pub crawl generator: In the United Kingdom, a lot of pubs have the same name

For instance, the UK’s most popular pub name is Red Lion—if you wanted to have a drink at every Red Lion in the UK area, you’d have to finish 339 drinks. (For the record, we don’t advise this!) This fun resource plots the shortest route between all the pubs with the same name in the UK, in case you’re up for visiting all 339 Red Lions in a row.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Soar above the Jurassic Coast’s 185 million years of geology

This sweeping drone video reveals the stark beauty of the UK’s Jurassic Coast, a 95-mile stretch where Triassic red rock, Jurassic layers, and Cretaceous limestone are exposed—one of the clearest visible records of the Mesozoic era on Earth.

China vs. Taiwan, explained

Taiwan and China are separated by just 100 miles of water, but the distance between the two countries is farther than that. This 14-minute video details the history of their sovereignty dispute, and China's likelihood to use military tactics if they can't unify peacefully. The main problem there is that the United States has vowed to defend Taiwan, which could lead to an American-Chinese war.

Why marathons are 26.2 miles (not 26)

Over 1,100 marathons are run every year, and they all share one oddly specific distance: 26.2 miles. From ancient Greece to a British queen's request, here's the surprising story behind the marathon's decimal.

What it's like to go inside the Great Pyramid of Giza

Tourists can actually enter the ancient wonder, taking a 15-minute jaunt through tight spaces some describe as uncomfortable. The focal point of the journey is the chamber of the dead pharaoh, historically significant but not always visually compelling. The author describes it as a cool bucket list item but wouldn't repeat it.

What is the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea?

The Isle of Man sits between Ireland to the west and Wales and England to the east. It is a self-governing British Crown dependency. This means it creates its own laws and collects its own taxes and currency, but is subject to the United Kingdom's defense systems and international treaties. Roughly 85,000 people live on the island, known as a tax haven for its attractive tax rates.

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

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.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

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.

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

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.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

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.

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.

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

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.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Explore what it's like inside a patient isolation unit, used in situations such as treating a patient or suspected patient with Ebola.

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

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

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

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

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

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.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.