Typhoid fever

A 1939 conceptual illustration showing various ways that typhoid bacteria can contaminate a water well (center)

Tupac Shakur (right) and The Notorious B.I.G. (left), the two main figures of the East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry, prior to the conflict in 1993 in Los Angeles. The image was also used in the 2002 feature-length documentary film…

Hydrogen-induced cracking (HIC) [ clarification needed ]

Unit 731 operatives dressed as medical relief workers handed typhoid-laced chocolates to Chinese children in rural villages. The downstream mortality was recorded as field-trial data.

Maestà (Duccio)

When Duccio's Maestà was carried from his workshop to Siena Cathedral on June 9, 1311, all shops in the city closed, bells rang, and the entire population walked in procession behind it — the largest panel painting of its age, at 5 metres wide, entering the city like a sovereign.

John Paul Getty III

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.

Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging

The AWB's tri-legged swastika flag flew at rallies where Eugene Terre'Blanche rode a white horse before crowds of 50,000 — a movement that threatened civil war, then imploded when apartheid ended anyway.

Septimius Severus

Rome's first African-born emperor marched his army to Scotland's edge, declared the campaign unfinished, and died in York in 211 AD — 3,000 miles from Leptis Magna, where he was born.

South Sea Company

Isaac Newton, who calculated planetary orbits, invested and withdrew from the South Sea Company in profit — then reinvested at the peak, losing £20,000. He reportedly said he could not calculate the madness of men.

East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry

By 1997, two of rap's biggest figures were dead and their labels were in ruin. What began as promotional rivalry between Death Row and Bad Boy became geography that determined whose side you were on at gunpoint.

David Koresh

David Koresh declared himself the 'Final Sinful Messiah' and took 'spiritual wives' as young as twelve. He stockpiled 300 weapons inside Mount Carmel. The 51-day ATF siege ended in fire: 76 dead.

Hydrogen embrittlement

Single hydrogen atoms — the smallest possible — squeeze between steel's iron lattice and make the metal brittle without leaving any visible trace. Bridge cables, surgical implants, and submarine hulls have failed this way.