Department
History
The past, precisely. 137 case files (96 cross-filed from other departments).
DID YOUKNOW?One Roof TownDD-008
One Roof Town
Most of Whittier, Alaska lives in a single 14-story building, and the only road into town is a tunnel that closes every night.
DID YOUKNOW?Salvadoran SalvationDD-751
Salvadoran Salvation
El Salvador recorded 6,656 homicides in 2015, a rate of about 105 per 100,000 and among the highest in the world. The Attorney General's office reported 114 for 2024. Since March 2022 a state of exception has suspended some constitutional rights, and more than 83,000 people were detained by late 2024. The government credits the crackdown for the fall. Analysts say the official count now excludes some categories of deaths, and the IACHR and Amnesty International report arbitrary detentions and deaths in custody.
DID YOUKNOW?Rick CharlsDD-742
Rick Charls
In 1983, ABC's Wide World of Sports staged its last World Record High Dive at SeaWorld San Diego. To count, a dive had to include at least one somersault, and the diver had to leave the water without help. Five divers succeeded from 172 ft (52.4 m): Rick Charls, Rick Winters, Dana Kunze, Bruce Boccia and Mike Foley, and all five share credit for the record. Charls, from Cincinnati, was a collegiate All-American at Ohio University and the 1980 world tandem high-diving champion.
DID YOUKNOW?Kenny POWERsDD-740
Kenny POWERs
The St. Lawrence 'Super Jump' was Canadian stuntman Ken Carter's project, begun in 1976, to jump a rocket-powered Lincoln Continental about a mile from near Morrisburg, Ontario to the United States. On September 26, 1979, after Carter's attempt was aborted, the backers and film producers had American stuntman Kenny Powers make the jump while Carter was away. The bumpy runway damaged the car, the parachutes deployed early, and it traveled about 506 feet before landing in shallow water. Powers survived with eight broken vertebrae, three broken ribs and a broken wrist. He died in 2009.
DID YOUKNOW?Mobile MortarsDD-021
Mobile Mortars
A mortar is a light, smoothbore tube that a small crew can carry and set up on a bipod and baseplate. A round dropped down the muzzle hits a fixed firing pin at the bottom, which sets off its propellant charge and throws it out at a steep angle (generally above 45 degrees). That high arc lets mortars hit targets behind hills or cover that the crew can't see.
DID YOUKNOW?National NEODD-731
National NEO
In 1983, Matsushita Electric (now Panasonic) aired a TV ad for National 'Neo Hi-Top' batteries, titled 'Because the Building Is There' (そこにビルがあるからだ篇). A battery-powered toy firefighter climbs a long ladder up a 33-story building, about 140 m, and at the top puts out a cigarette butt with its hose. Tetsuo Hashimoto, the Hakuhodo creative director behind it, later explained that the first idea was rock climbing, and that a Panasonic staffer redrew the toy's original cat face as a firefighter. The ad is widely reported to have won a gold award at Cannes.
DID YOUKNOW?The OdysseyDD-728
The Odyssey
The Odyssey is an ancient Greek epic poem in 24 books, traditionally attributed to Homer and generally dated to around the late 8th or early 7th century BCE. It follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, on his ten-year return from the Trojan War: blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus, a year with the sorceress Circe, sailing past the Sirens tied to his mast, and finally reclaiming his home from his wife Penelope's suitors. Counting the war, he's away for twenty years. The Reel was posted on July 18, 2026, the day after Christopher Nolan's film adaptation opened in U.S. theaters.
DID YOUKNOW?Independence DayDD-726
Independence Day
July 4, 2026 was the 250th anniversary, or semiquincentennial, of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, by adopting the Lee Resolution with 12 colonies in favor and New York not voting. It adopted the Declaration's text on July 4, and John Dunlap printed the first copies that night. Contrary to popular belief, the engrossed parchment wasn't signed on July 4. Most delegates signed it on August 2, 1776, and 56 eventually did.
DID YOUKNOW?RoboClassicalDD-722
RoboClassical
In and around Carrara, Italy, studios such as Robotor use large multi-axis industrial robots to carve marble from 3D scans or digital models. Software turns the model into toolpaths and the robot removes stone. Bloomberg described a 4.5-ton robot working along nine axes. Robotor's co-founder Giacomo Massari told 60 Minutes the robots are about 10 times faster than hand carving, and says they do about 99% of the work. Skilled artisans still hand-finish the surfaces and details the machine can't reach, which can take months. Some Carrara sculptors object that robot-made work isn't true sculpture.
DID YOUKNOW?Big Boy 4014DD-720
Big Boy 4014
Big Boy No. 4014 is one of 25 4-8-8-4 'Big Boy' articulated steam locomotives that the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) built for Union Pacific. It was delivered in December 1941. Big Boys normally hauled freight between Ogden, Utah, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, across the Wasatch range. No. 4014 made its last revenue run in July 1959 and was retired in December 1961 after 1,031,205 miles. It was then displayed in Pomona, California, until Union Pacific reacquired it in 2013. After a restoration that included converting it from coal to oil, it returned to service in May 2019 and is now the world's largest operating steam locomotive. In 2026 it made a 14-state coast-to-coast America250 tour.
DID YOUKNOW?Not So WellDD-719
Not So Well
In early 1991, retreating Iraqi forces set fire to Kuwaiti oil wells. Estimates of the number range from 605 to 732, and the U.S. government counted 610 burning out of 752 damaged wells. At their peak, the fires burned an estimated 4-6 million barrels of oil a day. Firefighting crews from 28 countries began work in April, and the last well was capped on November 6, 1991. Unburned oil formed lakes, estimated at more than 100 to about 300, and the soot and gases degraded regional air quality. Hardened 'tarcrete' crusts and oil-soaked soil left contamination that persisted for decades.
DID YOUKNOW?Bethlehem SteelDD-010
Bethlehem Steel
Bethlehem Steel grew out of the Saucona Iron Company, founded in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1857. It became Bethlehem Steel Company in 1899 and a corporation in 1904, and was for decades America's second-largest steelmaker. Its wide-flange beams helped make skyscrapers possible. Its steel went into the Golden Gate and George Washington bridges and the Empire State Building. In World War II its shipyards built 1,121 ships, more than any other builder. It went bankrupt in 2001 and was dissolved in 2003.
DID YOUKNOW?2026DD-714
2026
Metropolis, the German silent science-fiction film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea von Harbou, premiered in Berlin on January 10, 1927. Its city is split between a privileged elite above ground and workers who live and labor below. The year 2026 doesn't appear in the film. Von Harbou's novel says the story happens 'at no particular place or time'. The date comes from the 1963 Ace Books paperback, whose title page reads 'The World of 2026 A.D.' It was repeated in later writing on the film and in Giorgio Moroder's 1984 re-scored version. Film historians Lotte Eisner and Paul M. Jensen placed it around 2000 instead. Footage long thought lost was found in Buenos Aires in 2008 and restored for a 2010 re-release.
DID YOUKNOW?Atomic AnnieDD-004
Atomic Annie
In the Grable test (May 25, 1953, Nevada), the 83-ton M65 Atomic Cannon fired the only nuclear artillery shell in history.
DID YOUKNOW?Air JordanDD-713
Air Jordan
Michael Jordan won the NBA Slam Dunk Contest in 1987 and again on February 6, 1988, at Chicago Stadium. In 1988, he closed with a dunk from the free-throw line that earned a perfect 50 and edged out Dominique Wilkins, a result that's still debated. The dunk wasn't new. Julius Erving won the first-ever dunk contest, at the 1976 ABA All-Star Game, with a free-throw-line dunk, and Jordan had tried one in the 1985 contest. Both Jordan and Erving have said Erving suggested the 1988 attempt from the stands. 'Air Jordan' was also the name of Nike's Jordan signature shoe, launched in 1985.
DID YOUKNOW?Gassed Up...Way UpDD-711
Gassed Up...Way Up
Aerial refueling moves fuel from a tanker to another aircraft in flight. The first successful transfer took place on June 27, 1923, over Rockwell Field in San Diego. Two US Army Air Service DH-4B biplanes used a 50-foot hose to pass about 75 gallons, according to the National Museum of the US Air Force. Today there are two main methods. With probe and drogue, the tanker trails a hose ending in a basket and the receiver flies its probe into it. The US Navy, the Marine Corps, many allied air forces and helicopters use this method. With the flying boom, a boom operator on the tanker steers a rigid telescoping tube into a receptacle on the receiver. That's the standard for US Air Force aircraft. Some tankers carry both.
DID YOUKNOW?B52 StratofortressDD-708
B52 Stratofortress
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress first flew on April 15, 1952, and entered US Air Force service in 1955. Boeing built 744, and the last B-52H was delivered in 1962. Only the B-52H model is still flying. The Air Force fact sheet lists a payload of about 70,000 lb of mixed weapons and a 185 ft wingspan, with eight engines in four paired pods. It was built for high-altitude nuclear missions and was later adapted for low-level flight, conventional bombing and cruise missiles. Under the Commercial Engine Replacement Program, the Air Force plans to fit Rolls-Royce F130 engines and a new radar, rename the aircraft the B-52J and keep it in service into the 2050s. On June 15, 2026, a B-52H radar test aircraft crashed on takeoff at Edwards Air Force Base, killing all eight crew members. As of July 2026, the cause was under investigation.
DID YOUKNOW?Ali KhameneiDD-076
Ali Khamenei
Ali Khamenei was born on April 19, 1939, in Mashhad and studied at the seminary in Qom, including under Ruhollah Khomeini. From 1963 he took part in protests against the monarchy and was imprisoned several times. After the 1979 revolution he sat on the Revolutionary Council, served as deputy defense minister and was elected president in 1981, a largely ceremonial post at the time; he was reelected in 1985. When Khomeini died in June 1989, the Assembly of Experts chose Khamenei as leader, and a referendum that July loosened the office's clerical qualifications. He held the post for 37 years. On Feb. 28, 2026, he was killed in the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes of the 2026 war with Iran. The Assembly of Experts named his son Mojtaba Khamenei supreme leader on March 8, 2026.
DID YOUKNOW?Supersonic StrikerDD-036
Supersonic Striker
The B-1 began as the Mach 2 B-1A, which was canceled in 1977. It was revived in 1981 as the B-1B, a stealthier and heavier interim bomber, while the B-2 was delayed. Rockwell delivered all 100 B-1Bs between 1985 and 1988, and the type reached initial operating capability on nuclear alert in October 1986. Its wings sweep from 15° (137 ft span) back to 67.5° (79 ft). Top speed is about Mach 1.2. The U.S. dropped the B-1's nuclear mission in 1994, and its nuclear hardware was stripped out by March 2011 under New START, with Russian inspectors verifying it. Today it's a conventional-only bomber, nicknamed the 'Bone'.
DID YOUKNOW?The Chronicles of GeorgiaDD-028
The Chronicles of Georgia
On Keeni Hill at the north edge of Tbilisi, above the Tbilisi Sea reservoir, stand 16 bronze-clad pillars 30 to 35 meters tall. Sculptor Zurab Tsereteli began the Chronicle of Georgia (Sakartvelos Matiane) in 1985. Work dragged on through the Soviet collapse until 2003, and the monument was never fully finished. The upper sections show kings, queens and heroes of Georgian history, and the lower sections tell the life of Christ. The hilltop had once been earmarked for a 100-meter statue of Stalin.
