Valerie Solanas

A 13th–14th-century scroll of the Book of Esther from Fez, Morocco , held at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris . Traditionally, a scroll of Esther is given only one roller, fixed to its lefthand side, rather than the two used for a Torah…

The "Xiaohe Mummy", exhibited in Xinjiang Museum, is one of the oldest Tarim mummies, dating more than 3800 years ago. Another mummy from the same place is the " Princess of Xiaohe ".

Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol in 1968, then handed a manifesto to anyone who would read it: the SCUM Manifesto called for men's biological elimination. Warhol survived; the manifesto outlived them both.

Nikephoros II Phokas

The Byzantine emperor who reconquered Cilicia, Cyprus, and parts of Syria slept on a hair shirt on the floor and petitioned to have soldiers killed in battle canonized as martyrs by the Church.

Book of Esther

God's name never appears in the Book of Esther — the only biblical book with this omission. The plot hinges on a beauty contest for a drunk king and a eunuch's wounded pride.

George Soros

On September 16, 1992 — 'Black Wednesday' — George Soros shorted $10 billion in British pounds and pocketed $1 billion before London's close. The Bank of England spent $27 billion defending sterling and lost.

Tarim mummies

Xinjiang's Tarim Basin gave up Bronze Age mummies with red and blonde hair, plaid textiles, and features no one expected in 2nd-millennium-BCE China — their genetic origin is still genuinely contested.

Placenta cake

A segment of new parents encapsulate and swallow their own placenta, citing hormonal benefits; no peer-reviewed evidence supports the claim. One Oregon infant contracted group B streptococcus from a contaminated capsule.

Majungasaurus

Majungasaurus ate its own kind — we know because its teeth left marks on its own species' bones. A cannibal confirmed not by behavior but by the wound it signed.

Emperor Xian of Han

Emperor Xian reigned for thirty-one years as Cao Cao's hostage. He watched Cao Cao personally drag Empress Fu from her chambers and execute her inside the palace walls in 214 CE.

Mountain Meadows Massacre

In 1857, Mormon militiamen and Paiute allies killed 120 Arkansas emigrants at Mountain Meadows, Utah — then blamed the Paiutes for twenty years. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever executed, in 1877, shot at the site.