Emperor Xian of Han

Kurt Debus (front row, third from the left), a former V-2 rocket scientist and SS officer who became a NASA director, sitting between US president John F. Kennedy and US vice president Lyndon B. Johnson in 1962 at a briefing at Blockhouse…

Medieval English split tally stick ( front and reverse view). The stick is notched and inscribed to record a debt owed to the rural dean of Preston Candover , Hampshire, of a tithe of 20 d each on 32 sheep, amounting to a total sum of £2…

A barrel-type butter churn

Two sancai -glazed Tang dynasty tomb figures , early 8th century, Prague National Gallery

Emperor Xian of Han

Emperor Xian reigned for thirty-one years as Cao Cao's hostage. He watched Cao Cao personally drag Empress Fu from her chambers and execute her inside the palace walls in 214 CE.

Coronation of Bokassa I and Catherine

Bokassa's 1977 coronation cost $22 million — roughly one-third of the Central African Republic's annual GDP — including a diamond-encrusted crown, 6,000 bottles of Moët, and a throne shaped like a golden eagle.

Operation Paperclip

After 1945, the U.S. Army recruited 1,600 Nazi scientists — including men who used concentration camp prisoners as test subjects — then falsified or destroyed their SS and war crime records to grant them visas.

Anwar al-Awlaki

Anwar al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico, was placed on a presidential kill list, denied due process in U.S. courts, and killed by CIA drone in Yemen in September 2011. His lawyers were told they needed a license to represent him.

Tally stick

For 700 years, the English Exchequer split hazel sticks to record royal debts — the king kept one half, the creditor the other. In 1834, Parliament burned the old sticks and accidentally set Westminster on fire.

Valerie Solanas

Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol in 1968, then handed a manifesto to anyone who would read it: the SCUM Manifesto called for men's biological elimination. Warhol survived; the manifesto outlived them both.

Butter churn

A wooden dasher plunged up and down by hand for forty unbroken minutes to produce one pound of butter. The task fell to whoever was smallest — usually the children.

Operation Biting

British paratroopers landed on a French clifftop, dismantled a Würzburg radar dish under German fire, and carried its components back to England — handing scientists a device that changed the air war in six months.

Ferghana horse

In 104 BCE, Han emperor Wu dispatched 60,000 soldiers across the Pamirs for horses he believed sweated blood — a campaign that killed most of them and returned with 30 stallions.