Jay Gould

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Jay Gould and partner James Fisk cornered the entire U.S. gold market in September 1869. On 'Black Friday' the price collapsed, ruining thousands — while Gould had already quietly sold at the peak.

Wilkie Collins drank laudanum by the tumbler — eventually enough to kill several men — and dictated two complete novels in states he later had no memory of. His housekeeper measured the doses. The manuscripts survived him.

'Put me back on my bike' — Simpson's last request on Mont Ventoux, 1967. Amphetamines and brandy were found in his jersey pocket. The Tour rode past his corpse to finish.

A Mars-sized body called Theia struck the proto-Earth 4.5 billion years ago; the vaporized debris ring cooled into the Moon. Earth's closest companion is the corpse of a collision.

The Boeremag plotted to poison Johannesburg's water supply, detonate bombs across the country, and install a Boer republic — twenty-two men were eventually convicted in South Africa's longest treason trial.

Gustav Landauer, Germany's foremost anarchist philosopher, was stomped and shot by soldiers in a Munich prison courtyard on May 2, 1919. His last book on Shakespeare was still unfinished. Philosophy ended with a boot.

Vermin Supreme has campaigned in every U.S. presidential race since 1992 wearing a rubber boot as a hat, promising mandatory tooth-brushing laws and one free government pony for every American citizen.

J. Paul Getty — then the world's richest man — refused his grandson's ransom until a severed ear arrived by post. He negotiated the $17 million demand down to $2.2 million, the maximum he could deduct on taxes.

Signed on a Dhaka racetrack on December 16, 1971, a single document ended Pakistan's eastern wing and surrendered 93,000 soldiers — the largest military capitulation since World War II. Does the paper still smell of defeat?