DID YOUKNOW?EkranoplanDD-704
Ekranoplan
The Project 903 Lun was a Soviet wing-in-ground-effect craft from Rostislav Alexeyev's design bureau, built as a fast anti-ship missile carrier. Only one, MD-160, was completed. It was about 73.8 m long with a 44 m wingspan, weighed about 380 tonnes at takeoff, and carried six P-270 Moskit (SS-N-22) anti-ship missiles in pairs on its back. Eight Kuznetsov NK-87 turbofans on forward pylons blew air under the wings for takeoff. Published maximum speeds are about 500 to 550 km/h (about 310 to 340 mph). A CIA assessment quoted by The Aviationist gave about 250 knots. It entered trial service in the late 1980s or 1990, sources vary, and sat unused at Kaspiysk from the late 1990s. On July 31, 2020, it was towed to Derbent, Dagestan, for a planned Patriot Park display.
DID YOUKNOW?Grass SkiingDD-074
Grass Skiing
Grass skiing was invented in Germany by Josef Kaiser of Geislingen an der Steige; sources date it between 1960 and 1966. It began as summer training for alpine skiers. Grass skis run on tracks of small rollers, about 192 rolls in a typical pair. A European Cup started in 1971 and European Championships in 1976, and the first World Championships were held in 1979 at Bryce Resort in Virginia. The International Grass Ski Federation ran the World Championships until 1985, when the International Ski Federation (FIS) took over the sport and the federation dissolved. The sport is still raced under FIS today, with a World Cup since 2000.
DID YOUKNOW?Haus des GlockenspielsDD-698
Haus des Glockenspiels
The Haus des Glockenspiels (Glockenspiel House) is at Böttcherstraße 4 in Bremen, northern Germany, not in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius, who first marketed decaffeinated coffee, had two old warehouses there rebuilt in 1922 as offices for a bank, with gabled red-brick facades. In 1934 a carillon of 30 Meissen porcelain bells was hung between the gables. While the bells play sea shanties and folk songs, a tower beside them turns to show 10 carved wooden panels. They depict people who crossed the ocean by sea or air, including Columbus, Lindbergh, and Zeppelin and Eckener. They're carved panels, not life-sized moving figures, and they don't show local history. The bells play at noon, 3 pm and 6 pm from January to March, and hourly from noon to 6 pm from April to December, except in frost.
DID YOUKNOW?Cannikin QuakeDD-026
Cannikin Quake
On November 6, 1971, the Atomic Energy Commission set off Cannikin 5,875 feet beneath Amchitka Island in Alaska's Aleutians. The test proved the W71 warhead for the Spartan anti-ballistic missile. Its yield was officially 'less than five megatons', making it the largest underground nuclear test the United States has ever conducted. It shook the ground like a magnitude-7 earthquake, lifted the land and nearby seafloor, and caused rockfalls. Seismometers worldwide recorded it. Protests against the test launched the group that became Greenpeace.
DID YOUKNOW?Shine SublimeDD-696
Shine Sublime
A shoe shine follows a few basic steps: clean the leather, condition and color it, then build and buff a protective layer. Shoe creams are softer and richer in oils and pigment, so they nourish and recolor. Wax polishes leave a harder layer that gives shine and some water resistance. A 'mirror' or 'spit' shine comes from many thin coats of wax buffed with a little water. Modern tinned polish owes much to Kiwi. William Ramsay and Hamilton McKellar launched it in Melbourne in 1906, and its 1908 Dark Tan polish was marketed for restoring color and preserving leather. Through the 20th century, shining shoes was also a street trade, from bootblacks to the shoe-shine stands still found in stations and airports.
DID YOUKNOW?Snake SupremeDD-694
Snake Supreme
Titanoboa cerrejonensis was a giant boid snake, a relative of today's boas and anacondas. Its fossils come from the Cerrejón coal mine in northeastern Colombia, in rocks 58 to 60 million years old, from the oldest known neotropical rainforest. Describing it in Nature in 2009, Jason Head and colleagues estimated it at about 13 m (43 ft) long and 1,135 kg. They also argued that a cold-blooded snake that size needed a mean annual temperature of about 30 to 34 °C. Later estimates run from about 12.8 to 14.3 m. In 2024, Vasuki indicus, a madtsoiid snake from India about 47 million years old, was estimated at 10.9 to 15.2 m. That makes it a possible rival, though Titanoboa's vertebrae are slightly larger.
DID YOUKNOW?Chicxulub CraterDD-693
Chicxulub Crater
The Chicxulub crater is a buried impact structure about 180 to 200 km across, centered near the town of Chicxulub on Mexico's Yucatán coast and extending under the Gulf of Mexico. It formed about 66 million years ago when an object roughly 10 km wide struck Earth, and the impact is tied to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Nothing of the crater is visible at the surface. It lies under about 1 km of younger sediment, and a ring of sinkholes (cenotes) traces its outline. Pemex geophysicists Glen Penfield and Antonio Camargo found it while searching for oil. It was identified as the impact site in 1991. In 2016, IODP-ICDP Expedition 364 drilled its peak ring, and a 2024 ruthenium-isotope study concluded the impactor was a carbonaceous asteroid that formed beyond Jupiter, not a comet.
DID YOUKNOW?Hungarian Herding DogsDD-691
Hungarian Herding Dogs
The Puli (plural Pulik) is a medium-sized Hungarian sheepdog. The American Kennel Club says the Magyars brought it to Hungary more than a thousand years ago to herd sheep over rough ground, where it might even jump onto the animals' backs. The AKC standard gives a height of about 16-17 inches and 25-35 lb, in solid black, rusty black, gray or white. Its coat cords naturally from about 10-12 months old, and it can be shown corded or brushed out. The large, cream-white dog in this Reel's footage looks more like a Komondor, Hungary's other corded breed. The Komondor is a much bigger livestock guardian rather than a herder. It's always white, at least about 25.5-27.5 inches tall, and its coat mats into flat cords that owners must separate by hand. Hungary also has other herding breeds, such as the Pumi and Mudi, so the title's plural is apt. Both the Puli and the Komondor were nearly lost during the Second World War.
DID YOUKNOW?Arch of TitusDD-690
Arch of Titus
The Arch of Titus stands on the Velia at the eastern edge of the Roman Forum, where the Via Sacra climbs toward the Palatine. Its dedication (CIL VI 945) honors 'divus' Titus, meaning Titus after his death and deification. So it's dated after Titus died in 81 CE, to the early reign of his brother Domitian, around 81-82 CE. Its reliefs celebrate the Roman triumph that Titus and his father Vespasian held in 71 CE after the Judaean War, in which Roman forces captured Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE. The south panel shows soldiers carrying the Temple's spoils, including the seven-branched menorah. The north panel shows Titus in his chariot, crowned by Victory, and the vault shows his apotheosis. The arch is mostly Pentelic marble. In the Middle Ages it was built into a fortress, and Giuseppe Valadier restored it in the 1820s, filling missing parts with travertine. Its menorah image was later chosen as the basis for the emblem of the State of Israel.
DID YOUKNOW?da Vinci's Double HelixDD-688
da Vinci's Double Helix
The staircase in the footage is the double-helix staircase at the heart of the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, France. Two independent flights wind around each other and a hollow, partly open core, so people on one flight can see people on the other through the openings but never meet them. Leonardo da Vinci lived in France from 1516 as François I's 'first painter, architect and engineer of the king', and his notebooks include central-plan palaces and double and quadruple spiral stairs. Chambord itself says the staircase was 'inspired by' Leonardo and its architecture 'influenced' by him. No surviving document names him as the architect, and most art historians see him as an adviser whose ideas were developed with Domenico da Cortona and the master builders. Leonardo died on May 2, 1519, and construction at Chambord officially began on September 6, 1519, four months later.
DID YOUKNOW?Anti-Defamation LeagueDD-674
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a New York-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit. B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization, founded it in Chicago in autumn 1913, with attorney Sigmund Livingston as its first leader. Wikipedia's account places the founding in the wake of the contested murder conviction of Leo Frank that year. The ADL became independent of B'nai B'rith in 2009, and Jonathan Greenblatt has been its CEO since 2015. The ADL describes its purpose as protecting the Jewish people and fighting antisemitism and hate. It's known for incident audits, research on extremism, law-enforcement training and pro-Israel advocacy. The ADL is politically contested. Critics on the left have accused it of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. In late 2025, conservative critics, including Elon Musk and FBI Director Kash Patel, attacked its extremism research after its glossary included an entry on Turning Point USA. The ADL took the glossary down, the FBI announced it was cutting ties, and the ADL said it remained committed to protecting the Jewish people. This case reports those claims with their sources and doesn't judge them.
DID YOUKNOW?OrwellianDD-045
Orwellian
George Orwell's ninth and final completed book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, came out from Secker & Warburg in London on June 8, 1949, and in the U.S. five days later. Orwell died seven months after publication. The novel is set in London, chief city of 'Airstrip One', a province of the superstate Oceania, ruled by the Party under its symbolic head, Big Brother. Winston Smith, an Outer Party member, works at the Ministry of Truth, revising back issues of The Times while the originals vanish down 'memory holes' into a furnace. He rebels with Julia and is betrayed by O'Brien of the Inner Party. Under torture he is broken until he loves Big Brother. The Reel's footage comes from Michael Radford's 1984 film, with John Hurt as Winston.
DID YOUKNOW?The Wailing WallDD-673
The Wailing Wall
The Western Wall (Hebrew HaKotel HaMa'aravi, 'the Kotel') is a limestone wall in Jerusalem's Old City. It's the more common name. 'Wailing Wall' comes from European descriptions of Jews mourning the Temple's destruction there, and in Arabic it's called al-Buraq Wall. The wall isn't part of the Temple building. It's a stretch of the western retaining wall that Herod the Great built, starting around 19 BCE, when he enlarged the platform of the Temple Mount. The Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, but the retaining wall survived. The full wall is about 488 m long, with roughly 19 m exposed above the prayer plaza. The lowest visible courses are Herodian, and the upper layers were added in later periods. Because of restrictions on prayer on the Temple Mount itself, the Wall is the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray. The site sits beside the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound, which is also sacred to Muslims, and it's religiously and politically sensitive.
DID YOUKNOW?Nic MadDD-068
Nic Mad
Nicolás Maduro, born Nov. 23, 1962, in Caracas, worked as a bus driver and transit-union representative before entering politics alongside Hugo Chávez. He served in the legislature, as foreign minister from 2006 and as vice president from October 2012. After Chávez died in March 2013, Maduro became interim president and narrowly won an April 2013 special election. He was reelected in 2018, and in 2024 the National Electoral Council declared him the winner of an election that the opposition and several foreign governments disputed. On Jan. 3, 2026, U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in Caracas and flew them to New York, where they face federal charges. Both have pleaded not guilty, and Maduro calls the accusations false. Delcy Rodríguez, his former vice president, has led Venezuela as acting president since January 2026. This Reel was posted in November 2025, before those events.
