The Berlin Wall physically separated East and West Berlin for nearly three decades, preventing East Germans from fleeing to the West and earning the nickname 'the Iron Curtain.'

The final shots of the Civil War were fired in the Arctic over 2 months after the South's surrender.

Cats have a mutation that prevents them from tasting sweetness, and goldfish rank among the world's supertasters.

Between 2002 and 2012, at least 12 people were killed in the Philippines in incidents related to off-key karaoke singing of Frank Sinatra's 'My Way.'

Explore how temperatures compare to historical averages in cities worldwide with this interactive global monitor.

The US has discontinued a variety of different currency denominations over the years—including a $100K bill.

'Tulip mania,' the 1630s Dutch craze where rare bulbs were briefly traded like luxury assets, may have been the first financial bubble—and it still shapes markets today.

Explore a collection of famous literary maps, including original images from 'Treasure Island,' 'The Swiss Family Robinson, ' and 'Walden.'

Lake Sørvágsvatn sits about 32 meters (105 feet) above sea level, but the taller surrounding cliffs create an optical illusion that makes it appear to float much higher above the ocean.

Explore an interactive forecast of the future of the universe, from the return of Halley's Comet to the last light in the cosmos.

On planets in systems with two stars, such as the fictional Tatooine from 'Star Wars,' observers would see overlapping rainbows and double rainbows.

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

Watch footage from the moments the Titanic wreck was discovered by a joint US-French research team in 1985.

There are 'YouTube camps' that teach children how to create content for the video platform.

Emanuel Leutze's painting 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' is one of the defining images of the Revolutionary War.

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.

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is "Afghan Girl" by Steve McCurry. Sharbat Gula, the subject of the photo, was not credited until 2002 for her role in the famous National Geographic cover, and continued to live in poverty after the photo was taken.

Humans tend to imagine aliens as humanlike, but that's probably unlikely. Three different hypothetical planets show how aliens' bodies could take many forms.

If a source of music traveled past someone at twice the speed of sound, assuming sufficiently sensitive hearing and powerful equipment, they would hear the music backward.

Joan Didion interviewed The Grateful Dead in 1967, before they became music icons.

You may be better at spotting a lie when listening to a speaker's voice inflections rather than watching for facial and body cues.

Watch Bruce Springsteen's 1985 performance of Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land,' which he calls 'the greatest song ever written about America.'

Pregnancy makes someone more attractive to the mosquito species that transmits malaria.

Relax to a livestream of brown bears chilling in Katmai National Park in Alaska.

Explore 3D models of some of the most dangerous viruses, allowing us to understand these and other pathogens in new ways.

See a breakdown of how some of the most common food items are traded across the globe, including the key trade relationships for each item.

Watch 4-plus decades of Pixar's opening logos.

Watch a visualization of what it would look like to move along Earth's surface as fast as the International Space Station, or about 23 times the speed of sound.

Explore Lewis and Clark's 8,000-mile journey in Google Earth.

'Golden blood' is the rarest blood type in the world—fewer than 50 people are known to have it.

On a cruise ship, the average person uses about 50 gallons of water a day, which is treated by bacteria and onboard filtration systems, then stored until the ship can legally discharge the wastewater.

Watch Dr. Laurence Peter explain his 'Peter Principle,' which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence and explains why bosses aren't always good at their jobs.

The average banana produces one positron—the antimatter counterpart to an electron—every 75 minutes as its trace amounts of radioactive potassium decay.

Experience a century of America's healthcare advances with this medical visualization, tracing a sampling of healthcare innovations from head to toe.

Listen to audio clips from Hoover, a harbor seal named after its insatiable appetite, who learned to say English phrases such as 'hello there' and 'come over here.'

See where your state ranked in an analysis of the best public school systems in the US.

Humans may have as many as 100,000 to 150,000 individual hairs on our scalps, growing at a rate of roughly 1 centimeter per month.

'Bibliotherapy' is of increasing interest as a way to improve mental health and help navigate complex life situations—with people immersing themselves in the experiences of fictional characters or nonfiction and self-help books to find relief and gain personal insights.

Author David Foster Wallace's 'This Is Water' speech provides guidance for adulthood.

The US jobs projected to shrink the fastest over the next decade include typists and word processors.

Fecal transplants can help treat infections by transplanting healthy gut bacteria from a donor into a patient's gastrointestinal tract using samples of human waste, which are turned into a liquid mixture and often delivered via a colonoscopy procedure.