Explore the 2025 Uber lost & found index

Uber's startup origin story starts in Paris

Back in 2009, Uber’s cofounders tried to catch a cab during a Paris snowstorm without much luck. If only they could have requested a ride through one of their phones. This article dives into how Uber went from idea, to reality, to successful startup.

The 25 biggest IPOs in US history

These 25 companies—which include UPS, Uber Technologies, AT&T, and The Kraft Heinz Co.—had some of the biggest IPO drops in US history. However, not all these drops led to long-term (or even immediate) success.

The number of people collecting money from gig work tripled between 2017 and 2021

That includes people driving for Lyft or delivering food through GrubHub. Those people might be changing the face of the US economy at large, too. Gig work provides a cushion between jobs outside of government unemployment assistance, for example.

Twenty of the coolest products from CES 2025

This roundup from Cybernews showcases standout CES 2025 innovations—from flying cars and robot dogs to VR headsets and AI-powered gadgets—showing the event’s most talked-about tech.

A 'unicorn' is a private company with a $1B-plus valuation

Just like a horse with a spiraling horn on its head, private companies with a more than $1B valuation are rare creatures. But unlike the mythical creature, this type of “unicorn” is occasionally spotted in the wild. Unicorn companies include SpaceX, OpenAI, Skims, and more.

As of 2025, Waymo has rolled out "robotaxi" services in five US cities

The company has been under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration following dozens of crashes and incidents that appear to show Waymo vehicles violating traffic laws over the past decade in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin.

Possible globster sighted on the Oregon coast.

A man riding an ATV on the Oregon coast comes across a “sea monster", which is actually likely a decaying carcass of shark or whale.

See a website that tracks layoffs

A startup founder has been tracking tech layoffs since 2020. In 2025, 124,201 tech employees were laid off, per the website.

An anthropologist spent years riding garbage trucks to understand what our trash says about us

Robin Nagle rode with New York City sanitation workers to trace the hidden life of what we throw out. Her research explores what the things we discard reveal about who we are. 1440 explores the hidden life of trash.

A ‘Bored Ape’ NFT was once kidnapped

An art heist in the crypto world plunges listeners of the "Search Engine" podcast into another mystery about why so many celebrities suddenly started selling the public on NFTs in 2021.

The dating app Hinge markets itself as 'designed to be deleted'

Harvard graduate Justin McLeod started Hinge in 2011. Since then, despite competition from larger apps like Bumble and Tinder, it's grown into the third-largest dating app by market share in the US, bringing in roughly $396M in revenue as of 2023.

The oddest shots captured on Google Street View

Ever wondered what you could see on Google Street View if you looked hard enough? With this delightful site, you can now explore the weird and wonderful things captured since the service debuted in 2007.

Explore internet usage data, including how humans consume 1.2 billion years of content yearly

About half this time consists of content from social media platforms, where the average user spends about 18.5 hours weekly. An estimated $3.66T was spent on consumer goods by online shoppers in 2025, though nonconsumer goods, such as flights and hotel stays, greatly increase this estimate.

In 2001, Pizza Hut became the first company to deliver pizza to space

The chain paid the Russian space agency nearly $1M for the promotional stunt, which saw a Russian cosmonaut eat the pizza on video. Other unusual objects to make it to the International Space Station include a gorilla suit, an espresso machine, and several musical instruments.

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

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.

The largest jewelry heist in US history resulted in $100M of jewelry stolen

Robbers stole the gems from a Brinks truck in Lebec, California, in July 2022. The truck was transporting the jewels to different jewelry shows in the state, and thieves stole diamonds, emeralds, gold, rubies, and designer watches while one driver was asleep and the other was getting food. Some of the stolen jewelry has been recovered.

Shrunken human heads were once a valuable commodity

In the Ecuadoran Amazon of the 1800s, shrunken human heads had spiritual significance. As outsiders became fascinated by the exotic practice, head shrinking became commercialized, and counterfeit shrunken heads were common. By the mid-1940s, shrunken heads could be traded for guns. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

3 US maps illustrate transplants, donors, and organ waitlist additions—by state

National UNOS tracking data feeds into these US maps that record all the transplants, donors, and waitlist additions in the last 12 months. California, for example, had the most transplantations in 2025—totaling about 5,200—but it also has the longest waiting list, with more than 20,000 additions in that same period.

Rare Jurassic-era insect found outside Arkansas Walmart

An entomologist on his way to buy milk sighted a giant lacewing, a rare insect not seen in the US for fifty years. The species has been present on earth for at least 160 million years, but has become incredibly rare in North America.

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

Explore a database of more than 200,000 wrecks

Only a small fraction of shipwrecks occurring throughout human history have been discovered. This database is the largest compilation to date, and includes more than 80,000 images, with related news updated on a rolling basis.

Take a look at the companies that help people vanish.

Each year, some choose to "disappear" and abandon their lives, jobs, homes, and families. In Japan, there are companies that can help those looking to escape into thin air.

Metal wreckage found in a Canadian farm turned out to be SpaceX spacecraft debris

The pieces of the wreck included a 36-kilogram aluminum spear more than 2 meters long, and its origins were confirmed by satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. No government acknowledged or took accountability for the space trash, which SpaceX later quietly retrieved.

Fraud and identity theft are among the most common dark web-related crimes

Credit card information, driver's license or passport scans, and login credentials are among the data bought and sold on dark web marketplaces, which can appear there without users' knowledge through data breaches. Medical records can fetch higher sums of money for their potential use in blackmail and insurance fraud.

Amazon launched a Temu competitor called Haul in 2024

On Amazon's Temu competitor, which it named "Haul," users can get extremely low-priced items shipped to them from—you guessed it—China.

The artwork at Burning Man is impressive and transient

Huge sculptures, mutant vehicles, concert stages, the Man, and other spectacles created at Burning Man each year are often destroyed by the end of the event. If they aren't burned, they'll often be repurposed or trashed.

Sushi is an estimated $33B business in the US

US fishermen stock most of the country's more than 17,000 sushi restaurants. Distributors frequently adjust prices for different fish, based on their availability and the quality of the meat. This podcast unpacks how that industry operates.

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.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

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

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

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

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.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

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.

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.

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.

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024.

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.

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

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.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

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.

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.

In its famous catalog, Sears sold $600 DIY house kits from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in an estimated 100,000 'Sears and Roebuck homes.'

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

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.

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.