Gift exchange in many non-Western societies creates binding social obligations — what anthropologist Marcel Mauss called 'the gift.'

Jazz is one of the few art forms considered uniquely American in origin, developed in New Orleans in the early 1900s.

Many Native American languages contain single words that would require whole sentences to express in English.

Anne Parrish found a childhood book she owned in a Paris bookstore years later.

Olympic weightlifters follow a precise diet and weigh in the day before competition to make their weight category.

There's a statue of Jason Voorhees, the “Friday the 13th” serial killer, chained to the bottom of a Minnesota lake.

The word 'assassin' comes from the Arabic 'hashishin,' a term for a secretive Islamic sect.

John Cage's 4'33" consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence — performed in concert halls.

Wayne Gretzky scored so many goals in his NHL career that if you remove all his goals, he would still be the all-time leader in points.