BioShock

Sworn virgin in Rapsha, Hoti , Ottoman Albania , 1908

The epitome of the Rohan Master's art is the " Lamentation of the Virgin " (f. 135, Pl. 57) from the Hours of the Cross. The grieving Virgin cannot be consoled by the Apostle John , who looks up in consternation at a saddened God.

A mangle being used in a domestic science course during World War II

Rapture sank two miles beneath the Atlantic — an entire Art Deco civilization of neon, jazz, and crumbling marble, built to prove Ayn Rand's objectivism and destroyed by its own logic before a single player arrives.

Balkan sworn virgins

Albanian women who swore lifelong virginity before twelve village elders were legally reclassified as men — permitted to carry rifles, own land, and head households, sometimes for sixty years.

Philippine tarsier

The Philippine tarsier kills itself by slamming its skull into cage bars when stressed — a pocket-sized primate with eyes larger than its brain, martyring itself rather than enduring a hand.

Killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

Sixteen-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen eating dinner in Yemen, was killed by a drone two weeks after his father. The Obama administration later said it was a mistake. His grandfather asked why.

Clay Allison

After shooting a man dead at a New Mexico saloon, Clay Allison stripped naked and danced on the bar. He later offered to duel the sheriff who came to arrest him. The sheriff declined.

Rohan Hours

In the Rohan Hours, painted around 1420, a skeletal dying man lies naked on bare ground while God leans down from the sky to address him directly — a private conversation between a mortal and the divine, held across a page smaller than a hardback book.

Mangle (machine)

Two steel rollers squeezed laundry dry — and de-gloved hands at the wrist without stopping. Hospitals tracked the injuries by decade. The machine outlasted every safety campaign aimed at it.

Battle of the Metaurus

Roman soldiers catapulted Hasdrubal's severed head into Hannibal's camp. Hannibal recognized it, said 'I see there the fate of Carthage,' and wept. He had invaded Italy 14 years earlier and would never win again.

Eugène Terre'Blanche

Hacked to death on his own farm by the men he employed, Eugene Terre'Blanche — South Africa's most feared white supremacist — died owing his workers two months' unpaid wages.