Visualizing the trans-Atlantic slave trade in two minutes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

'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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Rapid intensification is the increase in a hurricane's sustained wind speed by at least 35 miles per hour within 24 hours, which can strengthen it by up to two categories.

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.'

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.

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

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

Watch what would happen if you literally had all the money in the world.

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.

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.'

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

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.

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

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

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

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.