Computer scientists first started trying to optimize dating using computers in the 1950s.

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.

Check out some of the best books that can be read in a single day, with titles from Han Kang, Denis Johnson, Muriel Spark, and more.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks.

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

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

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.'

George Lucas used Joseph Campbell's 'hero's journey,' a narrative structure that encompasses the common characteristics of multiple cultures' mythologies, to revise 'Star Wars.'

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

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.

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

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

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

Give your memories a place to live and explore the personal stories left by strangers, tied to specific locations, in this interactive map of the world.

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.

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.'

Semaglutides, which belong to a class of drugs called GLP-1s, are prescribed for weight loss in combination with diet and exercise because they trigger the release of the appetite-suppressing hormone incretin.

Miracle berries make things that normally taste acidic or sour, such as lemons, taste sweet, like sugar-coated candy, by binding a special protein called miraculin to taste buds.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Watch a two-year time-lapse of a pinecone seed transforming into a pine tree.

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

Watch a breakdown of the canine family tree that explains how foxes and wolves are related to our beloved household pets, like poodles and dachshunds.

Here are some tips from Pew Research to help you distinguish between a good poll and an unreliable one.

Researchers generally group gut bacteria into six different categories, with varying amounts of these microbes residing in different parts of the digestive tract.

Plato's famous allegory of the cave is a metaphor exploring the value of truth over ignorance.

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.

Robert Smalls escaped slavery by piloting a stolen Confederate ship to freedom, then became an influential Black political leader during Reconstruction.

Explore the 2025 Uber Lost & Found Index to find out the weirdest items that passengers left behind in Ubers last year, from ten live lobsters to a mannequin head with human hair.

Male pattern baldness accounts for more than 95% of hair loss in men and is characterized by thinning hair, hair loss, and a receding hairline.

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

Sea stars are invertebrates—they lack a backbone—and while most exhibit pentametric radial symmetry due to having five arms radiating from a central disk, some can possess more than 40.

The collapse of gas bubbles in the joint synovial fluid causes 'cracking' knuckles.

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

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

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.

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

Abraham Lincoln had to sneak into Washington, DC, in disguise for his 1861 inauguration after a detective uncovered a plot to assassinate him in Baltimore.

Apeirophobia is the fear of everlasting life and may stem from the human brain's inability to conceptualize the concept of anything happening beyond what it can project out, such as the concept of an infinite life.

Watch an animated visualization of how the Large Hadron Collider works, including how particles are accelerated through a series of machines and how collision data is collected and distributed worldwide.

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