DID YOUKNOW?GyotakuDD-671
Gyotaku
Gyotaku (from gyo, 'fish', and taku, 'impression') is the Japanese practice of printing fish. The oldest known gyotaku, Kinshibori no funa ('Crucian Carp from the Kinshibori Canal'), is dated to 1839. It records a crucian carp caught in Edo (now Tokyo) by Sakai Tadaaki, ninth lord of the Shōnai domain, and is kept at the Tsuruoka City Museum of Local History. Nippon.com reports that the Shōnai region around Tsuruoka in Yamagata Prefecture is considered gyotaku's birthplace. The domain encouraged its samurai to fish from the rocky shore as training, and they used prints to record their big catches. There are two main methods. In the direct method (chokusetsuhō), ink or paint goes on the fish and paper is pressed over it, which gives a mirror image. In the indirect method (kansetsuhō), thin damp washi paper is molded onto the fish and color is dabbed on with a silk-wrapped pad called a tanpo, like a rubbing. After photography spread in the postwar period, colorful 'art gyotaku' grew into a style of its own. Researchers have also used old gyotaku as historical records of fish sizes and species. The footage shows the technique on an octopus, which is inked, printed on paper and finished with a red seal stamped on the print. Gyotaku is traditionally done with fish, and octopus and squid prints are also common.
DID YOUKNOW?Kangina GrapesDD-666
Kangina Grapes
Kangina (also spelled gangina or kangana) is an Afghan way of keeping fresh grapes through winter in sealed containers made of mud and straw. In summer, families shape mud and straw into pairs of shallow bowls and dry them in the sun for a few hours. At harvest, they fill one bowl with fresh grapes, cap it with the other and seal the seam with more mud. Each kangina in a 2025 Xinhua report held about 1 kg. Stored in a cool, dry place, the sealed vessels keep grapes fresh for up to about six months, from early October to late March according to Kabul-area vendors. Many are opened for Nowruz, the spring new year. The method works best with Taifi, a thick-skinned, late-season grape. The tradition is strongest in the Shomali Plain and Kalakan district north of Kabul, and vendors sell kangina grapes through the winter. The method had been studied very little until recently. A 2022 study of Taifi grapes stored at room temperature for 50 days found gangina effective but heavy and fragile. Styrofoam boxes cut moisture loss but led to more rot.
DID YOUKNOW?BAPS NJDD-660
BAPS NJ
BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham, in Robbinsville Township, New Jersey, was built by the Hindu organization Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS). It was formally dedicated on October 8, 2023, and opened to the public on October 18. The AP called it the largest Hindu temple built outside India in the modern era, and NBC News called it the largest in the U.S. The 183-acre figure (NBC also cites 185) is for the whole campus, not the mandir building. Work began in 2011, so construction took about 12 years. BAPS says about 12,500 volunteers took part. About 2 million cubic feet of stone was used, and a 2023 report counted about 4.7 million hours of artisan and volunteer work. The stone came from several countries, including Bulgarian and Turkish limestone, marble from Italy, Greece and Turkey, granite from India and China, and Indian sandstone. It was carved by artisans in India, dry-fitted there, then shipped about 8,000 miles to New Jersey for assembly. A 2021 federal lawsuit by workers who came on religious visas alleged forced labor and very low pay. BAPS says the artisans were religious volunteers. Twelve of the original plaintiffs withdrew their claims in October 2023, and the lawsuit is ongoing.
DID YOUKNOW?The KaabaDD-655
The Kaaba
The Kaaba stands at the center of the Masjid al-Haram (the Sacred Mosque, often called the Great Mosque) in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and is the most sacred site in Islam. Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Ismail (Ishmael) built it as a house for the worship of one God. It's roughly cube-shaped, about 13.1 m high, 12.8 m long and 11.03 m wide. The structure has been rebuilt several times in its history, and the 1629 reconstruction used large granite blocks. The Black Stone is set in its eastern corner. The Kaaba is the qibla, the direction Muslims face in prayer. During Hajj and Umrah, pilgrims perform tawaf, walking around it seven times counterclockwise. Its covering, the Kiswah, is made each year at the King Abdulaziz Complex for the Holy Kaaba Kiswa in Mecca. It's black natural silk embroidered with Qur'anic verses in silver thread plated with gold, weighs around 1,400 kg, and in recent years has been changed at the start of the Islamic new year, on 1 Muharram.
DID YOUKNOW?SpacewalkerDD-652
Spacewalker
On February 7, 1984, during shuttle mission STS-41B, Bruce McCandless II made the first untethered free flight in space. He was flying NASA's Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), a backpack propelled by nitrogen gas jets and steered with hand controllers. NASA says he flew out to 150 ft, came back, then flew out to about 320 ft (about 98 m) from Challenger before returning. Crewmate Robert L. Stewart flew the same MMU later in that spacewalk, so both men made untethered flights on the mission's first EVA. The flights were practice for repair and retrieval work. Two satellites deployed on STS-41B ended up in useless orbits, and in November 1984, STS-51A astronauts Joseph Allen and Dale Gardner used MMUs to help capture them. That was the last time the MMU flew. Later shuttle spacewalkers stayed tethered, with the smaller SAFER unit as a backup.
DID YOUKNOW?Kazotsky KickDD-647
Kazotsky Kick
'Kazotsky Kick' is the name of a group taunt in Valve's game Team Fortress 2. It was added on July 2, 2015, in the Gun Mettle Update. Any class can perform it, and other players can join in. The official TF2 Wiki calls it a hopak set to a fast folk tune, with variations for each class. The step itself is the prisyadka (also spelled prysiadka), a squat step in which the dancer drops onto the balls of the feet and kicks the legs out one at a time while keeping the back straight. The squat-kick step comes from folk dance of the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, including the Russian prisyadka and the Ukrainian hopak; the game wiki calls the taunt a hopak. Britannica traces the hopak to the Zaporozhian Cossacks and describes improvised leaps, squatting kicks and turns, and Dictionary.com calls the prisiadka the signature step of the kazachok, a Cossack-style dance. The name 'Kazotsky' isn't a traditional dance name; it's best known from the game. The footage shows men in Soviet-style military uniforms doing squat kicks in what appears to be a colorized archival film. The source doesn't identify the clip, so the case doesn't either.
DID YOUKNOW?Felix FallsDD-637
Felix Falls
Felix Baumgartner was an Austrian skydiver and BASE jumper. On October 14, 2012, in the Red Bull Stratos project, he rode a pressurized capsule under a helium balloon from Roswell, New Mexico, and stepped off at 38,969.4 m (127,852 ft). Red Bull's final mission data say he went supersonic 34 seconds into the fall and reached 1,357.6 km/h (843.6 mph), Mach 1.25, at 50 seconds. He became the first person to break the speed of sound in freefall without a vehicle. He was in freefall for 4 minutes 20 seconds, and the whole descent from jump to landing took 9 minutes 18 seconds. The FAI, air sports' world governing body, ratified three world records from the jump: exit altitude, maximum vertical speed and freefall distance (36,402.6 m). It now lists the exit-altitude record as superseded, while the speed and freefall-distance records still stand. Baumgartner died on July 17, 2025, aged 56, when he lost control of a motorized paraglider over Porto Sant'Elpidio, Italy, and crashed at a resort. The investigating prosecutor later said the crash was caused by human error and found no technical fault with the equipment. This Reel was posted about four weeks after his death and doesn't mention it.
DID YOUKNOW?The ShahDD-065
The Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was born in Tehran on Oct. 26, 1919. He became shah on Sept. 16, 1941, after British and Soviet forces occupied Iran and his father, Reza Shah, abdicated. In August 1953, during a power struggle with Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, he briefly fled the country and returned after a coup backed covertly by the United States and Britain. His White Revolution, ratified by referendum in 1963, redistributed land, set up literacy and health corps and extended voting rights to women. Iran's economy grew quickly, but by the 1970s inflation was high and there was little room for political participation. Opposition came from the clergy, secular nationalists and the left. He left Iran on Jan. 16, 1979; the Islamic Republic was declared on April 1, 1979; and he died in Cairo on July 27, 1980.
DID YOUKNOW?Cloud ChambersDD-623
Cloud Chambers
A cloud chamber makes the paths of electrically charged particles visible. Inside, the air holds more vapor than it normally could, so it is supersaturated and ready to condense. A fast charged particle knocks electrons off molecules along its path and leaves a line of ions behind it. Vapor condenses on those ions as tiny droplets, which form a thin trail. The trail doesn't glow: it shows up because a lamp lights it against a dark background, and it fades within moments. The Scottish physicist C.T.R. Wilson built the first cloud chamber at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in 1911. His version used water vapor and made it supersaturated with a sudden expansion. He shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics for the method. Many classroom chambers today are diffusion chambers, which keep alcohol vapor supersaturated over a very cold plate, so tracks form continuously. The shape of a track hints at the particle: alpha particles leave short, thick tracks and electrons leave thin, wandering ones. In a magnetic field, the tracks curve, which reveals charge and momentum. That is how Carl Anderson identified the positron, the first known antiparticle, in 1932.
DID YOUKNOW?Fresh FiatDD-622
Fresh Fiat
US paper money is made by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, part of the Treasury Department, which has printed the nation's currency since 1862. All of it comes from two plants, in Washington, D.C., and Fort Worth, Texas. Coins are a separate job, made by the US Mint. The notes are Federal Reserve notes, and the Federal Reserve Board, as their issuing authority, sends the BEP an annual print order. The 2025 order, approved on July 16, 2024, called for 4.1 billion to 5.9 billion notes worth $83.2 billion to $113 billion. The Board says the main driver in recent years has been replacing unfit notes destroyed in normal processing, along with demand at home and abroad. The BEP reported finishing the 2025 order at 4.8 billion notes. The 2026 order ranges from 3.8 billion to 5.1 billion notes, and a redesigned $10, the first of the 'Catalyst' series, is due in 2026. The dollar is 'fiat' money because its value rests on law and trust rather than a promise to swap it for gold. The last link, letting foreign governments convert dollars to gold, ended on August 15, 1971, when President Nixon suspended convertibility. The footage shows a currency plant: sheets on presses, stacks of printed notes and bundles moving along conveyors.
DID YOUKNOW?ArdabilDD-620
Ardabil
Ardabil is the capital of Ardabil province in northwestern Iran, near the border with Azerbaijan, with about 588,000 people in the 2022 census. It lies on an open plain just east of Mount Sabalan, a 4,811-meter dormant stratovolcano. Wikipedia lists the city's elevation as about 1,350 meters, with an average altitude of 1,263 meters. Local historical research puts its origins 4,000 to 6,000 years back, and Muslim historians credit its founding as a city to the Sasanian king Peroz I in the fifth century. Ardabil's fame comes from Sheikh Safi al-Din Ardabili, a Sufi master who died in 1334. His followers, the Safaviyya order, stayed loyal to his family. In 1501 a descendant, Ismail I, seized power, united Iran and made Shi'a Islam the state religion; the Safavid dynasty took its name from Sheikh Safi. Ismail I is buried at the shrine too. The Safavids promoted the shrine as a pilgrimage site, and in the late 1530s Shah Tahmasp enlarged it and commissioned the famous pair of Ardabil carpets, one now at London's V&A and the other at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. UNESCO inscribed the Sheikh Safi al-Din Khānegāh and Shrine Ensemble as a World Heritage Site in 2010. Its route to the shrine has seven segments, mirroring the seven stages of Sufi mysticism. The footage shows the shrine's tiled tower, facades and dome interiors.
