Cannibalism in Oceania

A cannibal feast on Tanna , Vanuatu, c. 1885–1889

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.

"Queens" of Mysore : left, Krishnaraja Wadiyar III 's first wife, Devajammani has a discoloration around the mouth, thought to be due to the blowing of variolation dust in the nose ("nasal insufflation"). Right, his second wife shows the…

Cannibalism in Oceania

Pacific Islander cannibals called human flesh 'long pig' — not metaphor, but olfactory report: it smelled indistinguishable from roasting pork. The term traveled back to Europe in 19th-century missionary journals.

Angora rabbit

Ottoman sultans kept Angora rabbits as living luxury objects in the Topkapi Palace; their wool — harvested monthly by hand — was spun into garments reserved for imperial gift-giving.

Gayle Rubin

Gayle Rubin's 1984 essay 'Thinking Sex' placed consensual intergenerational sex on a 'charmed circle' diagram beside murder as objects of equal public hysteria. The map still burns.

Berserker

Norse berserkers bit their shields and charged wearing bear pelts, impervious to iron. Saga accounts describe them foaming at the mouth; one killed 11 men before being pinned to the earth with a pitchfork.

Ico

Fumito Ueda pinned a single photograph of a boy and girl holding hands to his office wall, then spent four years at Sony Japan building an entire game backward from that image — with no combat, no inventory, just the grip.

RENAMO

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.

Battle of 73 Easting

At a featureless map-grid called 73 Easting, nine M1A1 Abrams tanks destroyed 28 Iraqi Republican Guard tanks in exactly 23 minutes on February 26, 1991. It was the largest US tank battle since World War II.

Variolation

Ottoman physicians rubbed smallpox scabs into children's skin scratches centuries before Jenner's vaccine. The practice cut mortality from roughly 30% to under 2%, yet Europe called it barbarism until the death tolls reversed.

Toys "R" Us

KKR, Vornado, and Bain Capital bought Toys 'R' Us in 2005 for $6.6 billion, immediately saddled it with $5 billion in debt, and spent 13 years watching 33,000 employees lose jobs as the debt ate the stores.