The ancient Egyptians developed the first pregnancy test—and scientists tested it in the 1960s and discovered it was accurate about 70% of the time.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Washing dishware before putting it in a dishwasher may reduce the appliance's effectiveness because it dynamically adjusts wash time and temperature based on a sensor that detects dirtiness.

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.

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

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

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

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

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

Experience 14 billion years of important moments in world history with this scrollable interactive timeline.

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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

The tallest tsunami in recorded history was 524 meters (1,720 feet) high—taller than the Empire State Building—and occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska, in 1958 after an earthquake dislodged a rockface into the water.

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.

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.'

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.'

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.