DID YOUKNOW?On A GlideDD-615
On A Glide
The Space Shuttle orbiter came home without engine power. NASA's Glenn Research Center explains that once the external tank was gone, the main engines had no propellant, so the shuttle returned as an unpowered glider. It had a low lift-to-drag ratio because it had to slow from about 17,300 mph to about 250 mph. About an hour before landing, a deorbit burn dropped it out of orbit. It entered the atmosphere nose-first at a 40° angle of attack to limit heating, and computers controlled its speed with a series of banking roll reversals. NASA's Kennedy Space Center fact sheet says commanders took manual control for the final approach during subsonic flight, usually about 22 miles (35 km) from touchdown. The initial approach glide slope was 20 degrees, more than six times steeper than an airliner's 3 degrees. Because the orbiter was unpowered, it had no go-around capability. It touched down at 213 to 226 mph. From 1991, orbiters were fitted with a 40-foot drag parachute, deployed as the nose came down, plus carbon brakes. Of 133 successful landings, 78 were at Kennedy's 15,000-foot Shuttle Landing Facility, 54 at Edwards Air Force Base in California and one, STS-3, at White Sands in New Mexico. The program flew 135 missions between April 12, 1981, and July 21, 2011, when Atlantis made the final landing. The footage shows an orbiter gliding over Florida wetlands, touching down and rolling out with its drag chute.
DID YOUKNOW?Lunar RovingDD-609
Lunar Roving
The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) was the electric car of the last three Apollo missions. According to NASA, it made its debut on July 31, 1971, when Apollo 15's David Scott and James Irwin drove it. Rovers were also driven on Apollo 16 (John Young and Charles Duke) and Apollo 17 (Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt), each used for three traverses, one per day. NASA's Space Science Data Coordinated Archive gives its mass as 210 kg and its design payload as 490 kg (Wikipedia gives 440 kg), so it could indeed carry more than twice its own mass. The frame folded so it could ride to the Moon in a bay of the Lunar Module. Each of its four wire-mesh wheels had its own 0.25-horsepower electric motor, powered by two 36-volt silver-zinc batteries that were not rechargeable. Boeing built the rovers, with Delco as a major subcontractor. The original $19 million contract ended up costing $38 million for four rovers, one of which was used for spare parts. Apollo 15's rover was driven 27.8 km, and Apollo 17's went 35.9 km, with a farthest distance of 7.6 km from the lander. The three rovers are still on the Moon. The footage is a view from the rover's TV camera, wrapped in gold-colored thermal insulation, looking across the lunar surface.
DID YOUKNOW?Kailasa TempleDD-605
Kailasa Temple
The Kailasa temple is Cave 16 of the Ellora Caves in Maharashtra, India, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983. UNESCO calls it the largest monolithic temple of the 34 caves, which were cut into a basalt cliff between about AD 600 and 1000. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) calls it the largest single monolithic excavation and attributes it to the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I (c. 757–783), citing a copper-plate inscription of c. 812–813. The temple is dedicated to Shiva and named after Mount Kailash, which Hindu tradition holds to be Shiva's home. Rather than being built up from blocks, it was cut downward from the top of a sloping rock face into a free-standing shrine, with a gateway, a Nandi pavilion and a surrounding courtyard. Wikipedia, citing published estimates, puts the stone removed at about 85,000 m³, weighing about 200,000 tonnes, and the courtyard at about 82 by 46 m. Those figures are modern estimates, not records. The court elephants and an elephant-and-lion frieze around the base are among the parts the historian M. K. Dhavalikar attributes to Krishna I. Other parts, including the sculpture of Ravana shaking Mount Kailasa, appear to be later additions. The footage is aerial and close-up drone video of the temple and its carved walls.
DID YOUKNOW?DugaDD-592
Duga
Duga, Russian for 'arc', was a Soviet over-the-horizon radar system that formed part of the USSR's early-warning network against ballistic missiles. Over-the-horizon radar bounces shortwave signals off the ionosphere to see far beyond the line of sight. After an experimental Duga near Mykolaiv proved the idea, two operational systems were built: Duga-1 in what is now northern Ukraine, then the Ukrainian SSR, and Duga-2 in eastern Siberia near Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Duga-1 split its transmitter and receiver about 60 kilometers apart. The giant receiving array stands in the closed town of Chernobyl-2, a few kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and the transmitters were near Liubech. From July 1976 to December 1989, its pulses, at up to about 10 megawatts, swept across the shortwave bands as a sharp tapping, usually 10 times a second. Listeners worldwide called it the 'Russian Woodpecker', and it disrupted broadcasts, amateur radio and aviation communications, drawing thousands of complaints. NATO reportedly gave it the reporting name STEEL WORK or STEEL YARD. The Chernobyl antenna is about 700 meters long and 150 meters high. The signals faded in the late 1980s and stopped in 1989; the reasons were never made public. The abandoned array, inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, is now a listed monument in Ukraine. The footage shows its rusting steel towers and antenna elements.
DID YOUKNOW?The Motherland CallsDD-590
The Motherland Calls
The Motherland Calls is a reinforced-concrete war memorial on Mamayev Kurgan, a hill in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), Russia. It is the centerpiece of a memorial complex to the Battle of Stalingrad, fought between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany from July 1942 to February 1943 and won by the Soviets at enormous cost. Sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich designed it with architect Yakov Belopolsky, and structural engineer Nikolai Nikitin led construction, which began in 1963. The statue shows a female personification of the homeland striding forward with a sword raised in her right hand and her left arm outstretched, a design inspired by the ancient Greek Winged Victory of Samothrace. The figure itself is 52 meters tall; with its pedestal and sword it reaches 85 meters (279 feet). Wikipedia, citing historian Scott Palmer, reports that Nikita Khrushchev wanted it taller than the Statue of Liberty. The sword caused trouble: the original stainless-steel blade swayed in the wind and was replaced in 1972 with a slotted steel version. The complex was dedicated on October 15, 1967, timed for the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. It was the world's tallest statue until 1989, and Wikipedia describes it as still the tallest statue in Europe when the pedestal is counted. A major restoration was finished in 2020, and the complex has been on UNESCO's tentative list since 2014. The footage shows the statue on its hilltop above the city and the Volga.
DID YOUKNOW?Flying BikeDD-584
Flying Bike
From the footage, I identify the machine as the de Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle, a one-man 'personal helicopter' built for the US Army in the mid-1950s. It grew out of work by Charles H. Zimmerman of NACA on kinesthetic control: with the rotors below the pilot, the craft could be steered by shifting body weight, much like riding a bicycle or a surfboard. The Aerocycle had a cross-shaped frame with the pilot standing on a platform in a safety harness, above two contra-rotating 15-foot rotors driven by a 40-horsepower Mercury outboard motor. A motorcycle-style twist-grip throttle sat on the handlebars, and airbags on each arm plus a central rubber float served as landing gear. It made its first tethered flight on November 22, 1954, and its first free flight in January 1955 at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in New York. Early tests suggested untrained soldiers could learn to fly it in about 20 minutes, and the Army ordered 12. After testing moved to Fort Eustis, Virginia, in 1956, test pilot Capt. Selmer Sundby found it much harder to fly than expected. Two crashes, in which the rotors intermeshed and shattered, and the wider failure of the 'personal lifting device' concept ended the program. One HZ-1 survives at the US Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis.
DID YOUKNOW?MaslenitsaDD-575
Maslenitsa
Maslenitsa, also called Butter Week or Cheesefare Week, is an Eastern Slavic religious and folk holiday observed mostly in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and by their diaspora communities. It falls in the last week before Great Lent, the eighth week before Eastern Orthodox Easter, so its date moves every year. In 2025 it ran from February 24 to March 2. In 2026 it ran from February 16 to 22. Wikipedia describes it as a Christian observance that keeps many elements of older Slavic mythology. Meat is already off the table that week for observant Orthodox Christians, but butter, cheese, eggs and other dairy are still allowed, so the signature food is blini, thin pancakes. Ukrainians and Belarusians also make varenyky and syrniki. Customs include visits to family, sleigh rides, sledding, snowball fights, the storming of a snow fortress and, in some regions, a different tradition for each day. The week ends on Forgiveness Sunday, when people ask one another's forgiveness. A straw effigy, Lady Maslenitsa, is stripped of her finery and burned in a bonfire, and the next day, Clean Monday, Lent begins. Large public celebrations faded after 1917 under Soviet state atheism, returned in a more secular form in the 1960s and 1970s, and grew again after the Soviet Union ended. Moscow has held a yearly festival near Red Square since 2002. The footage shows masked revelers in horned and antlered costumes and huge wooden towers burning in the snow in front of a crowd.
DID YOUKNOW?BuzludzhaDD-573
Buzludzha
The Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist Party stands on Buzludzha Peak in the Balkan Mountains (Stara Planina) of central Bulgaria, near the Shipka Pass. Bulgaria's communist government built it to commemorate an 1891 meeting nearby. There, socialists led by Dimitar Blagoev founded the party that became the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party, a forerunner of the Bulgarian Communist Party. Architect Georgi Stoilov designed it. Construction began on January 23, 1974, after the summit was leveled with explosives, lowering it from 1,441 m to 1,432 m. Party leader Todor Zhivkov opened it on August 23, 1981. The building is a circular, saucer-shaped hall of concrete, steel and glass beside a 70 m tower set with red-glass stars. Inside, about 937 m² of mosaics depicted the party's history and figures such as Marx and Lenin. Maintenance stopped after communism ended in 1989, and the building was stripped and left open to the weather, so part of the mosaic art has been lost. Wikipedia notes that earlier rescue proposals were mostly political and tied to the Bulgarian Socialist Party. In 2018, Europa Nostra listed it among Europe's seven most endangered heritage sites. The Buzludzha Project Foundation, founded in 2015 by architect Dora Ivanova, received a Getty Foundation grant in 2019 for a conservation management plan. A second grant in 2020 paid for emergency stabilization of the mosaics. The foundation describes the building today as a symbol of conflict between people with different views of the past. The footage shows the frost-covered peak, the saucer roof and the tower's red star at sunrise.
DID YOUKNOW?Unlimited BladeworksDD-572
Unlimited Bladeworks
The Didgori memorial stands on the meadows of Mount Didgori, about 40 km west of Tbilisi in the Trialeti Range. It marks the Battle of Didgori, fought on August 12, 1121. King David IV of Georgia, known as David the Builder, defeated a much larger Muslim coalition led by the Artuqid commander Ilghazi, acting for the Seljuk sultan. Medieval chroniclers gave wildly inflated figures for Ilghazi's army. Modern Georgian historians estimate 100,000 to 250,000 men, against roughly 55,000 on David's side, a force that included Kipchak allies and a small number of Frankish knights. Accounts credit David's victory to surprise and the terrain. The Georgian Chronicles call it the 'miraculous victory'. The next year, 1122, David took Tbilisi and made it his capital. The battle is traditionally seen as opening Georgia's medieval golden age. Sculptor Merab Berdzenishvili and architect Tamaz Gabunia designed the memorial, which went up in the early 1990s and won them the State Prize of Georgia in 1995. Dozens of giant swords are driven into the ground like crosses. Colossal sculptures of warriors lie scattered across the meadows, and at the center stands a concrete column shaped like a deda bodzi, the central pillar of a traditional Georgian house. Since 1997, a commemoration called Didgoroba has been held at the monument every August 12. The footage shows the swords against a blue sky and spread across the grassy ridges, with wildflowers in the foreground.
