Sicilian Expedition

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Fengdu Ghost City

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Poster symbolizing the Ele Não Movement.

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Athens voted in 415 BC to conquer Sicily — 38,000 men, 200 ships — based on flawed intelligence and civilian fever. Every ship and every soldier was lost; the expedition ended the Athenian Empire.

In 1971, a Soviet drilling rig collapsed into a natural gas pocket in Turkmenistan's Karakum Desert. Engineers lit it to burn off the gas. It has not gone out in over 50 years.

To swing a 1984 county election in Oregon, Rajneeshees poured salmonella cultures onto ten restaurant salad bars, sickening 751 people — the first bioterror attack on U.S. soil. The plot was conceived by Ma Anand Sheela.

The Yippies hauled a 145-pound pig named Pigasus to Chicago's Grant Park in 1968 and held a formal press conference nominating him for president — police arrested both the pig and seven activists within minutes.

Kim Philby headed British intelligence's anti-Soviet section while simultaneously reporting to Moscow Centre. For nine years he sat across the table from the people hunting his handler — and warned Soviet networks whenever they got close.

Calamity Jane scouted in men's clothes, claimed to have served under Custer, and demanded burial beside Wild Bill Hickok — a man she may have met only briefly. Deadwood gave her what she wanted in 1903.

On the Senate floor, Bolsonaro told Senator Maria do Rosário she was 'not worth raping' — then, as president, publicly praised the colonel who tortured her during Brazil's military dictatorship.

Bokassa spent $22 million — one-third of the Central African Empire's annual budget — on a coronation modeled on Napoleon's, including a throne cast as a two-ton golden eagle, while France quietly paid the bill.

Michael Milken financed the 1980s on junk bonds, paid a then-record $600 million fine, served 22 months in prison, and emerged rebranded as a cancer-research philanthropist. The decade he dismantled made him a saint.