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.

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

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

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.'

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.

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

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.'

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

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

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The animatronic shark from 'Jaws' was a complex machine called 'Bruce.'

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

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

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.

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

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.

Stonehenge was built using giant wooden rollers and precisely carved tongue-and-groove joints to lock the stones in place.

This short animation shows how human beings managed to lug 30-ton stones over miles of prehistoric English countryside and stand them up The Stone Age engineering involved using giant wooden rollers and carving precisely interlocking tongue-and-groove joints to hold the heavy stones in place.

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.

Use this tool to calculate the dollar value of your parental mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care, then see resources that help generate solutions.

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

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

Lake Sørvágsvatn sits about 32 meters (105 feet) above sea level, but the taller surrounding cliffs create an optical illusion that makes it appear to float much higher above the ocean.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.'

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.