Mapping the origins of the world's crops

Watch 4-plus decades of Pixar's opening logos.

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.

'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.

A dog's nose can be up to 100,000 times more sensitive than a human's, and each possesses a secondary organ for smelling, which helps learn about other dogs when they sniff each other's butts.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Simulations suggest that a paper airplane launched from the International Space Station would maintain its orientation and gradually descend for 3.5 days before chaotically tumbling down and burning up.

On planets in systems with two stars, such as the fictional Tatooine from 'Star Wars,' observers would see overlapping rainbows and double rainbows.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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