DID YOUKNOW?Bunker ValentinDD-571
Bunker Valentin
Bunker Valentin is a bomb-proof U-boat factory that the German navy (Kriegsmarine) built on the Weser River at Bremen-Farge, in Bremen's Rekum district. With Allied bombers pounding open shipyards, the plan was to assemble Type XXI submarines there from prefabricated sections, on an assembly line. Construction ran from 1943 to March 1945. The memorial says it was the second-largest above-ground bunker in Europe. Wikipedia gives its size as about 426 m long and up to 97 m wide, with a height of 22.5 to 27 m. Its walls are about 4.5 m thick, and its roof is 4.5 m thick, rising to 7 m in one section. According to the memorial, up to 10,000 forced laborers built it: civilians from across Europe, Soviet prisoners of war, Italian military internees, concentration-camp prisoners from the nearby Neuengamme subcamp at Farge, and Gestapo labor-camp inmates. They worked 12-hour shifts day and night. The memorial puts the death toll at about 1,600, from hunger, disease and arbitrary killings, and 1,144 victims are known by name. On March 27, 1945, RAF 617 Squadron bombed the bunker with Grand Slam and Tallboy bombs. Two Grand Slams broke through the thinner western roof. Building stopped soon afterwards, and no submarine was ever finished there. After the war it was used for bomb tests. From the 1960s to 2010, the German navy (Bundesmarine) used it as a depot. A memorial sculpture, 'Vernichtung durch Arbeit' ('Extermination through Labour'), was erected in 1983. The bunker opened as the Denkort Bunker Valentin memorial on November 8, 2015. The footage shows the overgrown exterior walls and the dim interior bays behind fencing.
DID YOUKNOW?Baikonur CosmodromeDD-570
Baikonur Cosmodrome
Buran was the Soviet Union's reusable spaceplane, built in response to the US Space Shuttle and launched on the Energia rocket. The orbiter Buran (1K) flew once, uncrewed, on November 15, 1988. It lifted off from Baikonur, circled Earth twice in 3 hours 25 minutes and landed automatically on the cosmodrome's runway. Funding dried up as the Soviet Union broke apart, and the program was suspended in 1993. The flown orbiter didn't survive. It was stored in Baikonur's main assembly building, MIK 112, which was originally built for the N1 Moon rocket. On May 12, 2002, the roof collapsed during repair work, killing eight workers and destroying Buran along with Energia hardware. The craft in the famous photos are two others, kept in a separate Assembly and Fueling Complex (MZK) at Site 112A. According to RussianSpaceWeb, the MZK is 150 m long, 80 m wide and 70 m high. Inside are orbiter 1.02, the second flight article, which was about 95–97% complete and never flew, and OK-MT, an engineering mockup. Both were moved there in 1995. Their doors later jammed, and RussianSpaceWeb calls the building a sarcophagus for both vehicles. Wikipedia, citing CNN, reports that a Russian-Kazakh company, Aelita, has owned them since 2005. Baikonur is in Kazakhstan. Under a 1994 agreement, Russia leases the whole Baikonur complex for $115 million a year, and the lease has since been extended to 2050. The footage looks down on an orbiter between rusting work platforms in the MZK, then shows the hall and the vehicles from the side.
DID YOUKNOW?Commercial SupersonicsDD-568
Commercial Supersonics
Concorde was an Anglo-French supersonic airliner. A UK–France treaty of November 29, 1962 launched it, and it was developed and built by Sud Aviation (which became part of Aérospatiale in 1970) and the British Aircraft Corporation. The first prototype flew from Toulouse on March 2, 1969. Air France and British Airways began scheduled service on January 21, 1976, and New York JFK flights started on October 17, 1977. It had an ogival delta wing, a droop nose for landing visibility and four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets with afterburners. Its regular cruise was Mach 2.02, about 1,340 mph (2,150 km/h), with a maximum altitude of 60,000 ft. A New York–Paris flight took just under 3.5 hours, compared with about seven to eight hours on a subsonic jet. Its top speed was capped by heat: the aluminum skin could only tolerate about 127 °C. Only 20 were built, and Air France and British Airways were the only customers, with seven airframes each. Sonic booms kept supersonic flights over the sea. On July 25, 2000, Air France Flight 4590 crashed after takeoff from Paris, killing 113 people. It was Concorde's only fatal accident, and service resumed in November 2001. Both airlines retired the aircraft in 2003, citing rising maintenance costs, lower demand after the crash and the post-9/11 slump. Air France's last commercial flight was on May 30, 2003, and British Airways' was on October 24, 2003. Eighteen are preserved. No supersonic airliner has flown passengers since. On January 28, 2025, Boom Supersonic's XB-1 demonstrator broke the sound barrier over the Mojave Desert, a test for its planned Overture airliner. The footage shows a British Airways Concorde landing at night with its nose drooped.
DID YOUKNOW?HallgrímskirkjaDD-567
Hallgrímskirkja
Hallgrímskirkja is a Lutheran parish church of the Church of Iceland, on the Skólavörðuholt hill near the center of Reykjavík. At 74.5 m (244 ft), it is the largest church in Iceland and the second-tallest building in the country. It is named after Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–1674), the poet and pastor who wrote the Passion Hymns. State Architect Guðjón Samúelsson was commissioned to design it in 1937. He is said to have modeled it on Iceland's landscape, especially columnar basalt formations like those at Svartifoss. Architectural historians usually classify it as Expressionist, and Copenhagen's Grundtvig's Church is often cited as an influence. Building it took 41 years. Construction began in 1945, the crypt beneath the choir was consecrated in 1948, and the tower and its wings were finished in 1974. The nave was consecrated on October 26, 1986. The nave is plain and pale, and a lift takes visitors up the tower to a viewing deck. The main concert organ was built by Johannes Klais of Bonn and inaugurated in December 1992. It is 15 m tall, weighs about 25 tonnes and has 72 stops and 5,275 pipes. The statue of Leif Erikson in front of the church is older than the building: the United States gave it to Iceland for the 1930 millennium of the Althing, Iceland's parliament. The footage shows the tower at dusk with the statue, the main doors, the façade against a sunrise, and a winter aerial view.
DID YOUKNOW?One Small Fall for Man...DD-541
One Small Fall for Man...
During the Apollo Moon landings (1969-1972), astronauts sometimes fell over. Lunar gravity is about one-sixth of Earth's, and pressurized suits that protected them from extreme temperatures and micrometeoroids were bulky and stiff, making bending, turning and recovering balance difficult. Many adopted a bunny-hop gait to move efficiently. The footage, credited to galaxies, shows astronauts falling on the Moon.
DID YOUKNOW?Old-Timey LaundryDD-507
Old-Timey Laundry
Wringer washers, sold by retailers such as Montgomery Ward in the early to mid-20th century, combined a tub agitated by a hand crank or electric motor with a wringer: two rollers that pressed water out of clothes before they were hung to dry. They were common in homes before automatic washers with spin cycles took over. The footage, credited to technology, shows a vintage wringer washer.
DID YOUKNOW?Sea DragonDD-498
Sea Dragon
Sea Dragon was a 1962 concept for a huge two-stage rocket designed by Robert Truax at Aerojet. It would be built cheaply in a shipyard, towed to sea, ballasted upright and launched from the water, avoiding a launch pad. The first stage burned RP-1 and liquid oxygen, the second liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and it was meant to lift about 550 tonnes to low Earth orbit. It was never built. The footage, credited to newspaceenterprise, shows an animation of the launch.
DID YOUKNOW?Project OrionDD-496
Project Orion
Project Orion was a U.S. study from 1958 to 1965, led at General Atomics, of nuclear pulse propulsion: small nuclear explosions behind a spacecraft would strike a large pusher plate whose shock absorbers smoothed the thrust. It promised performance far beyond chemical rockets, with trips to Mars in weeks, but ended after the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty barred nuclear explosions in the atmosphere and space. The footage, credited to spaceman.in, shows an animated Orion craft.
DID YOUKNOW?Black HawkDD-480
Black Hawk
The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a four-blade, twin-engine, medium-lift utility helicopter introduced by the U.S. Army in 1979 and used by many allied forces. Roles include troop transport, medical evacuation, air assault and logistics. This Reel was posted a week after a U.S. Army Black Hawk collided with an American Eagle airliner over the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., on January 29, 2025. The footage shows a Black Hawk in flight.
DID YOUKNOW?One World Trade CenterDD-473
One World Trade Center
One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet (541 meters) including its spire, a nod to 1776. It is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex after the original Twin Towers were destroyed on September 11, 2001. Its structure was completed in 2013 and it opened in November 2014. The footage, credited to EarthCam, shows the tower from the air.
DID YOUKNOW?In RemembranceDD-471
In Remembrance
Auschwitz was the largest Nazi German concentration and extermination camp, near Oświęcim in German-occupied Poland. It comprised Auschwitz I, the main camp; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the main extermination site; and Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp serving industrial plants. Opened in 1940, it was a central site of the Holocaust, where about 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed. It was liberated on January 27, 1945, and this Reel was posted on the 80th anniversary, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The footage, credited to auschwitzmemorial, shows the camp today.
DID YOUKNOW?Alaska Airlines 261DD-455
Alaska Airlines 261
On January 31, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 flying from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, toward San Francisco and Seattle, crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Anacapa Island, California, killing all 88 people on board. The NTSB found the horizontal stabilizer's jackscrew assembly failed because of insufficient lubrication and excessive wear. The footage, credited to planesanity, shows a reconstruction of the flight.
DID YOUKNOW?Varnish VanishingDD-431
Varnish Vanishing
Varnish protects paintings and saturates their colors, but natural resin varnishes yellow and darken with age. Conservators test solvents on small, hidden areas, then roll swabs to dissolve and lift the old varnish in small sections without disturbing the paint, often revealing much brighter colors. A new, stable varnish may be applied afterward. The footage shows a conservator swabbing varnish off a painting.
DID YOUKNOW?Fall MaryaDD-412
Fall Marya
RDS-3, the Soviet Union's third nuclear test, took place on October 18, 1951, at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in present-day Kazakhstan. It was the first Soviet atomic bomb dropped from an aircraft, a Tupolev Tu-4 bomber, and it detonated about 400 meters above the ground with a yield of about 42 kilotons. The footage shows archival test film.
DID YOUKNOW?Tesla's CoilDD-405
Tesla's Coil
A Tesla coil is a resonant transformer invented by Nikola Tesla around 1891. A capacitor discharges through a primary coil of a few turns, and the oscillating magnetic field induces current in a secondary coil of many turns; resonance between the circuits builds very high voltage at high frequency. At the top terminal the voltage ionizes air and throws sparks. The footage shows a Tesla coil discharging.
DID YOUKNOW?Old-Timey LaundryDD-402
Old-Timey Laundry
Before electric washers spread in the 20th century, many households used hand-cranked or lever-operated machines with wooden tubs and internal paddles or dollies that agitated clothes. They still took real effort but were easier than scrubbing on a washboard. Electric washing machines appeared in the early 1900s. The footage shows an antique wooden washer being cranked.
DID YOUKNOW?The TitanpointeDD-400
The Titanpointe
The AT&T Long Lines Building at 33 Thomas Street in Manhattan is a 550-foot (168 m) windowless brutalist tower completed in 1974, designed by John Carl Warnecke & Associates to house long-distance telephone switching equipment and to withstand disasters, including nuclear fallout. In 2016, The Intercept reported that documents linked it to a National Security Agency surveillance site code-named Titanpointe; AT&T and the NSA did not confirm. The footage shows the building from street level.
