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Brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht split their German grocery chain in 1961 along the Ruhr River — one taking the north, one the south — and never reconciled. Two global empires grew from a single family silence.

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.

In March 1922, someone slaughtered six members of the Gruber family at Hinterkaifeck farm with a mattock. Neighbors found the livestock fed, the stove warm, and fresh food cooked — the killer had lived there for days.

Fred Lorz crossed the 1904 Olympic marathon finish line to cheers, waved at crowds, and posed for photos before admitting he'd hitched a car ride for 11 of the 26 miles.

Mugabe's hyperinflation peaked in November 2008 at 89.7 sextillion percent monthly; Zimbabwe issued a $100 trillion banknote that could not buy a bus ticket, while life expectancy fell to 37 — the world's lowest.

In 2014, Isnilon Hapilon pledged bayah — formal oath of allegiance — to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, absorbing his Abu Sayyaf faction into the Islamic State's caliphate project. The pledge turned a kidnap-for-ransom gang into an ISIS province.

No ransom note ever arrived. DEA agent Kiki Camarena was taken off a Guadalajara street in broad daylight, kept alive for 30 hours of recorded torture, then buried in a ranch. The tape was the only demand.

Yumenguan — the Jade Gate — was a Han-dynasty fort at the Silk Road's western edge. Tang poets used it as shorthand for the world's end: cross it and you were gone from civilization itself.

KKR, Vornado, and Bain Capital bought Toys 'R' Us in 2005 for $6.6 billion, immediately saddled it with $5 billion in debt, and spent 13 years watching 33,000 employees lose jobs as the debt ate the stores.