John Paul Getty III

gnostek

gnostek

gnostek

1 / 3

gnostek

1 / 8

gnostek

gnostek

gnostek

1 / 2

gnostek

1 / 11

gnostek

1 / 19

Flick ↓ for more

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.

A small boy in a cardboard crown discovers a kingdom and builds it not by conquering, but by politely knocking on doors and asking residents — farmers, bakers, warriors — if they'd like to help. They usually say yes.

Thirty-nine people castrated themselves, donned identical black tracksuits and Nike Decades, and drank phenobarbital pudding to board the Hale-Bopp comet. Their bunk beds were made, bags packed, and hands folded across their chests.

Bokassa's 1977 coronation cost $22 million — roughly one-third of the Central African Republic's annual GDP — including a diamond-encrusted crown, 6,000 bottles of Moët, and a throne shaped like a golden eagle.

Director T.F. Mous used an actual child's corpse — sourced from a local hospital — for a dissection scene. Chinese censors banned it; Hong Kong screened it. The corpse is in the frame.

Liu Ziye forced his own aunts into his imperial harem, declared them imperial concubines, then was stabbed to death by a palace servant at sixteen — his ministers had arranged the blade.

On the night of December 4, 1971, Indian missile boats fired Styx missiles into Karachi harbor, igniting Pakistan's main fuel depot. The harbor burned for seven days and lit the sky over a city of millions.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, phone tapped by the FBI, tried to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder — stating on tape, 'I've got this thing and it's fucking golden, and I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing.'

Norse berserkers bit their shields and charged wearing bear pelts, impervious to iron. Saga accounts describe them foaming at the mouth; one killed 11 men before being pinned to the earth with a pitchfork.