Companies sometimes issue corporate bonds to raise capital

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

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.

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.'

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.

If the moon were less than one-twelfth its current distance from Earth, the planet's tidal forces would overcome the moon's internal gravity, tearing it apart and forming a ring of debris.

'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 the wineries of Napa Valley with an interactive map of its hundreds of wineries, vineyards, and tasting rooms.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

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.'

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

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.

Streaming service Netflix's sound logo 'Tudum' was designed as a key sonic differentiator.

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

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

There are up to 100 trillion microbes in the gut, and maintaining the relative balance in this ecosystem is important for our health.

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.'

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.

As part of the up to 15 pounds of seafood they consume daily, sea otters eat urchins that feed on kelp forests—sources of shelter and food to over 800 species—thereby making the marine mammal a keystone species.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Examine this captivating animation 'building' a human—illustrating the roughly 40 weeks of fetal development.

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

Use this tool to calculate the dollar value of your parental mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care, then see resources that help generate solutions.

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

The world's largest waterfall is in the ocean and is more than three times the height of Angel Falls, the largest waterfall on land.

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

Watch the many different civilizations around the Mediterranean shift power from the year 2500 BCE to 0 BCE in this animated map.

Explore how the most commonly used words in the English language have changed from the 1950s to 2023.

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

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.