In 2011, President Obama awarded Warren Buffett the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

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.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

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.

Calculate how much of your tax dollars go to each federal program based on your income, filing status, and number of children

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

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.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

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.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

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.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

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

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

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

Ebola species have historically been named after where they were discovered, stigmatizing residents who live there, including Bundibugyo, in Uganda.

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.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

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.

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

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

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

Larger animals like giraffes, elephants, and blue whales have developed a unique defense against cancer, a phenomenon known as Peto's Paradox

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

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

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

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

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

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

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.

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.

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.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

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.