Isao Machii

Plot of shear rate as a function of the shear stress. Dilatants in green.

Zimbabwean banknotes ranging from 10 dollars to 100 billion dollars printed within a one-year period. The magnitude of the currency scalars signifies the extent of the hyperinflation.

Chinese propaganda poster from the Korean War era: "Vaccinate everyone, to crush the germ warfare of US imperialism !"

Isao Machii, a modern iaijutsu master, sliced a 200 mph BB pellet clean in two mid-air — his sword completing the cut before his conscious brain could have processed the pellet's position.

Dilatant

Cornstarch stirred into water becomes a dilatant: press slowly and your finger sinks; punch it and the fluid hardens to concrete. BAE Systems built flexible armour panels from it that stop a knife in 8 milliseconds.

Irritator

Paleontologists named it 'Irritator' — formally, in the scientific literature — because a fossil smuggler had packed car body filler into the skull to counterfeit a complete specimen.

Diego Maradona

Maradona punched the ball into England's net with his left fist in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final, then credited 'the Hand of God.' He scored the century's greatest goal four minutes later in the same match.

LIGO

LIGO's mirrors must hold still to one-ten-thousandth the width of a proton. That precision, costing $1.1 billion, caught the first gravitational wave in September 2015 — a collision 1.3 billion years old.

Maestà (Duccio)

When Duccio's Maestà was carried from his workshop to Siena Cathedral on June 9, 1311, all shops in the city closed, bells rang, and the entire population walked in procession behind it — the largest panel painting of its age, at 5 metres wide, entering the city like a sovereign.

Vermin Supreme

Vermin Supreme has campaigned in every U.S. presidential race since 1992 wearing a rubber boot as a hat, promising mandatory tooth-brushing laws and one free government pony for every American citizen.

Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

At its worst, Zimbabwe's inflation hit 89.7 sextillion percent annually. Workers were paid twice a day so they could spend wages before lunch erased the value.

Allegations of biological warfare in the Korean War

China charged the U.S. with dropping plague-infected fleas and cholera-laced clams over North Korea in 1952. Twenty-five captured American airmen confessed. Every confession was later recanted. The insects remain unresolved.