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.

'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 non-fiction and self-help books to find relief and gain personal insights.

A malfunctioning prop caused Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to burn down during a performance of 'Henry VIII.'

'The consumer isn't a moron, she's your wife' is among David Ogilvy's most memorable pieces of advertising advice.

If the US government paid off its debt, it could disrupt the entire bond market, as Treasury bonds are among the most common bonds for investors and the majority of the national debt is in bonds.

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

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

Dorothea Lange's photos of Japanese-Americans interred in US concentration camps were censored.

Humans can have brain damage after four minutes without blood flow.

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.

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.

Noise-canceling headphones use a microphone to identify external sounds, which are then used to produce an out-of-sync version of those sounds to cancel them in your ears.

According to its creators, Virginia's famous tourism slogan, 'Virginia Is for Lovers,' contains no salacious or subtle messages.

Our phones can provide a dopamine hit because of our positive associations with them, which feeds into what some psychologists call social media addiction.

More than 90% of America's food allergies are triggered by 9 foods.

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

'A Boy Named Sue,' made famous by Johnny Cash, was written by Shel Silverstein, a writer best known for his children's poetry.

Explore the full list of over 1,000 UNESCO World Heritage sites, broken down by country.

The bullwhip was the first human-made object to break the sound barrier, producing a small sonic boom heard as a crack when flicked quickly.

With the help of one photographer who took photos of children at work, child labor in the US was eventually restricted by law in the mid-1900s.

The first social media platforms date back to the early 2000s, when algorithms were typically chronological, with entities like MySpace and Facebook feeding users content from the most recent posts to the oldest.

Delacroix's painting 'Liberty Leading the People' is one of romanticism's most recognizable works, vividly depicting a scene from the French Revolution of 1830, just a few months after it began.

By igniting flammable gas in a tube filled with holes and playing music into it, the fire will take the shape of the sound waves, enabling the visualization of audio.

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

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

Measles attacks the body's immune system, leaving it vulnerable to secondary complications.

An 1844 chess match via telegraph anticipated the board game's online popularity.

John D. Rockefeller—the world's first billionaire—was born to a well-known con artist father.

In the 19th century, ice-cream-related illnesses were somewhat regular in America thanks to vendors' poor hygienic practices.

Examine this captivating animation 'building' a human—illustrating the roughly 42 weeks of fetal development.

Immigrants generated about $1.7T in economic activity in 2023 and paid roughly $652B in taxes.

Just as squeezing a grape causes it to bulge, the moon's gravity exerts an overall pressure that displaces water toward the opposite sides of Earth's equator, producing tides.

If surgeons removed organs, including one of your lungs, a kidney, your spleen, appendix, tonsils, part of your liver, and even some of your reproductive organs, you could still survive.

Humans tend to imagine aliens as humanlike, but that's probably unlikely. Three different hypothetical planets show how aliens' bodies could take many forms.

Read JK Rowling's original 'Harry Potter' pitch that a dozen publishers rejected.

Although there are 10,000 possible combinations of four-digit personal identification numbers, data suggests that about 27% of all PINs are one of 20 combinations, including 1234, 1111, and 0000.

Before 1965, US immigration law relied on nationality-based bans and quotas.

It's likely a myth that Ellis Island inspectors changed immigrants' names, but historians say the errors actually happened overseas.

See how antidepressants—used by roughly 1 in 10 Americans—were discovered.

Across the animal kingdom, mice are among the least efficient travelers, while the efficiency of human locomotion falls between that of a cow and a horse. (Paywall may apply.)

More than 80% of New York City's newsstands have closed in the past two decades, in part due to a series of price caps that hurt the stands' ability to evolve.

Explore an interactive timeline of the world's biggest data breaches and hacks, led by the 2024 National Public Data breach, which involved almost three billion stolen records, including full names and Social Security numbers.

Cartoonist Thomas Nast helped bring down Boss Tweed, one of America's most corrupt political bosses.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, contends that children are losing the ability to pay attention as they spend half their lives perusing social media content designed to hook them.

Brown dwarfs are nicknamed 'failed stars' because, while much more massive than planets, they lack sufficient mass to initiate nuclear fusion in their cores and become stars.

Listen to Steve Jobs explain his 'rock tumbler' metaphor for teamwork.

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.'

Oxygen is produced in the International Space Station from recycled water, which is split into hydrogen and oxygen gases using an electric current.

'Loud budgeting' is a budgeting strategy in which one practices being open with their peers about what they can and can't afford.

A 1981 wedding on 'General Hospital' drew 30 million viewers.