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.'

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

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

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.

See where your state ranked in an analysis of the best public school systems in the US.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Watch Dr. Laurence Peter explain his 'Peter Principle,' which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence and explains why bosses aren't always good at their jobs.

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.

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.

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

Located on Ross Island in Antarctica, Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth and features a lava lake—one of eight known worldwide as of 2026—that erupts regularly.

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

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

'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.

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

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

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

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.

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

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.'

Play the role of a student as you try to navigate college and remain debt-free.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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