RENAMO

01RENAMO was founded in 1977 by Rhodesian CIO officer Ken Flower specifically to destabilize the newly independent FRELIMO government in Maputo.
02After Rhodesia fell, South African military intelligence absorbed RENAMO entirely, funding and supplying it through the 1980s as a proxy Cold War force.
03RENAMO commanders ordered limb amputations to leave living evidence — they explicitly wanted victims to walk to the nearest village as a warning.

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)…

RENAMO began as a Rhodesian intelligence project to punish Mozambique for hosting ZANLA guerrillas — then became a movement that cut off ears and hands as loyalty enforcement. The Rhodesian secret service created one of Africa's most lethal insurgencies.

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar

After playing his own game and feeling like a villain, Richard Garriott scrapped Ultima III's kill-everything model and invented a new goal: becoming a moral exemplar across eight virtues, with no final boss to slay.

Diplodocus

Diplodocus's tail ended in a thin whip-tip that could break the sound barrier — a 45-foot bullwhip cracking a sonic boom, possibly the loudest sound made by any land animal.

Tulip mania

In 1637 Amsterdam, a single Semper Augustus tulip bulb sold for 10,000 guilders — enough to buy a canal house. The market collapsed in one week in February, leaving traders holding contracts for flowers that didn't exist.

Screaming Lord Sutch

Screaming Lord Sutch lost 40 consecutive British elections across 35 years, founding the Official Monster Raving Loony Party — yet outlasted so many rivals that he became the longest-serving party leader in UK history.

Shoko Asahara

Before releasing sarin on the Tokyo subway in 1995, Shoko Asahara sold his bathwater to followers for $800 a cup. He convinced a physician to murder members who tried to leave. He was hanged in 2018.

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius wrote the Meditations in Greek, on military campaign, with no intention of publishing. The book — private, furious, self-lacerating — survived because someone ignored his wishes.

Dnepropetrovsk maniacs

In 2007, two teenagers in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine filmed themselves beating a homeless man to death with hammers and a pipe over several minutes. The video, called '3 Guys 1 Hammer,' leaked online and became one of the most viewed snuff films in history.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

When New York's legislature sided against him in an 1867 rail dispute, Cornelius Vanderbilt cut all rail connections into Manhattan in January — mid-winter — strangling the city's supply lines until Albany capitulated.