Inoculation

Mary Wortley Montagu, by Charles Jervas , after 1716

01Juba's general Saburra lured Curio's 10,000-man army into a valley in 49 BC; almost none escaped; Curio refused evacuation and died there.
02After Thapsus, Juba found no town willing to shelter him; he dined with the Roman commander Petreius, then the two men fought a duel to the death — Juba killed Petreius, then had a slave finish him.
03Years earlier, Caesar had proposed a bill to annex Numidia; Juba's hatred of Caesar was therefore partly personal legislative grudge.

Pyrocumulonimbus cloud formed by the firestorm following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima , 1945. Nuclear winter effects are triggered by at least a hundred such city firestorms.

01The paper coined the term 'nuclear winter'; Sagan published it simultaneously in Science and in Parade magazine, reaching 17 million readers at once.
02Soviet climatologist Vladimir Alexandrov independently produced near-identical temperature-drop models in Moscow the same year.
03The 35°C cooling estimate meant most temperate-zone crops would fail within weeks of a detonation, before fallout reached them.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu watched Ottoman doctors scratch pus into children's arms in 1717 and brought the technique to England the following year — inoculating her own son, then daughter, as living proof of concept.

Bloodgate

A physio bit open a fake blood capsule on the sideline so a player could be illegally swapped out. The capsule left red stains on his teeth. The entire scheme unraveled in 22 minutes.

Juba I of Numidia

Juba I grabbed Caesar's deputy Curio by the beard in single combat metaphor — then destroyed his army of 10,000 in ambush, leaving Curio to die on the field rather than flee. Years later, Juba dueled his last ally to the death.

Tesem

The Tesem, a sleek prick-eared hound depicted on pre-dynastic pottery circa 4000 BCE, was buried in pharaonic tombs with its own name-stele and food offerings. Amenhotep II had four interred with him at death.

John Profumo

British War Secretary John Profumo shared a mistress, 19-year-old Christine Keeler, with Soviet naval attaché Yevgeny Ivanov — then lied about it to Parliament. The lie cost him his career; the affair may have cost Britain state secrets.

Mary Celeste

The brigantine Mary Celeste was found in November 1872 sailing itself across the Atlantic — lifeboat gone, cargo of 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol intact, captain's log open to ten days prior.

Nuclear winter

Carl Sagan and four co-authors published calculations in 1983 showing that even a 'limited' nuclear exchange of 100 warheads could throw enough soot into the stratosphere to drop global temperatures by 35°C — killing more people than the bombs.

Kathy Acker

Acker lifted pages of Dickens verbatim, inserted orgies and gang rapes, and called it literary theory. Arrested for obscenity in the UK in 1984; the charges were dropped.

Anwar al-Awlaki

Anwar al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico, was placed on a presidential kill list, denied due process in U.S. courts, and killed by CIA drone in Yemen in September 2011. His lawyers were told they needed a license to represent him.