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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.'

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.'

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

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

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

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

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.

Light takes approximately eight minutes to travel from the sun's surface to Earth, but it takes thousands of years to reach the star's surface from its core—a distance more than 200 times shorter.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

'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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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

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.

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

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.