Cleaning a glass bridge 4,000 feet in the air

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.

See technicians use rappelling gear to make wind turbine repairs from 35+ stories up

Although drones are used to conduct initial reviews from the ground, mechanical engineers trained in turbine maintenance face extreme risks during close inspections more than 150 meters off the ground.

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.

One Falls daredevil once made breakfast while tightrope walking over the gorge

In 1859, tightrope walker Jean François “The Great Blondin” stunned crowds by cooking and serving an omelet mid-walk across the Niagara Gorge.

Watch the annual three-day revamp of the Q'eswachaka bridge

Rebuilt every year since the Inca empire, this bridge still is used today by locals who want to traverse the 120-foot-wide gorge that runs beneath it. This three-minute video shows just how much effort goes into its restoration.

Reflections from Ben Giles, history's greatest stain remover

Starting out as a freelance window cleaner, the British cleaning legend started taking on jobs cleaning out people's garages and shacks. He soon realized people would pay top-dollar to have their worst messes cleaned up by someone else.

Da Vinci’s ingenious self-supporting bridge

Without using glue or nails, the brilliant polymath Leonardo Da Vinci was able to construct a sturdy bridge of wood logs. This video unpacks the genius civil engineering behind this concept and offers a visual demonstration of how it worked. See how Da Vinci accomplished this feat without using permanent parts, and how his bridge got even stronger as weight and force was added.

Glass can be endlessly recycled without losing quality

Sand from specialized mines is thoroughly cleaned and melted at more than 1,600 degrees Celsius before being poured onto liquid tin and evenly spread out to form glass sheets. Some factories are designed to reprocess 100% of glass scraps created when cutting glass with diamond-tipped blades or lasers.

Explore a gallery of lightning photography taken from the Grand Canyon

In this series, award-winning photographer Adam Schallau accompanies each image with expert advice on how to capture the phenomenon successfully. Initially requiring the shutter to remain open for extended periods, today's technology includes a device called a lightning trigger, which senses incoming lightning and automatically manages the shutter.

A $7.5M renovation aimed to protect Fallingwater from climate-related damage

The exhaustive plan took over three years to reach the finish line. The majority of the expenses went toward hiring skilled laborers to address issues such as water damage in the unique location.

Who cleans the London Underground at night?

The London Underground, also known as the Tube, services millions of people every day. After the transit system closes each evening, a crew of workers known as “fluffers” gather to clean the underground tunnels. This article sheds light on these unnoticed cleaners, covering the difficulties of their jobs and the bizarre things they’ve encountered, from ghosts to nesting pigeons.

20 of the world's most iconic big rock wall climbs

Big wall climbs are tall rock faces that require climbers to "pitch" multiple times during the ascent—that is, reuse a rope. They also often portaledge, or sleep, at least once during the climb. Topping the list is California's El Capitan.

Space trash could be cleaned up using a giant inflatable bag

California-based TransAstra has developed and tested a device called Capture Bag, intended to catch anything from small rocks to house-sized boulders. The company claims its system could also be adapted for asteroid capture and mining.

The ghost-hunting industry helps maintain historical buildings

There’s no shortage of spirit-obsessed customers in America, with an estimate that ghost-themed tours generate about $300M annually in the country.

Ingenuity and advanced engineering have allowed trains to overcome extreme landscapes

The Jungfrau Railway utilizes electric trains powered by hydroelectric energy to ascend the Swiss Alps, while Poland's Elbląg Canal hauls ships along cable-powered tracks driven by waterwheels. Germany's Wuppertal monorail navigates bends as it glides over a river valley, and New Mexico's Holloman High-Speed Test Track can achieve speeds of Mach 8.6 for rocket sleds.

Watch a YouTuber solve a Rubik's Cube while in free fall

He broke a world record, completing the task in the sky in just 23.333 seconds.

What it takes to guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Sentinels who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Virginia, must do so around the clock, year-round, no matter the weather. They're also a select few: Only 735 have been permitted to serve since 1958. This documentary explores the history of the role and the strict requirements it takes to fill it.

'Breather holes' in airplane windows help manage cabin pressure

Airplane windows have three layers of acrylic: the super durable outside layer, the inner pane which acts like a "scratch" surface, and the middle pane with the tiny hole. This bleed hole allows pressurized cabin air to be borne by the strong outer pane while preventing the inner pane from breaking.

The 50 best (and highest paying) jobs in America

Here are the 50 Best Jobs in America, according to Glassdoor. Where does your job fall? This report ranks jobs according to each job’s Glassdoor Job Score, determined by combining three factors: number of job openings, salary, and overall job satisfaction rating.

Hubble overcame early optical failure and became a critical scientific instrument

The flaw in Hubble's mirror was smaller than the width of a human hair, but fixing it required a space mission as complex as a Hollywood rescue story—with astronauts installing corrective optics like contact lenses for a giant eye in the sky.

Nearly all American skilled workers deserted the canal worksite the first year

More than 75,000 workers labored to build the Panama Canal, and up to a third of them, by some estimates, died on the job. This gallery of 16 archival black-and-white photographs from PBS shows what life was like for the workers.

Watch the cumbersome, but necessary, precautions healthcare workers must take to care for and protect themselves while caring for Ebola patients.

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.

Explore how close you live to some of the most contaminated places in the US

Known as Superfund sites, these toxic locations undergo long-term cleanup to remove hazardous waste, protect health, and restore land for safe reuse. As of 2025, the EPA lists around 1,300 active Superfund sites on its National Priorities List, with more than 450 cleaned and removed since 1980.

Making an opera is expensive and requires many people to reach the stage

Bringing an opera to the stage is a detailed, demanding, and costly process. Following the lead ​​of Phillip Glass’s “Akhnaten” before its performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan, this Vox video displays the rehearsals, vocal lessons, intricate costumes, and even juggling involved in putting on a show.

Google data centers possess six layers of security

Property boundaries, such as anti-climb fencing, overlapping cameras, vehicle crash barriers, and circulating patrols, are coupled with lobby iris scans and ID and badge checks. The security operations center monitors individuals throughout their visit, including the less than 1% of Google users who ever receive permission to visit the data center floor.

Austin Dillon appreciates the nuts and bolts of car safety after his horrific crash

When Austin Dillon’s No. 3 car left the Daytona track in 2015 and smashed into the safety net protecting the grandstands, his car shattered, leaving only the driver’s cage spinning on the infield. Crew members from every team sprinted to the mangled wreck, and miraculously, Dillon walked away.

Go behind the scenes of a 911 dispatch center

This video follows a dispatcher at a Colorado communications center serving over 1,600 square miles across four counties, showing the constant communication and relentless pace of a 24-hour shift on the other end of your emergency call.

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

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.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

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.

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

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

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.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

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

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

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.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

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.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

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.

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

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

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