The term 'burnout' in academia dates back to 1974

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

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.

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.'

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

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.'

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The Aztec Empire ruled over 80,000 square miles of central Mexico for nearly a century—until a small band of Spanish conquistadors brought it down in 1521.

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.

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

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

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

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.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Watch an animated visualization of how the Large Hadron Collider works, including how particles are accelerated through a series of machines and how collision data is collected and distributed worldwide.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Pregnancy makes someone more attractive to the mosquito species that transmits malaria.

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

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.

'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.

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

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.'

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.

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

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