Titus

The Kwakwaka'wakw continue the practice of potlatch. Illustrated here is Wawadit'la in Thunderbird Park , Victoria, B.C. , a big house built by Chief Mungo Martin in 1953. Wealthy, prominent hosts would have a Big House specifically for…

Parthian-era bronze statue believed by some scholars to represent General Surena.

Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem's Temple in 70 AD, wept on any evening he'd performed no act of generosity, reportedly saying, 'Friends, I have lost a day.' He reigned only two years before dying at 41.

Potlatch

Pacific Northwest chiefs burned blankets, smashed canoes, and gave away slaves to humiliate rivals — the more you destroyed, the higher your rank. Canada banned the ceremony in 1885.

Hinterkaifeck murders

In March 1922, someone slaughtered six members of the Gruber family at Hinterkaifeck farm with a mattock. Neighbors found the livestock fed, the stove warm, and fresh food cooked — the killer had lived there for days.

Surena

Surena annihilated seven Roman legions at Carrhae in 53 BC — 20,000 dead, 10,000 captured — then was executed by the Parthian king within the year, fame deemed more dangerous than Rome itself.

Tarrare

Tarrare, an 18th-century French soldier, ate live cats, eels, and a silver fork whole — and was suspected of swallowing a toddler from a hospital ward. Hunger never left him.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was hauled off an Air France plane at JFK in his underwear, May 2011, accused by hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo of assault — ending the near-certain next presidency of France.

Kommandokorps

Boys as young as ten are circumcised, sleep in the veld, and recite Afrikaner identity oaths at Kommandokorps camps — a private paramilitary operating openly in the post-apartheid state.

Protoceratops

Protoceratops skulls and clawed skeletons littered the Gobi Desert for millennia before Greece mapped the Silk Road. Herodotus's gold-guarding griffin may be the fossil, remembered wrong.

Škocjan Caves

The Reka River in Slovenia plunges underground and carves through 6 kilometres of limestone before disappearing entirely — reappearing 34 kilometres away, having hollowed out one of the largest underground canyons on the planet.