gnostek1 / 14Heracles , wearing his characteristic lion-skin, club in right hand, leash in left, presenting a three-headed Cerberus, snakes coiling from his snouts, necks and front paws, to a frightened Eurystheus hiding in a giant pot. Caeretan hydria…
01Honey cakes called 'meli' were physically placed in corpses' mouths as payment to pass Cerberus.
02Hercules' twelfth labor was to drag Cerberus from Hades alive — using no weapons.
03Orpheus bypassed Cerberus not with force but by playing his lyre until the dog fell asleep.
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01Edison Manufacturing Company filmed Topsy's electrocution; the film, 'Electrocuting an Elephant,' was commercially distributed that same year.
02Topsy killed three men in three years, including an abusive trainer who fed her a lit cigarette.
03She was given cyanide-laced carrots, then 6,600 volts — organizers had originally planned to hang her publicly.
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01Doe was 28 years old and held no officer's rank when he personally led the executive mansion raid.
02The beach executions of 13 ministers on April 22, 1980 were filmed and broadcast internationally.
03Doe was himself captured in 1990, tortured, and killed on video by Prince Johnson's rebel faction.
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01Nineteen Chinese men were lynched in a single night — roughly 10% of Los Angeles's entire Chinese population.
02The mob looted an estimated $40,000 in cash and jewelry from victims before hanging them.
03Eight men were convicted of manslaughter, but all convictions were vacated within a year on procedural grounds.
gnostek1 / 17Pyrocumulonimbus cloud formed by the firestorm following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima , 1945. Nuclear winter effects are triggered by at least a hundred such city firestorms.
01The paper coined the term 'nuclear winter'; Sagan published it simultaneously in Science and in Parade magazine, reaching 17 million readers at once.
02Soviet climatologist Vladimir Alexandrov independently produced near-identical temperature-drop models in Moscow the same year.
03The 35°C cooling estimate meant most temperate-zone crops would fail within weeks of a detonation, before fallout reached them.
gnostek1 / 5Corybantian dance , the type of dance most likely danced on Gymnopedia festivals (image from Smith 's Dictionary of Antiquities ).
01The festival lasted several days in July, the hottest period of the Spartan calendar, with no shade permitted.
02Choral competitions involved three age groups — boys, men, and elders — performing simultaneously.
03When news of the defeat at Leuctra arrived mid-festival in 371 BC, the ephors refused to stop the dancing.
gnostek
01The 442nd suffered roughly 800 casualties rescuing 211 men of the 36th Infantry's 'Lost Battalion' in October 1944.
02The Texans had been surrounded in the Vosges for a week before Japanese American soldiers broke through.
03The 442nd became the most decorated unit of its size in U.S. military history — largely from this campaign.
gnostek
01The Tate Modern, MoMA, and the Pompidou each own at least one tin.
02Some tins have expanded over decades, suggesting fermentation is still occurring inside.
03Manzoni produced them in two months; he died of a heart attack at age 29, two years later.
gnostek
01CIH was written by Taiwanese student Chen Ing-hau while attending Tatung University in 1998.
02It triggered on April 26, the Chernobyl disaster anniversary, earning the nickname "Chernobyl virus."
03Unlike most viruses, CIH overwrote BIOS firmware, making infected machines unable to boot at all.