The War on Terror used controversial tactics like torture and secret prisons

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.'

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

'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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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