The 1973 oil embargo by OPEC inspired advances in alternative energy technology

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.'

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.

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

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 a breakdown of the canine family tree that explains how foxes and wolves are related to our beloved household pets, like poodles and dachshunds.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

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

'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.

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

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is "Afghan Girl" by Steve McCurry. Sharbat Gula, the subject of the photo, was not credited until 2002 for her role in the famous National Geographic cover, and continued to live in poverty after the photo was taken.

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

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.'

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.

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

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

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