Watch how engineers salvaged almost every sunken ship at Pearl Harbor

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor caused heavy losses but failed to cripple the US navy

Japan’s air assault sank or damaged 18 warships (including eight battleships) and destroyed 188 aircraft, killing 2,403 Americans, yet all three Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers were absent and survived, and vital infrastructure like oil depots and repair yards remained intact—preserving core US naval power and enabling a rapid recovery. Watch original reporting here.

Recovering the USS Oklahoma was the largest naval salvage operation ever attempted

In 1943, engineers spent three months using 21 giant winches and an intricate cable system to right the capsized USS Oklahoma. It was the largest naval salvage effort ever attempted at the time and remains one of the most complex in history.

The USS Nevada was refloated within three months—and later fought at Normandy

Badly damaged at Pearl Harbor, the USS Nevada was raised by February 1942 after extensive salvage work. Repaired and modernized, it returned to action and bombarded German defenses during the D-Day landings.

Hear Pearl Harbor survivors reflect on the attack 80 years later

This anniversary video features some of the last living witnesses to the Pearl Harbor attack. Their firsthand memories—shared eight decades later—offer a rare perspective on the day that changed their lives and the world.

Explore an interactive map of WW2 shipwrecks

Historians estimate roughly 20,000 ships were sunk during World War II as a direct cause of fighting, primarily in the Mediterranean and Pacific theaters. This mapping project lists about 75% of them, while the remainder lacked specific location data.

FDR stayed composed as he absorbed the news of Pearl Harbor

This video reconstructs Roosevelt’s steady, methodical response on Dec. 7, 1941, from his first briefing to drafting his speech to Congress. It demonstrates how FDR maintained composure and moved rapidly to prepare the nation for war.

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.

2 months after Pearl Harbor, American libraries launched a drive to collect 10 million books for soldiers

The 1942 Victory Book Campaign—sponsored by the American Library Association, the Red Cross, and the USO—asked the public to donate books to both train and entertain troops. The national campaign exceeded its goal, collecting more than 10.2 million books.

A new scan of the Titanic reveals details about its final hours

Using over 700,000 images captured by underwater robots, researchers created a highly detailed 3D "digital twin" of the Titanic. The analysis gives us new insights into the life of the ship that lays 3,800m down in the icy waters of the Atlantic. Emerging details from close-up images, such as a smashed porthole likely caused by the iceberg, match the eye-witness accounts of what happened. Read for more insights into the devastating wreck.

How massive cargo ships fight off modern pirates

Piracy on the high seas costs a reported $16 billion each year from either theft or damage incurred during an attempt to pirate massive cargo ships. This video breaks down several ways companies attempt to fend off would-be thieves. Pirate crews are...

The usual rules of fate do not apply': Race car driver-turned-ace WWI fighter pilot survives being lost at sea

Eddie Rickenbacker had an amazing career as a World War I hero, fighter pilot, and race care driver, among other accomplishments. This restored footage of an short 12-minute documentary about his early life, war stories, and survival at sea for 24 days provides amazing insight on a truly American character.

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

Disney chipped away at its debt by creating propaganda during World War II

Disney began producing training videos for the Navy and propaganda films for US involvement in World War II, including the shorts "Der Fuehrer's Face," "The Spirit of '43," and "Donald Gets Drafted." The effort provided a much-needed cash injection, allowing Disney to continue producing films.

Fire engines are among the most complex vehicles on the road

These vehicles are purpose-built to carry water, foam, hoses, ladders, and lifesaving equipment to a scene in minutes. This animated video pulls apart every system inside a pumper truck, showing exactly how the machinery that fights fires actually works.

Grace Hopper was inspired to join the armed forces after the attack on Pearl Harbor

Despite being too old to enlist and weighing below the required minimum to serve, Hopper was granted an exemption and assigned to work on the first electromechanical computer produced in the US. She and her team spent three months using the device to solve equations needed to design the implosion mechanism for the atomic bomb.

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.

The story behind the iconic flag-raising photo on Iwo Jima (1945)

The iconic image captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal went viral, as far as it could in the 1940s, showing six marines raising a flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. The shot was used for public relations by the military, but it would later be shrouded by controversy when it was revealed it was the second flag raising that day, inviting accusations it was staged.

Explaining the engineering challenges of extracting metal-rich nodules from the seafloor

Proposed solutions for collecting these potato-shaped rocks involve lifting a slurry composed of them, organic debris, and water through several kilometers of flexible tubing to a ship on the surface, a process that is more difficult than pumping crude oil. One method would use compressed air, but this method is only 15% energy-efficient.

A Manhattan building doomed to collapse was saved in secret

After completing the Citicorp Center, its engineer realized that cost-cutting measures to use bolted instead of welded joints made the building vulnerable to collapse under quartering winds. For three months, crews worked in secret at night to reinforce the building under Project Serene.

Explore the decommissioning work at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

This virtual tour explores the nuclear disaster site, which resulted from a magnitude 9.1 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, and the various processes underway to remove debris, fuel, and contaminated water.

Listen to the five-part podcast series that reconstructs how Challenger failed

The "American Scandal" podcast devotes a five-part series to Challenger, tracing the engineering warnings, internal pressure to launch, the moment of the explosion, and the long aftermath that reshaped NASA's safety culture.

5 works of art that were destroyed and repaired

Art preservation is a delicate skill; art reconstruction is even more challenging, especially when the damaged works are centuries old. This Artnet guide details five of the most famous cases of dismembered works (from Manet, Cézanne, and more) that were repaired by specialists, allowing audiences to see the pieces in the way they were intended.

National Geographic presents how to protect the oceans

What can we do to protect and preserve the world's oceans? Be inspired by spectacular wildlife footage from National Geographic while learning key strategies.

Why Japan builds airports on water

Some of Japan's roughly 100 airports are built on water—that is, engineers have created new land in bodies of water specifically to construct airports. This six-minute video explains why the country is doing so despite the higher cost of such airports.

Fungi have been used to restore island habitats in the central Pacific

After removing 1.5 million invasive coconut palm trees and eradicating the black rats that fed on them, as well as seabirds and crabs, conservationists working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service identified areas where fungi could be transplanted to provide nutrients to native trees. These trees serve as nesting sites for seabirds whose guano nourishes coral reefs.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

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.

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.

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

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

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

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.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

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.

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

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.

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.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Planarian flatworms are small, aquatic worms with exceptional regenerative capabilities. When cut, the worms can regenerate multiple bodies in a matter of weeks.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

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

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

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

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.

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

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.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

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.