Battle of Novara (1849)

A tulip, known as "the Viceroy" ( viseroij ), displayed in the 1637 Dutch catalogue Verzameling van een Meenigte Tulipaanen ("Collection of a Crowd of Tulips"). Its bulb was offered for sale for between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders (florins)…

01Roman officer Volusenus struck Commius in the head with a sword during a supposed parley; Commius escaped and swore never to set eyes on a Roman again.
02Commius later negotiated a formal peace with Mark Antony on the sole condition that he never be required to enter Roman presence.
03He eventually crossed to Britain, founded a dynasty among the Atrebates tribe, and minted coins bearing his own name — the only Gallic rebel to build a kingdom afterward.

Battle of Novara (1849)

Defeated at Novara, King Charles Albert of Sardinia abdicated on the battlefield to his son Victor Emmanuel II — same hour, same field. Victor Emmanuel II would later become the first king of unified Italy.

Tulip mania

In 1637 Amsterdam, a single Semper Augustus tulip bulb sold for 10,000 guilders — enough to buy a canal house. Within three months the market collapsed; bulbs sold for the price of onions.

Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins drank laudanum by the tumbler — eventually enough to kill several men — and dictated two complete novels in states he later had no memory of. His housekeeper measured the doses. The manuscripts survived him.

Rai stones

On Yap Island, a family's wealth included a 4-ton stone disc sitting on the ocean floor — sunk during transport centuries ago — yet everyone agreed they still owned it. The ledger was communal memory.

Commius

Caesar trusted Commius enough to send him as personal ambassador to Britain — then ordered him assassinated mid-mission. Commius survived, defected, fought on for years, and finally escaped Caesar's reach by sailing into darkness.

Cerberus Capital Management

Cerberus Capital — named for the three-headed dog guarding the underworld — bought Chrysler from Daimler for $7.4 billion in 2007, then watched it go bankrupt in exactly 735 days. Hell kept the dog; taxpayers kept the bill.

Thomson's lamp

Switch a lamp on and off — once per second, then half a second, then a quarter — completing infinite switches in two minutes flat. Mathematics gives no answer to whether it's on or off at minute two.

Battle of Isandlwana

At Isandlwana, January 1879, 1,300 British regulars were annihilated by a Zulu force of 20,000 — partly because a quartermaster refused to issue reserve ammunition without the proper paperwork.

1975 Tour de France

A spectator's fist on the Puy-de-Dôme cracked Eddy Merckx's cheekbone during the 1975 Tour — the blow that broke the greatest cyclist alive and handed Bernard Thévenet the race.