Angela Davis

Plate 34: Por una navaja ( For a clasp knife ). A garroted priest grasps a crucifix in his hands. Pinned to his chest is a description of the crime for which he was killed—possession of a knife.

Langton's ant after 11,000 steps. A red pixel shows the ant's location.

Temperature map of the cosmic microwave background measured by the Planck spacecraft

Angela Davis, in 'Women, Race & Class' (1981), argued that rape of Black women by white men during slavery was a calculated instrument of racial terror — and that the law's blindness to it was the policy.

CIH (computer virus)

CIH triggered on April 26 — Chernobyl's anniversary — flashing BIOS chips into permanent silence. Written by Taiwanese student Chen Ing-hau in 1998, it destroyed hardware, not just files.

The Disasters of War

Goya etched 82 plates of castrated soldiers, impaled civilians, and mass graves — then hid them. They weren't published until 1863, 35 years after his death. The plates still exist; one shows a man arranged like a broken doll.

Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign

At a $50,000-a-plate Boca Raton fundraiser, Romney told donors 47% of Americans 'believe they are victims' and pay no income tax. A bartender's phone captured every word.

Paul Tudor Jones

Paul Tudor Jones filmed himself predicting the 1987 crash with eerie precision — charts, dates, the exact word 'collapse.' He then spent years suppressing the documentary, reportedly buying up every copy to prevent distribution.

Langton's ant

Langton's Ant flips squares black or white under two rules. For 10,000 steps it scrambles randomly. Then, without warning, it locks into a diagonal highway and marches forever. Nobody has proved why.

Cosmic microwave background

The faint hiss on an analog TV is partly photons from 380,000 years after the Big Bang — the CMB, discovered accidentally in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson while trying to eliminate 'noise.'

David Koresh

David Koresh declared himself the 'Final Sinful Messiah' and took 'spiritual wives' as young as twelve. He stockpiled 300 weapons inside Mount Carmel. The 51-day ATF siege ended in fire: 76 dead.

Javed Iqbal (serial killer)

Javed Iqbal dissolved 100 boys in vats of acid in Lahore, then mailed a handwritten confession and a diary to police. He was sentenced to be killed by acid in the same vat — a sentence never carried out.