Sun City (South Africa)

A depiction of a hypothetical Dyson swarm surrounding a star

Plot of Weierstrass function over the interval [ − 2, 2]. Like some other fractals , the function exhibits self-similarity : every zoom (red circle) is similar to the global plot.

Sun City (South Africa)

Apartheid law banned gambling and interracial sex in South Africa proper — so the government built Sun City inside the 'independent' bantustan of Bophuthatswana, where neither law applied. Frank Sinatra played there in 1981.

Iamblichus

He rose ten cubits off the ground — glowing gold — while his students watched twice. A Syrian Neoplatonist who made ritual magic philosophically respectable. What do you do with a man who keeps floating?

Siad Barre

Siad Barre fled Mogadishu in a tank in January 1991, leaving behind a capital he had shelled into ruins; the artillery campaign against his own city killed thousands and destroyed Somalia's central state for a generation.

William Stewart Halsted

Halsted invented modern surgical residency, the mastectomy, and rubber gloves while injecting cocaine daily — then morphine to cure the cocaine. Johns Hopkins never knew. Did his addiction sharpen him, or did he succeed despite it?

Lupercalia

Priests called Luperci slaughtered goats, cut strips from the hides, smeared sacrificial blood on two boys' faces, then ran naked through Rome striking every woman they passed. February. Every year.

Dyson sphere

Freeman Dyson proposed in 1960 that a civilization running out of energy would dismantle its own planets to build a shell around its star, capturing every photon. We should look for the heat.

Therizinosaurus

Therizinosaurus carried three-foot claws — longer than any animal's, ever recorded — and used them to rake leaves. The most terrifying hand on the planet belonged to a herbivore.

Weierstrass function

Weierstrass wrote down a function in 1872 that draws a continuous curve — no gaps, no jumps — yet has no defined slope at any single point. Every zoom reveals more jaggedness. It shouldn't exist; it does.

Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign

At a $50,000-a-plate Boca Raton fundraiser, Romney told donors 47% of Americans 'believe they are victims' and pay no income tax. A bartender's phone captured every word.