DID YOUKNOW?Sanctuary of TruthDD-379
Sanctuary of Truth
The Sanctuary of Truth in Pattaya, Thailand, is a carved wooden structure about 105 meters tall, built with wooden joinery rather than metal nails. Thai businessman Lek Viriyaphant began it in 1981, and carving and restoration continue; the Reel puts completion around 2050. Its design mixes Thai, Khmer, Chinese and Indian styles with Hindu and Buddhist imagery. The footage shows the sanctuary and its carvings.
DID YOUKNOW?A Step UpDD-341
A Step Up
Stairs began as steps cut into hillsides and rock. Romans built more elaborate stairs with stone and concrete; medieval castles used spiral staircases, which tradition says favored right-handed defenders; and Renaissance architects made grand decorative staircases. Steel and reinforced concrete later allowed floating and helical designs. The footage is a computer-generated sequence of staircases through the ages.
DID YOUKNOW?Nuclear ShadowsDD-330
Nuclear Shadows
When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the intense flash of thermal radiation bleached and scorched exposed surfaces. Where a person or object blocked the flash, the surface behind stayed darker, leaving a shadow-like outline. Some of these shadows, on steps, walls and pavements, are preserved; the best known is on the steps of a Hiroshima bank. The footage shows such shadows and a re-enactment of how they form.
DID YOUKNOW?Sharpening Your MindDD-317
Sharpening Your Mind
Before sharpeners, pencils were whittled with knives. The French mathematician Bernard Lassimone patented a pencil sharpener in 1828, and many hand-operated designs followed in the 19th century. Rotary sharpeners use gear-driven helical cutters that turn around the pencil, giving a long, even point. The footage shows an old mechanical sharpener being restored and tested.
DID YOUKNOW?Knuckle CouplingDD-303
Knuckle Coupling
The knuckle coupler, originally the Janney coupler, was patented by Eli H. Janney, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, in US patent 138,405 on April 29, 1873. Each coupler has a hinged knuckle; when two cars are pushed together, the knuckles swing closed and lock automatically, and a lever lets workers uncouple without stepping between the cars. Before that, link-and-pin couplers required a worker to stand between moving cars to drop a pin, and injuries were common. The Safety Appliance Act of 1893 required automatic couplers on US railroads. Railroads standardized on Janney's mating profile, and coupling accidents fell from 11,710 in 1893 to 2,256 in 1902 even as the workforce grew. Knuckle couplers remain standard in North America. The footage shows a coupler's knuckle opening and closing in close-up.
DID YOUKNOW?NUCLEAR DISASTERDD-297
NUCLEAR DISASTER
On April 26, 1986, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded and burned, in the Soviet Union's Ukrainian SSR, now The Ukraine. During the accident, molten fuel, cladding, concrete and sand mixed into a lava-like material called corium that flowed into rooms beneath the reactor. The best-known mass, the Elephant's Foot, was found in December 1986 in a maintenance corridor below the reactor's remains. Measurements then put its surface at roughly 8,000 to 10,000 roentgens per hour, enough to deliver a 50/50 lethal dose in a matter of minutes. Its radioactivity has fallen a great deal since, but it remains hazardous, and the site sits inside the New Safe Confinement arch completed in 2016. The footage shows photos from inside the plant and the corium mass.
DID YOUKNOW?OVER 0DD-284
OVER 0
Mechanical calculators divide the way people do long division: by subtracting the divisor over and over and counting the subtractions. With a divisor of zero, each subtraction takes nothing away, so the count never ends. Some machines simply keep cycling, carriage and counters spinning, until the operator stops them by hand. Others jam or trip a stop. That behavior is a physical version of why division by zero is undefined in arithmetic: no number multiplied by zero gives a nonzero result, so there's no answer to find. Desktop mechanical calculators were common office tools from the late 1800s until electronic calculators replaced them in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The footage shows a mechanical calculator's carriage and keys in motion, with a hand at the controls.
DID YOUKNOW?The Opening CeremonyDD-283
The Opening Ceremony
The Olympic opening ceremony marks the start of each Games, with performances that showcase the host nation's culture and history, the parade of athletes and the lighting of the cauldron. Each ceremony is designed by the host. I posted this Reel two days after the Paris opening ceremony on July 26, 2024. The footage shows the fou drummers from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
DID YOUKNOW?KilotonDD-270
Kiloton
After World War II, the United States conducted nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Operation Crossroads in 1946 included the Baker test on July 25, 1946, in which a 23-kiloton atomic bomb was detonated underwater to study effects on naval vessels. It threw up a huge column of water and caused severe radioactive contamination. Bikini's residents had been relocated before the tests and have not resettled the atoll permanently. The footage shows the Baker test.
DID YOUKNOW?The Beirut BlastDD-266
The Beirut Blast
On August 4, 2020, a large amount of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut, Lebanon, exploded. About 2,750 tons had been kept in a port warehouse for years. Reports say the blast was felt in Cyprus, more than 150 miles (240 km) away. More than 200 people were killed, thousands were injured, and about 300,000 people lost their homes. Buildings across the city were damaged and windows shattered. The footage is phone video of the blast from several places in the city.
DID YOUKNOW?Be Not AfraidDD-261
Be Not Afraid
The Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible describes a vision of four living creatures, later identified as cherubim. Each has four faces, of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle, and four wings. Beside each is a wheel 'within a wheel' whose rims are full of eyes, and the wheels move with the creatures. In Christian and Jewish tradition these wheels became associated with the ophanim. The phrase 'Be not afraid', often said by angels in the Bible, is popular in modern 'biblically accurate angel' memes based on these descriptions. The footage shows digital renderings of eye-covered rings and winged figures, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Not the Space ForceDD-259
Not the Space Force
NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is the U.S. civilian space agency, established on July 29, 1958. Its Apollo program landed 12 astronauts on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. It also runs robotic missions such as the Mars rovers, Earth-observing satellites and space telescopes including Hubble and, with partners, the James Webb Space Telescope. Its Artemis program aims to return astronauts to the Moon. The U.S. Space Force, by contrast, is a military branch founded in 2019. The footage shows NASA missions and facilities, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Le Petit CaporalDD-224
Le Petit Caporal
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 to 1821) rose through the French Revolutionary army, seized power in 1799 and crowned himself Emperor of the French in December 1804. His wars reshaped Europe until his defeats in 1814 and at Waterloo in 1815, after which he was exiled to Saint Helena. The Napoleonic Code of 1804 influenced civil law in many countries. 'Le Petit Caporal', the little corporal, was an affectionate nickname from his soldiers; he was about 1.69 m tall, roughly average for a Frenchman of his time. The footage shows illustrations of Napoleon, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?SHŌGUNDD-223
SHŌGUN
Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543 to 1616) won the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and was appointed shogun in 1603, founding the Tokugawa shogunate. His successors ruled Japan from Edo, now Tokyo, until 1868, a period of about 265 years known as the Edo period. The era brought internal peace after more than a century of civil war, strict social order, economic growth and policies that sharply limited foreign contact. The footage shows illustrations of Ieyasu and Edo-era Japan, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Khan of KhansDD-222
Khan of Khans
Genghis Khan, born Temüjin around 1162, united the Mongol tribes and was proclaimed Great Khan in 1206. He led campaigns across northern China and Central Asia that were both innovative and highly destructive, and introduced a legal code, a postal relay system and protections for trade along routes such as the Silk Road. He died in 1227. Under his successors the Mongol Empire grew into the largest contiguous land empire in history. The footage shows illustrations of Genghis Khan and the steppe, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The Famine QueenDD-221
The Famine Queen
Queen Victoria ruled the United Kingdom from 1837 until her death in 1901, a reign of 63 years surpassed among British monarchs only by Elizabeth II. The Victorian era saw industrial, scientific and political change and the expansion of the British Empire; from 1876 she was also Empress of India. She is associated with strict moral standards but was a keen dancer in her youth. The nickname 'the Famine Queen' was used by the Irish activist Maud Gonne in a 1900 article, criticizing her government's record during the Great Famine of the 1840s; the Reel's voiceover does not discuss it. The footage shows illustrations of Victoria and Victorian Britain, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The Virgin QueenDD-220
The Virgin Queen
Elizabeth I ruled England and Ireland from 1558 until her death in 1603, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Her reign is often called the Elizabethan era or a golden age, with the theater of Shakespeare and Marlowe, overseas exploration and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. She never married, and was celebrated as the Virgin Queen. Contemporaries noted her command of languages including Latin, Greek, French and Italian. The footage shows illustrations of Elizabeth, Tudor London and the Armada, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Russia's Greatest EmpressDD-219
Russia's Greatest Empress
Catherine II, known as Catherine the Great, was born a German princess in 1729 and married the future Peter III of Russia. In 1762, months after he took the throne, a coup overthrew Peter and Catherine became empress, ruling until her death in 1796, longer than any other female ruler of Russia. Her reign saw territorial expansion, Enlightenment-era reforms, and patronage of the arts; the art collection she began in 1764 became the Hermitage Museum. She was a keen rider and often rode astride rather than sidesaddle. The footage shows illustrations of Catherine, her court and Russia, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The Last CzarDD-218
The Last Czar
Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, reigning from November 1894 until his abdication in March 1917. His reign included rapid industrial growth, defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, the 1905 Revolution and Russia's entry into the First World War. Wartime losses and shortages fed the February Revolution of 1917, and he abdicated. In July 1918, Bolshevik forces shot Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their five children and four attendants in Yekaterinburg. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized the family in 2000. The footage shows illustrations of Nicholas II, his family and Russia, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?CharlemagneDD-217
Charlemagne
Charlemagne (Charles the Great, about 747 to 814) was King of the Franks from 768 and King of the Lombards from 774. On Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned him Emperor of the Romans, a title later seen as the start of the Holy Roman Empire. His reign saw the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of learning, art and religious scholarship through the Church, including new schools and the standardized Carolingian minuscule script. His biographer Einhard wrote that he tried to learn to write late in life but had little success. The footage shows illustrations of Charlemagne and his court, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Canute the GreatDD-216
Canute the Great
Canute the Great (Cnut) was a Danish prince who became King of England in 1016, King of Denmark in 1018 and King of Norway in 1028, ruling all three until his death in 1035. Historians call this union the North Sea Empire. He kept peace in England for most of his reign, worked with the Church and English nobles, and supported trade across the North Sea. A later legend says he ordered the tide to stop to show his courtiers the limits of royal power. The footage shows illustrations of Canute and his court, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Little BootDD-215
Little Boot
Caligula, born Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus in AD 12, was Rome's third emperor. His nickname, meaning 'little boot', came from the miniature soldier's boots he wore as a child in his father's army camps. He became emperor in AD 37 and was assassinated by members of the Praetorian Guard in January AD 41. Ancient writers such as Suetonius and Cassius Dio describe extravagant spending, cruelty and claims to divinity; modern historians note that these sources were hostile to him. According to Suetonius, he planned to make his horse Incitatus a consul. The footage shows illustrations of Caligula and Rome, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The Beast of RomeDD-214
The Beast of Rome
Nero was Roman emperor from AD 54 to 68. He was known for his love of performing, singing and acting in public, which Roman elites considered beneath an emperor. After the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, the historian Tacitus wrote that rumors blamed Nero and that he in turn blamed and punished Christians. In AD 67 Nero competed at the Olympic Games, which were rescheduled for his visit; ancient sources say he was declared the winner of the chariot race even though he fell and didn't finish. He died by suicide in AD 68 after being declared a public enemy. Some early Christian writings associated him with the 'Beast' of the Book of Revelation. The footage shows reconstructions of Nero and Rome, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The First Roman EmperorDD-213
The First Roman Emperor
