Editor's Note: On the night of March 24-25, 1944, 76 Allied prisoners of Stalag Luft III, a German prison camp in Sagan, 100 miles southeast of Berlin, escaped through a tunnel named "Harry." Within ...

The birth of writing and the first alphabet were among the world’s most vital inventions.

Continuing to the south of Victoria Island, the Gjøa clears the Arctic Archipelago on this date but has to stop for the winter before going on to Nome on Alaska Territory's Pacific coast. About 500 ...

How were the giant stone heads of Rapa Nui–also known as Easter Island–carved and raised, and why? Since Europeans arrived on this remote Pacific island over 300 years ago, controversy has swirled ...

Almost as astonishing as the fact that a pair of bicycle shop owners invented the airplane is the fact that the first accurate reporting about some of their earliest powered flights appeared not in ...

Einstein's Dream: Combining the laws of the universe in one theory that explains it all is the Holy Grail of physics.

In ancient Egypt, when pharaohs wanted to record something for eternity and have it be known not only to mortals, but more importantly, to the gods, they wrote in stone. The hieroglyphs carved into ...

Can we harness the power of artificial intelligence to solve the world’s most challenging problems without creating an uncontrollable force that ultimately destroys us? ChatGPT and other new A.I.

Major funding for NOVA Wonders is provided by the National Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and public television viewers, with additional ...

Arctic Passage homepage At first glance and out of context, the amount and variety of food brought on the Erebus and Terror, the two ships of Sir John Franklin's expedition, seems impressive (see list ...

The story behind the centuries-long decipherment of ancient Maya hieroglyphs.

This one-hour program is divided into six chapters. Choose any chapter below and select QuickTime or Windows Media Player to begin viewing the video. If you experience difficulty viewing, it may be ...