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Taken from Albania as a child hostage, raised as an Ottoman janissary, Skanderbeg defected at 38 with three hundred men and held off the full Ottoman army 25 times over 25 years.

Mithridates VI ingested measured poisons daily for decades to build immunity, then waged 46 years of war against Rome. When he finally tried to poison himself at defeat, the doses failed. He had to beg a soldier to run him through.

In April 1919, thirty-six mail bombs were posted simultaneously to US senators, a Supreme Court justice, and John D. Rockefeller. Most were intercepted by a postal worker who noticed the postage due. Justice nearly by accident.

Leon Black founded Apollo after being effectively pushed out of Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1990. The SEC barred him from the securities industry — then watched the firm he built grow to manage $600 billion. Bars, it turns out, are negotiable.

The Bender family of Cherryvale, Kansas ran a roadside inn with a canvas curtain dividing the table from the back. Guests seated against it were hammer-struck through the cloth; at least eleven bodies were found in the orchard.

A 1950 letter signed by U.S. Ambassador John Muccio authorized American soldiers to fire on Korean civilian refugees approaching front lines. The paper trail survived. An ally's civilians, cleared for killing by a diplomat's signature.

Sue's skeleton logged gout, healed T. rex bite wounds, and a jawbone rotted through by bacterial infection — a biography of agony written in 67-million-year-old bone.

Kublai Khan's fleets were wrecked twice — in 1274 and again in 1281 — by typhoons striking the same Japanese coastline. The Japanese named the storms kamikaze: divine wind.

The Symbionese Liberation Army demanded $6 million in free food as Patty Hearst's ransom — then she picked up a rifle, renamed herself 'Tania,' and robbed a San Francisco bank with them 10 weeks later.