Augustus, born Gaius Octavius in 63 BC, was the great-nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar. After Caesar's assassination in 44 BC and years of civil war, he defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra and became Rome's first emperor in 27 BC, ruling until his death in AD 14. His reign began the Pax Romana, about two centuries of relative peace. He used art, coins and building programs to shape his public image. The biographer Suetonius wrote that he lived modestly and usually wore clothes made at home by his wife, sister, daughter and granddaughters. The footage shows statues and reconstructions of Augustus and Rome, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The Land of IsraelDD-206
The Land of Israel
Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, as the British Mandate for Palestine ended. Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day, starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War; the war also displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought further wars with neighboring states, including in 1967 and 1973. Jerusalem is holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Israel designates Jerusalem as its capital, while Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, and the city's status is disputed internationally. The footage shows Jerusalem and other locations, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Russia & The UkraineDD-205
Russia & The Ukraine
The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014, when Russia occupied and then annexed Crimea from The Ukraine, and Russian-backed separatists took up arms in the Donbas region of eastern The Ukraine. On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced what he called a 'special military operation', and Russia launched a full-scale invasion of The Ukraine, the largest attack on a European country since the Second World War. By June 2022, the Ukrainian government said Russia held about 20% of The Ukraine's territory. The war has killed or wounded large numbers of soldiers and civilians, and millions of people from The Ukraine have been displaced inside the country or have fled abroad. The footage shows news coverage from 2014 to 2022, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?IranDD-204
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a country in West Asia. Its territory was the heart of several Persian empires, beginning with the Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC. The country was widely known abroad as Persia until 1935, when the government asked foreign governments to use the name Iran. Since the 1979 revolution it has been an Islamic republic. Persian (Farsi) is the official language, and Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Luri, Arabic, Baluchi and other languages are also spoken. Iran has had tense relations with several countries in recent decades, including over its nuclear program. The footage shows Iranian cities, mosques and landscapes, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The Red CityDD-198
The Red City
Marrakech is a city in western Morocco, founded around 1070 by the Almoravids. It's nicknamed the Red City for the red-ochre color of its walls and buildings. Its medina, the walled old city, has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985 and is known for its souks selling spices, textiles and crafts. Jemaa el-Fnaa, the main square, fills each evening with food stalls, musicians and storytellers, and UNESCO lists its cultural space as intangible heritage. The footage shows the Koutoubia minaret, souks and the square, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Catalan GothicDD-197
Catalan Gothic
Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, Spain. Its best-known building, the Basílica de la Sagrada Família, designed by Antoni Gaudí, has been under construction since 1882. Gaudí worked on it until his death in 1926. The Gothic Quarter (Barri Gòtic) preserves narrow medieval streets around Barcelona Cathedral, a Catalan Gothic church built mainly from the 13th to 15th centuries, with its facade finished in the late 19th century. La Rambla is a tree-lined boulevard running from the city center to the old port. The footage shows Barcelona's streets and churches, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?TheraDD-196
Thera
Santorini, officially Thira (ancient Thera), is a Greek island group in the southern Aegean Sea. Its crescent shape is the rim of a flooded caldera left mainly by the Minoan eruption, about 3,600 years ago, one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human history; it buried the Bronze Age town of Akrotiri. The towns of Fira and Oia sit on the caldera cliffs, known for whitewashed houses and blue-domed churches. The island's volcanic soil supports vineyards growing native grapes such as Assyrtiko. The footage shows Santorini's cliffs, villages and sunsets, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The City of 10,000 ShrinesDD-195
The City of 10,000 Shrines
Kyoto was Japan's imperial capital from 794 until 1868, when the emperor moved to Tokyo. The city has around 1,600 Buddhist temples and hundreds of Shinto shrines, and 17 of its sites are part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing. Fushimi Inari Taisha is known for thousands of vermilion torii gates lining trails up Mount Inari. Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, is a Zen temple whose upper floors are covered in gold leaf. Kyoto is also known for its wooden machiya townhouses, the Arashiyama bamboo grove, tea culture and geiko (geisha) districts such as Gion. The footage shows Kyoto's shrines, temples and streets, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Future of FinanceDD-188
Future of Finance
A cryptocurrency is a digital currency that uses cryptography to secure transactions and usually runs on a decentralized ledger called a blockchain rather than through a central bank. Bitcoin, launched in January 2009 by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, was the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Thousands of others, often called altcoins, have followed. Supporters point to lower barriers to access and to privacy; critics and regulators point to price volatility, fraud, and use in illegal activity. Regulation varies widely by country. The footage shows coin graphics and charts, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Fair & Efficient MarketsDD-187
Fair & Efficient Markets
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, after the 1929 stock market crash and during the Great Depression. Its stated mission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. It requires public companies to disclose financial and other information, oversees exchanges, brokers and investment advisers, and brings civil enforcement actions for violations such as fraud and insider trading. Joseph P. Kennedy was its first chairman. The footage shows the SEC building and market screens, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Money Isn't Real?DD-186
Money Isn't Real?
Fiat money is currency that isn't backed by a physical commodity such as gold or silver. Its value comes from government decree, its status as legal tender, and people's trust in the issuer. It lets central banks adjust the money supply and interest rates, but it can lose value through inflation if trust or discipline fails. Most major currencies, including the US dollar, euro and Japanese yen, are fiat currencies. The US ended the dollar's last link to gold in 1971, when President Nixon suspended its convertibility for foreign governments. The footage shows banknotes and money, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Spirit of EcstasyDD-183
Spirit of Ecstasy
Rolls-Royce Limited was founded in 1906 by Charles Rolls and Henry Royce in Britain. It built luxury cars and, from the First World War, aircraft engines. In 1971 the company went bankrupt and was nationalized; the car business was later separated, and since 2003 Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has been owned by BMW, while Rolls-Royce Holdings makes aircraft engines. The Spirit of Ecstasy hood mascot, sculpted by Charles Sykes, has appeared since 1911. Rolls-Royce describes the smooth ride of its cars as a 'magic carpet ride'. The footage shows Rolls-Royce cars and interiors, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Hypercar LuxuryDD-182
Hypercar Luxury
Bugatti was founded in 1909 by the Italian-born Ettore Bugatti in Molsheim, Alsace, then part of the German Empire and part of France since 1919. Its pre-war cars won many races, and the Type 41 Royale was one of the largest luxury cars ever built. After decades of closures and revivals, Volkswagen relaunched the brand in Molsheim, building the Veyron from 2005 and the Chiron from 2016. Since 2021 it has been part of Bugatti Rimac. A horseshoe-shaped grille is a long-running Bugatti signature. The footage shows Bugatti cars and details, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?LamborghiniDD-181
Lamborghini
Automobili Lamborghini was founded in 1963 by Ferruccio Lamborghini, who had made his fortune building tractors, to compete with established grand touring brands such as Ferrari. It is based in Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy, and has been owned by the Volkswagen Group through Audi since 1998. The 1966 Miura set the pattern for mid-engined supercars, and the Countach introduced the scissor doors that later models such as the Aventador kept. The Huracán, built from 2014 to 2024, used a naturally aspirated V10. The footage shows Lamborghini cars, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The Prancing HorseDD-180
The Prancing Horse
Ferrari is an Italian sports car maker based in Maranello. Enzo Ferrari, who had run Alfa Romeo's racing team, founded Auto Avio Costruzioni in 1939; the first car bearing the Ferrari name, the 125 S, followed in 1947. Its prancing horse emblem was the symbol of the First World War pilot Francesco Baracca, and its red, rosso corsa, was Italy's traditional international racing color. Ferrari is the oldest and most successful team in Formula One. It builds cars in limited numbers, which helps their value. The footage shows Ferrari cars and badges, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Empire StateDD-157
Empire State
The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, with William F. Lamb as chief designer, it was built during the Great Depression and opened on May 1, 1931, about 410 days after construction began. Its roof is 381 m (1,250 ft) high, and its tip reaches 443 m (1,454 ft). It was the world's tallest building until the North Tower of the World Trade Center topped out in 1970. The footage shows the building and city views, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?EiffelDD-156
Eiffel
The Eiffel Tower is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, built by Gustave Eiffel's company as the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair. During construction, a group of artists and intellectuals published a protest against it. It was the world's tallest structure until the Chrysler Building in New York was completed in 1930. It stood 324 m (1,063 ft) with its antennas; new antennas brought it to about 330 m in 2022. It has become a global symbol of Paris and France. The footage shows the tower and a portrait of Gustave Eiffel, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?King TigerDD-146
King Tiger
The Tiger II, nicknamed 'King Tiger' by Allied soldiers, was a German heavy tank of the Second World War, used in combat from 1944 to 1945. It weighed about 68 to 70 tonnes and carried the 8.8 cm KwK 43 L/71 gun. Its sloped frontal armor, up to 180 mm thick on the turret, was hard for most Allied tank guns of the time to penetrate from the front. About 490 were built. Its weight strained the engine and drivetrain, which were prone to breakdowns, and it was difficult to transport and to cross many bridges. The footage shows archive and museum images of the Tiger II, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Taj MahalDD-123
Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal in Agra, India, is a white marble mausoleum that Mughal emperor Shah Jahan built for his wife Mumtaz Mahal; construction ran from about 1631 to 1653. Its polished white marble reflects the color of the light falling on it, so visitors often describe it as pinkish at dawn, bright white or golden by day and soft or silvery by moonlight. It's been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983 and was named one of the New 7 Wonders in 2007. The footage shows the Taj Mahal and its gardens at different times of day, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The ColosseumDD-121
The Colosseum
The Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre) in Rome was completed in AD 80 under Emperor Titus and could hold tens of thousands of spectators for gladiator fights and animal hunts. It had a velarium, a retractable awning of canvas or sailcloth that could shade much of the seating. It was hung from ropes and masts set in brackets around the top of the outer wall; sailors specially enlisted from the Roman naval headquarters at Misenum and housed nearby worked it. Historians debate how it was rigged. The Colosseum is part of the Historic Centre of Rome World Heritage Site and was named one of the New 7 Wonders in 2007. The footage shows a reconstruction of the arena and its seating, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Chichen ItzaDD-120
Chichen Itza
Chichen Itza is a large pre-Columbian Maya city on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988. Its central pyramid, the Temple of Kukulcán, also called El Castillo, has a stairway on each side. Around the spring and autumn equinoxes, the late-afternoon sun casts triangles of light and shadow from the pyramid's stepped corner onto the northern stairway's balustrade, which ends in carved serpent heads; the effect looks like a serpent descending. Chichen Itza was among the New 7 Wonders of the World announced on July 7, 2007, in a popular vote run by the New7Wonders Foundation. The footage shows the pyramid, the serpent heads and the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Machu PicchuDD-118
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba valley in Peru. Most archaeologists think it was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti, around 1450. It was abandoned about a century later, around the time of the Spanish conquest, and there's no record of the Spanish ever reaching it. Local farmers knew the site; the American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1983, and it was named one of the New 7 Wonders of the World in 2007. The footage shows Machu Picchu and Inca-style portraits, with the presenter. This is No. 4 in his Seven Wonders of the New World series.
