Mummification in Ancient Egypt transformed a body into a divine statue

Play the role of a student as you try to navigate college and remain debt-free.

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

Explore the history of American restaurants through an archive of menus dating back to the early 1800s.

Peek into the love lives of thousands of strangers whom Stanford University researchers have been tracking since 2017 on this interactive page.

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

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

Explore (and debunk) the world's most contagious misconceptions—from the 5-second rule to sugar rushes—on this interactive site. Click on each misconception for further evidence.

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.'

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

Metamorphosis evolved over millions of years as species that hatched as smaller versions of adults started exhibiting genetic mutations that differentiated juvenile and adult bodies.

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

Located on Ross Island in Antarctica, Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth and features a lava lake—one of eight known worldwide as of 2026—that erupts regularly.

Explore a detailed map of Odysseus' fictional journey from 'The Odyssey.'

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

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.

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.

Watch President John F. Kennedy's speech on going to the moon

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Stonehenge was built using giant wooden rollers and precisely carved tongue-and-groove joints to lock the stones in place.

This short animation shows how human beings managed to lug 30-ton stones over miles of prehistoric English countryside and stand them up The Stone Age engineering involved using giant wooden rollers and carving precisely interlocking tongue-and-groove joints to hold the heavy stones in place.

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

In 1962, the US detonated a nuclear weapon in space, which produced an electromagnetic pulse that disabled three low Earth orbit satellites and damaged electrical equipment in Hawaii.

Find out how important you are to AI tools when they generate text responses with this tool, which estimates the weights of people's names.

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

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

The animatronic shark from 'Jaws' was a complex machine called 'Bruce.'

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.

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

Although the moon passes between the sun and Earth each month, its orbit is tilted by five degrees, preventing Earth from experiencing a solar eclipse each month.

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

Explore an interactive timeline of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history to visualize shifting landmasses and oceans, view the locations of significant asteroid impacts, and learn about major geological and biological events.