Commius

01Roman officer Volusenus struck Commius in the head with a sword during a supposed parley; Commius escaped and swore never to set eyes on a Roman again.
02Commius later negotiated a formal peace with Mark Antony on the sole condition that he never be required to enter Roman presence.
03He eventually crossed to Britain, founded a dynasty among the Atrebates tribe, and minted coins bearing his own name — the only Gallic rebel to build a kingdom afterward.

A tulip, known as "the Viceroy" ( viseroij ), displayed in the 1637 Dutch catalogue Verzameling van een Meenigte Tulipaanen ("Collection of a Crowd of Tulips"). Its bulb was offered for sale for between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders (florins)…

Caesar trusted Commius enough to send him as personal ambassador to Britain — then ordered him assassinated mid-mission. Commius survived, defected, fought on for years, and finally escaped Caesar's reach by sailing into darkness.

Mortal Kombat (1992 video game)

Ed Boon hid the fatality system inside Mortal Kombat's code as an undocumented secret, only revealing it after the arcade build was certified — his bosses at Midway never approved it before it hit machines.

Berserker

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.

Mongol invasions of Japan

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.

Majungasaurus

Majungasaurus ate its own kind — we know because its teeth left marks on its own species' bones. A cannibal confirmed not by behavior but by the wound it signed.

Judas Iscariot

Thirty silver coins, a prearranged kiss in a moonlit garden, and a civilization's entire moral vocabulary for treachery was set. Judas Iscariot handed over one man and poisoned his own name for two thousand years.

Tulip mania

In 1637 Amsterdam, a single Semper Augustus tulip bulb sold for 10,000 guilders — enough to buy a canal house. Within three months the market collapsed; bulbs sold for the price of onions.

1995 Tour de France

Fabio Casartelli died on Stage 15; the peloton rolled neutralized through Stage 16 the next morning, completing the course where he was killed — the race did not stop.

Chris Burden

In 1971 Burden asked an assistant to shoot him in the left arm with a .22 rifle inside a Santa Ana garage. The bullet grazed the bone. The event lasted five seconds and was witnessed by a handful of people.