DID YOUKNOW?Christ the RedeemerDD-116
Christ the Redeemer
Christ the Redeemer is an Art Deco statue of Jesus Christ on Corcovado mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was designed by French sculptor Paul Landowski and Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa, with French engineer Albert Caquot; Romanian sculptor Gheorghe Leonida sculpted the face. Built of reinforced concrete with a soapstone skin, it was constructed between 1922 and 1931 and dedicated on October 12, 1931. It stands 30 m (98 ft) tall, excluding its 8 m (26 ft) pedestal, with arms 28 m (92 ft) wide. It was named one of the New 7 Wonders of the World on July 7, 2007. The footage shows the statue, Rio and portraits, with the presenter. This is No. 3 in his Seven Wonders of the New World series.
DID YOUKNOW?PetraDD-114
Petra
Petra, in southern Jordan, was the capital of the Nabataean kingdom, known for its rock-cut facades and water-conduit system. It remained known to local Bedouin, but was largely unknown to Europeans after the Crusades. In 1812 the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, traveling as 'Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdallah', persuaded a guide to take him there on the pretext of sacrificing a goat at the tomb of Aaron nearby. UNESCO listed Petra as a World Heritage Site in 1985, and it was named one of the New 7 Wonders of the World in 2007. It's Jordan's most visited tourist attraction. The footage shows renderings of Petra's facades and Burckhardt, with the presenter. This is No. 2 in his Seven Wonders of the New World series.
DID YOUKNOW?The Great WallDD-111
The Great Wall
The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications built across northern China over roughly two millennia, from the 7th century BC through the Ming dynasty, to guard against raids from the steppe. After unifying China in 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang connected and extended earlier walls. Much of what stands today dates from the Ming (1368-1644). Builders included soldiers, conscripted peasants and convicts. A 2012 survey by China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage measured all its branches at about 21,196 km. UNESCO listed it as a World Heritage Site in 1987, and it was named one of the New 7 Wonders of the World in 2007. The footage shows renderings of the wall, workers and Qin Shi Huang, with the presenter. This is No. 1 in his Seven Wonders of the New World series.
DID YOUKNOW?JackDD-108
Jack
Jack the Ripper is the name given to an unidentified serial killer active in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. Five victims, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, are known as the 'canonical five'; they were killed between 31 August and 9 November 1888. Police investigated eleven Whitechapel murders between 1888 and 1891, but not all are linked to the same killer. Several canonical victims had organs removed, which led some at the time to suggest the killer had anatomical knowledge. The killer was never identified, and many suspects have been proposed since. The footage shows dark AI-style renderings of Victorian London and a figure in a top hat.
DID YOUKNOW?MarthaDD-107
Martha
Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (1731-1802) was the wife of George Washington and the first first lady of the United States. Her biography on Wikipedia notes she took to riding as a girl, once riding her horse up and down the stairs of her uncle's house. During the Revolutionary War she traveled to the Continental Army's winter encampments each year of the war, supporting the officers and troops, according to George Washington's Mount Vernon. Her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, died in 1757, and she married Washington in 1759. The footage shows AI-style portraits and riding scenes, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?The Red ForestDD-105
The Red Forest
The Red Forest is the roughly 10 km² (4 sq mi) area of woodland around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Exclusion Zone, in Polesia in The Ukraine. After reactor 4 exploded on April 26, 1986, the pine trees there absorbed very high doses of radiation and died, turning a ginger-brown color that gave the forest its name. During the cleanup the dead trees were bulldozed and buried in trenches. The area remains among the most contaminated in the zone, and wildfires there have raised concern about radioactive smoke. The footage shows the plant and red-tinted forest imagery.
DID YOUKNOW?Lighthouse of AlexandriaDD-104
Lighthouse of Alexandria
The Lighthouse of Alexandria, often called the Pharos, was built on the island of Pharos at Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy II, completed around 280 BC. Estimates put its height above 100 m (330 ft), making it one of the tallest human-made structures for centuries. A fire at the top, reflected by a mirror according to later accounts, guided ships into the harbor. Three earthquakes between 956 and 1303 AD badly damaged it and it became a ruin; in 1480 the Citadel of Qaitbay was built on its site using some of its stone. Its name lives on in the word for lighthouse in several languages, such as French phare. The footage shows renderings of the lighthouse and harbor. This is No. 7 in his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World series.
DID YOUKNOW?Colossus of RhodesDD-102
Colossus of Rhodes
The Colossus of Rhodes was a bronze statue of the sun god Helios, about 33 m (108 ft) tall, built by Chares of Lindos to celebrate Rhodes surviving a siege in 305-304 BC. Completed around 280 BC, it was made of bronze plates over an iron framework. An earthquake in 226 BC snapped it at the knees, and it lay where it fell for centuries; Pliny the Elder reported that even fallen it was a marvel. In 653 AD an Arab force under Muawiya took Rhodes and, by later accounts, sold the remains for scrap. The famous image of the statue straddling the harbor entrance is a medieval idea; modern scholars think it stood on land, as ships could not have passed under it and the harbor would have been blocked during construction. The footage shows renderings of the statue and harbor. This is No. 6 in his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World series.
DID YOUKNOW?Mausoleum at HalicarnassusDD-100
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum, Turkey) was a tomb about 45 m high, completed around 351 BC. It was built for Mausolus, a satrap of Caria under the Persian Achaemenid Empire, and his sister-wife Artemisia II, who oversaw the work after his death. Its architects were Satyros and Pythius of Priene, and its sculpture is credited to leading Greek sculptors. It was so famous that 'mausoleum' became the general word for a grand tomb. A series of earthquakes between the 12th century and 1402 wrecked it, and the Knights of St John reused its stones; demolition was complete by 1494. The footage shows renderings of the tomb and its ruins, with the presenter. This is No. 5 in his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World series.
DID YOUKNOW?CleoDD-099
Cleo
Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC) was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Her dynasty descended from Ptolemy I, a Macedonian Greek general, and her first language was Koine Greek. She is the first Ptolemaic ruler known to have learned Egyptian. Plutarch implies she also spoke Ethiopian, the language of the 'Troglodytes', Hebrew (or Aramaic), Arabic, Syrian, Median and Parthian, and Wikipedia notes she could apparently also speak Latin. She formed alliances with Julius Caesar and later Mark Antony, and after her death in 30 BC Egypt became a Roman province. The footage shows AI-style portraits and court scenes, with the presenter.
DID YOUKNOW?Temple of ArtemisDD-098
Temple of Artemis
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, near modern Selçuk in Turkey, was rebuilt several times. The great marble temple funded in part by Croesus of Lydia, begun around 550 BC, was burned by the arsonist Herostratus in 356 BC. A larger replacement followed, and that later temple is the one counted among the Seven Wonders. Pliny the Elder gave it 127 columns, each 60 feet high. It was plundered by the Goths in 262 AD and finally destroyed in 401 AD. One reconstructed column stands at the site today. The footage shows renderings of columns, statues and a fire. This is No. 4 in his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World series.
DID YOUKNOW?Zeus @ OlympiaDD-096
Zeus @ Olympia
The Statue of Zeus at Olympia was a giant seated figure, about 12.4 m tall, made by the Greek sculptor Phidias around 435 BC for the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. It was chryselephantine: ivory plates for the flesh and gold for the robes, over a wooden framework, and it sat on an ornate throne. It was lost in the 5th century AD. One tradition says it was taken to Constantinople and destroyed in the fire of the Palace of Lausus in 475 AD. Another says it perished with the temple, which was badly damaged by fire in 425 AD. The footage shows renderings of the statue, the temple and a fire. This is No. 3 in his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World series.
DID YOUKNOW?Hanging GardensDD-094
Hanging Gardens
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World whose location has never been established. Classical Greek and Roman writers describe terraced gardens and credit them to Nebuchadnezzar II, who reigned c. 605-562 BC and was said to have built them for his wife, Amytis. No Babylonian text mentions them, and excavations at Babylon haven't found definitive evidence. One theory, argued by Stephanie Dalley, places them at Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, built under Sennacherib. Others think they may be legendary. The footage shows renderings of terraced gardens and Babylonian scenes, with the presenter. This is No. 2 in his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World series.
DID YOUKNOW?The Great PyramidDD-092
The Great Pyramid
The Great Pyramid of Giza was built for the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu in the 26th century BC. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the only one still largely intact. It was originally faced with polished white Tura limestone casing stones. Most were removed or lost over the centuries, but some remain around the base. Its ancient Egyptian name was Akhet Khufu, 'Horizon of Khufu'. It is part of the 'Memphis and its Necropolis' UNESCO World Heritage Site. The footage shows renderings of the pyramid, its builders and casing stones, with the presenter. This is No. 1 in his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World series.
DID YOUKNOW?Deadliest Tornado in HistoryDD-085
Deadliest Tornado in History
The Tri-State Tornado of March 18, 1925, crossed Missouri, Illinois and Indiana and killed 695 people, making it the deadliest tornado in U.S. history. Its track was long recorded as 219 miles, the longest on record; a 2013 reanalysis found at least 174 miles was likely one continuous tornado.
DID YOUKNOW?Tenzing on TopDD-084
Tenzing on Top
Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa mountaineer, and New Zealander Edmund Hillary became the first people confirmed to reach the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953, as part of a British expedition. Tenzing's exact birth date was not recorded; he is usually said to have been born in the Khumbu region of Nepal, though some accounts place his birth in Tibet. He chose to celebrate his birthday on May 29.
DID YOUKNOW?The Atomic GunDD-083
The Atomic Gun
The Davy Crockett was a U.S. tactical nuclear weapon system of the Cold War: a recoilless rifle that fired the M388 nuclear projectile. Its W54 warhead had a yield of roughly 10 to 20 tons of TNT, tiny for a nuclear weapon. It was deployed with U.S. Army units, including in West Germany, from 1961 until it was withdrawn by 1971.
DID YOUKNOW?ArisTutorDD-081
ArisTutor
Around 343 BC, King Philip II of Macedon hired the philosopher Aristotle to teach his son Alexander, then about 13. Lessons were held at Mieza and covered subjects such as philosophy, ethics, politics, science and literature. Alexander later conquered an empire stretching to India, spreading Greek culture through the Hellenistic world; how much Aristotle shaped his rule is debated.
DID YOUKNOW?The Bermuda TriangleDD-079
The Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle, also called the Devil's Triangle, is a loosely defined area of the western North Atlantic roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico. It became famous for stories of ships and aircraft that vanished, often with supernatural explanations. The U.S. Coast Guard does not recognize it as a special hazard, and studies have found that losses there are not more frequent than in other busy waters.
DID YOUKNOW?Performing EmperorDD-078
Performing Emperor
The Roman emperor Nero, who ruled from 54 to 68 AD, saw himself as an artist and performed publicly as a singer, lyre player and actor, which many in Rome's elite found shameful. During a tour of Greece he competed in the Olympic Games of 67 AD, which were rescheduled for him. He drove a ten-horse chariot, fell and did not finish, but the judges declared him the winner anyway.
DID YOUKNOW?ChimeraDD-077
Chimera
In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a fire-breathing monster from Lycia. Homer's Iliad describes it as a lion in front, a serpent behind and a goat in the middle; later art shows a goat's head rising from its back and a snake for a tail. The hero Bellerophon killed it with the help of the winged horse Pegasus. Today 'chimera' also means any mix of different parts.