Tiryns

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Tollund Man , Denmark, 4th century BC

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Takifugu in a tank

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Walls 17 metres thick at Tiryns conceal vaulted stone galleries within their mass — corridors carved not to defend but, ancient Greeks believed, to house the Cyclopes who built them.

Edward Leedskalnin, a 5-foot, 100-pound Latvian immigrant, quarried and erected 1,100 tons of coral blocks alone at night in Florida — then refused to explain how. He left no drawings.

He sliced open his own abdomen, was sewn up by a doctor, then tore the stitches out with bare hands. Cato the Younger refused Caesar's pardon not once but twice — from the inside.

At Topaz, Utah, Japanese American artists built the Topaz Art School inside a relocation camp — teaching painting and sculpture under armed guard in the desert. Chiura Obata founded it; a guard shot and killed one student who wandered near the fence.

Iron Age men, women, and children were pressed face-down into peat bogs; two thousand years later, Tollund Man surfaced with his stubble, stomach contents — last meal: porridge — and the noose still around his neck.

Tsutomu Miyazaki killed four girls aged four to seven near Tokyo between 1988 and 1989, ate one victim's hands, and mailed her charred bones to her family in a box with photographs. Police found 5,763 videotapes stacked in his room.

Steve Schwarzman spent $3 million on his 60th birthday party — a Rod Stewart performance, a portrait of himself unveiled mid-room — then wrote a memoir advising readers to 'never do anything small.' The portrait still hangs at Blackstone.

A single fugu pufferfish carries tetrodotoxin enough to kill 30 adults; there is no antidote. Japanese chefs must train three years and pass a written and practical exam — the failure rate exceeds 35%.

Bokassa fed political prisoners to his private crocodiles and lions, then had himself crowned emperor in a ceremony copying Napoleon's — in a country where per-capita income was under $400 a year.