Not all alternative investments are easy to invest in

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.

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.

Male pattern baldness accounts for more than 95% of hair loss in men and is characterized by thinning hair, hair loss, and a receding hairline.

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

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

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.

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

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

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.'

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Computer scientists first started trying to optimize dating using computers in the 1950s.

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.

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

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

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.

'Bibliotherapy' is of increasing interest as a way to improve mental health and help navigate complex life situations—with people immersing themselves in the experiences of fictional characters or nonfiction and self-help books to find relief and gain personal insights.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Joan Didion interviewed The Grateful Dead in 1967, before they became music icons.

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

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

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.

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