Rod Blagojevich

Gelert by Charles Burton Barber (1884)

A tulip, known as "the Viceroy" ( viseroij ), displayed in the 1637 Dutch catalogue Verzameling van een Meenigte Tulipaanen ("Collection of a Crowd of Tulips"). Its bulb was offered for sale for between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders (florins)…

The Anatomical Zodiac Man

Logo of 1Malaysia Development Berhad

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.'

Tarrare

Tarrare, an 18th-century French soldier, ate live cats, eels, and a silver fork whole — and was suspected of swallowing a toddler from a hospital ward. Hunger never left him.

The Story of Adidon

Pusha T named Drake's hidden son Adonis and placed his image inside Drake's own Adidas campaign artwork — a diss track that used corporate branding as a delivery mechanism for a secret.

Gelert

Welsh prince Llywelyn killed his hound Gelert for apparently savaging his infant son — then found the baby unharmed, a dead wolf beneath the cradle. He never smiled again. The grave at Beddgelert still draws visitors.

Tulip mania

In 1637 Amsterdam, a single Semper Augustus tulip bulb sold for 10,000 guilders — enough to buy a canal house. The market collapsed in one week in February, leaving traders holding contracts for flowers that didn't exist.

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.

Bill W.

Bill Wilson co-founded AA on the principle of complete abstinence, then took LSD with Aldous Huxley in 1956 and spent years lobbying AA's board to adopt it as a sobriety tool. The board said no. He kept taking it.

Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Painted between 1412 and 1416 for the Duke of Berry, the February calendar page of the Très Riches Heures shows a peasant warming bare legs by a fire — the oldest surviving painted snow scene, accurate enough that meteorologists have studied it.

1MDB scandal

Malaysia's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund — created to build schools and hospitals — bought a $250 million superyacht, a Picasso, and financed The Wolf of Wall Street. The fund lost $4.5 billion. The prime minister who authorized it won an election first.