Disney Research developed a haptic interface where you can feel a fireworks display

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

Firework or sparkler burns, even if they cover a relatively small area of skin, can significantly affect our range of motion.

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

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

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

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

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

See this overview of the firework rules across all 50 states, ranging from a complete ban on non-professional fireworks in Massachusetts to states with more lax rules like Indiana.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

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

Dirty lightning is a thunderstorm created from friction between rising and falling flows of ash and smoke during volcanic eruptions.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

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.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

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.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

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.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

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

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

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 the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

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.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

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

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

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.

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

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

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.

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 fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

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

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

Poison ivy is in the same family as mangoes, cashews, and pistachios—and they all produce oily urushiol in their raw, unprocessed state—but they are typically prepared in ways to avoid causing human discomfort.

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.

Ebola infects and disables immune cells, triggering a cascade of events that leads to small blood clots throughout the body, weakening blood vessels and interrupting blood flow to key organs.

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.

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

Tattoos remain visible on your skin thanks to immune cells called macrophages

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.