gnostek‹›1 / 4Piero Manzoni1000%Critically acclaimed modern artIn 1961 Manzoni sealed his own excrement into 90 numbered tins, priced each at its weight in gold, and signed them. Tin No. 18 sold at Sotheby's in 2016 for £182,500.+ See More01Each tin weighs exactly 30 grams and is labeled 'Artist's Shit, Contents 30 gr net.'02The original gold-equivalent price in 1961 was roughly $37 per tin.03No one has opened a tin to verify the contents; the mystery is part of the market value.
gnostek+2‹›1 / 9Cato the Younger800%Julius Caesar’s most formidable opponentsHe sliced open his own abdomen, was sewn up by a doctor, then tore the stitches out with bare hands. Cato the Younger refused Caesar's pardon not once but twice — from the inside.+ See More01After botched surgery, Cato pulled his own intestines out with his hands rather than accept Caesar's mercy.02Caesar reportedly wept when told of Cato's death, saying 'I begrudge you this death' — his only rival for moral authority.03Cato read Plato's Phaedo on the immortality of the soul twice on the night he killed himself, then drew his sword.
gnostekPaul B. Preciado710%Revolutionaries in Queer TheoryPreciado injected black-market testosterone daily while writing 'Testo Junkie,' using his own body as the laboratory. Philosophy as self-experiment: what happens when the theorist becomes the specimen?+ See More01Preciado self-administered testosterone for 236 consecutive days while writing 'Testo Junkie' in 2008.02He named his framework 'pharmacopornography' — the regime of pills and porn governing 21st-century desire.03Preciado's transition began publicly at age 40, after decades as a female-presenting academic philosopher.
gnostek+16‹›1 / 23The National Ignition Facility, located at Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryNational Ignition Facility600%Most expensive scientific research projects192 lasers converge on a target smaller than a pencil eraser, briefly creating temperatures hotter than the sun's core. In 2022, NIF finally got more energy out than it put in.+ See More01The 192-beam pulse lasts just 20 billionths of a second but briefly exceeds 100 million degrees Celsius.02In December 2022, NIF produced 3.15 megajoules from a 2.05-megajoule input — the first fusion ignition.03The target pellet of hydrogen fuel is just 2 millimeters in diameter, smaller than a pea.
gnostek‹›1 / 82023 Tour de France710%Tour de France crashesOver seven decades, press motorcycles weaving through the peloton have shattered collarbone, kneecap, and career — one cameraman's vehicle knocked Joseba Beloki into a fracture pattern that ended his season in 2003.+ See More01Beloki's femur, wrist, and elbow all fractured in a 2003 crash partly triggered by a race vehicle.02Armstrong famously cut across a field to avoid the same crash — an improvised off-road detour mid-stage.03Tour motorcycles carry cameras, doctors, and sponsors, yet have no mandatory speed floor or collision protocol.
gnostek+20‹›1 / 27Diego Maradona800%Worst sports cheating scandalsMaradona 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.+ See More01Maradona's knuckle contacted the ball at the 51st minute; Tunisian referee Ali Bin Nasser never consulted his linesman.02He scored the 'Goal of the Century' in the same game, beating five England players in 11 seconds.03Maradona admitted the handball on camera in 2005, calling it 'a little with the head, a little with the hand of God.'
gnostek‹›1 / 5Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging700%South African farm killingsThe AWB's tri-legged swastika flag flew at rallies where Eugene Terre'Blanche rode a white horse before crowds of 50,000 — a movement that threatened civil war, then imploded when apartheid ended anyway.+ See More01AWB members stormed the Kempton Park CODESA negotiations in 1993, driving an armored vehicle through the glass entrance.02Three AWB members were shot dead by a lone Black police officer during the Bophuthatswana invasion in 1994.03Terre'Blanche was photographed passed out drunk in a Johannesburg gutter in 2001, ending the movement's mystique.
gnostek‹›1 / 5Siad Barre000%Nuttiest African republic and their leadersSiad 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.+ See More01Barre ordered his artillery to shell the Hawiye neighborhoods of Mogadishu, killing an estimated 25,000 civilians in 1990–91.02He had ruled Somalia for 21 years under a doctrine he called 'Scientific Socialism.'03Somalia has had no functioning central government in the three decades since his flight — the longest such collapse of any modern state.
gnostek‹›1 / 6Vito Cascio Ferro300%Real events that inspired the Sopranos, Goodfellas, and GodfatherVito Cascio Ferro reputedly committed the first Mafia murder on American soil — detective Joe Petrosino, shot in Palermo in 1909 — and allegedly boasted he was the only man to have done it personally in years.+ See More01NYPD detective Joseph Petrosino was shot dead in Piazza Marina, Palermo, on March 12, 1909.02Cascio Ferro claimed personal credit for Petrosino's murder, allegedly boasting about it late in life.03He is believed to be a primary model for Mario Puzo's Vito Corleone, the Godfather patriarch himself.