Jake and Dinos Chapman

A Jake and Dinos Chapman fused mannequin piece from the exhibition Come and See at the Serpentine Gallery

An illustration of Cantor's diagonal argument (in base 2) for the existence of uncountable sets . The sequence at the bottom cannot occur anywhere in the enumeration of sequences above.

A typical crossbow

Jake and Dinos Chapman

The Chapmans bought a complete set of Goya's 'Disasters of War' etchings — 80 prints of dismembered soldiers — and painted Ronald McDonald and clown faces over the victims' heads. They called it 'rectification.'

Taichang Emperor

The Taichang Emperor reigned 29 days before dying — reportedly after swallowing red pills supplied by a court official named Li Kezhuo, whose formula was never fully disclosed.

Cantor's diagonal argument

Cantor showed in 1891 that the infinity of real numbers cannot be listed — proving it by constructing one number guaranteed to be missing from any list. Infinity has a size hierarchy; most people never heard it.

Crossbow

The Second Lateran Council banned the crossbow against Christians in 1139 — the first arms-control treaty in Western history. Knights ignored it, and within a century the bolt had made armor obsolete and chivalry theatrical.

Battle of Sedan

Napoleon III, nephew of the great Napoleon, surrendered personally to Bismarck on a hillside at Sedan — 100,000 French troops captured in one day. The French Empire died within hours; Paris fell and the Republic was declared by afternoon.

Trajan's Dacian Wars

Trajan's two Dacian campaigns dragged 165 tonnes of gold and 330 tonnes of silver back to Rome — enough to fund gladiatorial games lasting 123 days straight. The kingdom of Dacia ceased to exist.

Rigoberta Menchú

Before turning twenty-three, Rigoberta Menchú had memorized the name and story of every neighbor disappeared in Guatemala's civil war. She dictated her testimony in eight days to anthropologist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray — in a second language.

Rod Blagojevich

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, phone tapped by the FBI, tried to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder — stating on tape, 'I've got this thing and it's fucking golden, and I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing.'

Unit 731

Prisoners renamed 'maruta' — logs — were vivisected, frozen, and plague-bombed by Japan's Imperial Army in Manchuria. At least 3,000 died inside the compound. Their data was traded to the US for immunity.