Battle of the Vosges (1944)

A slab of pykrete

The epitome of the Rohan Master's art is the " Lamentation of the Virgin " (f. 135, Pl. 57) from the Hours of the Cross. The grieving Virgin cannot be consoled by the Apostle John , who looks up in consternation at a saddened God.

Memorial stone to the Ems dispatch in Bad Ems

Battle of the Vosges (1944)

Over five days in the Vosges Mountains, the 442nd took 800 casualties to rescue 211 trapped Texans of the 'Lost Battalion' — nearly four Japanese American lives per white Texan saved.

Marshall Applewhite

Marshall Applewhite convinced 38 members to voluntarily castrate themselves, then drink phenobarbital-laced pudding to 'shed their containers' and board a spacecraft trailing Comet Hale-Bopp. Five had already been surgically castrated.

Pykrete

Pykrete — 14% sawdust locked in ice — stopped bullets in tests and barely melted. Project Habbakuk planned a 2-million-ton aircraft carrier made of it; a scale model was demonstrated to Churchill in a Quebec hotel bathtub.

Rohan Hours

In the Rohan Hours, painted around 1420, a skeletal dying man lies naked on bare ground while God leans down from the sky to address him directly — a private conversation between a mortal and the divine, held across a page smaller than a hardback book.

Ems dispatch

Bismarck received a routine diplomatic telegram in 1870, redacted it to read as a deliberate insult, and released it to the press. France declared war within days, and the German Empire was born from the fallout.

Coronation of Bokassa I and Catherine

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.

Katalonia

In July 1936, Barcelona's anarchists collectivized every barbershop, hotel, and tram line within weeks of Franco's coup. Waiters became co-owners. One journalist noted the menu prices hadn't changed, but the waiters walked differently.

2023 Tour de France

Over seven decades, press motorcycles weaving through the peloton have shattered collarbone, kneecap, and career — one cameraman's vehicle knocked Joseba Beloki into a fracture pattern that ended his season in 2003.

Battle of Actium

Cleopatra's 60 ships broke from the battle line and fled south without warning. Antony, commanding the largest naval force in the ancient world, abandoned his fleet and his men to follow her by rowboat. He never commanded again.