Carpet beater

A carpet beater

Tupac Shakur (right) and The Notorious B.I.G. (left), the two main figures of the East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry, prior to the conflict in 1993 in Los Angeles. The image was also used in the 2002 feature-length documentary film…

An electric steam iron

The eight "Chicago Black Sox"

Woven rattan, swung hard against hanging rugs in the yard every spring — the carpet beater was killed by one invention, the vacuum cleaner, within thirty years of its own peak production.

Cargill

The Cargill-MacMillan family, with roughly 14 members among the world's wealthiest individuals, owns the largest private company on Earth — a grain-and-commodity empire moving food across every ocean, entirely off public markets.

Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council

Colin Powell held up a vial of fake anthrax and pointed to blurred satellite photos at the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. He later called it 'a blot' — his single worst word.

East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry

By 1997, two of rap's biggest figures were dead and their labels were in ruin. What began as promotional rivalry between Death Row and Bad Boy became geography that determined whose side you were on at gunpoint.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

On Oblivion's 2006 launch day, a modder released a nude patch that worked perfectly — because Bethesda had shipped the fully modeled naked body meshes on the disc, just hidden under underwear textures.

Clothes iron

Named from the Old English 'sæd,' meaning solid — not sorrowful — the sad iron was a 6-pound cast-iron slab heated directly on the stove. Women rotated three irons to maintain one usable temperature.

Black Sox Scandal

Eight Chicago White Sox players threw the 1919 World Series for gamblers paying as little as $5,000 per player. A boy reportedly pleaded, 'Say it ain't so, Joe.' Shoeless Joe Jackson batted .375 during the fix.

Leonarda Cianciulli

Leonarda Cianciulli boiled three women into soap and stirred their fat into teacakes she served to neighbors in Correggio. Her motive: she believed human sacrifice would protect her son from dying in World War II.

Regensburg

A Roman legionary fortress built around 179 CE forms the literal foundation of modern Regensburg — its stone walls, still standing to several metres, prop up the ground floors of inhabited apartment buildings.