The colonial origins of Haiti/Dominican Republic divide

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

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.

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.'

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

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

Apeirophobia is the fear of everlasting life and may stem from the human brain's inability to conceptualize the concept of anything happening beyond what it can project out, such as the concept of an infinite life.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Humans tend to imagine aliens as humanlike, but that's probably unlikely. Three different hypothetical planets show how aliens' bodies could take many forms.

Explore an interactive timeline of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history to visualize shifting landmasses and oceans, view the locations of significant asteroid impacts, and learn about major geological and biological events.

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.

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

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

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.'

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

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

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

Experience a century of America's healthcare advances with this medical visualization, tracing a sampling of healthcare innovations from head to toe.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

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.

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.

This interactive website features nearly 40,000 photos from Wikipedia for you to create visual mosaics with.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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