gnostek1 / 5Two sancai -glazed Tang dynasty tomb figures , early 8th century, Prague National Gallery
01Emperor Wu sent two separate armies; the first 40,000 men were turned back by desert and siege before a second force of 60,000 succeeded.
02The 'blood-sweating' was likely caused by a parasitic worm, Parafilaria multipapillosa, which causes subcutaneous hemorrhaging.
03The Ferghana horses were called Tianma — Heavenly Horses — and Wu composed a poem in their honor.
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01The expedition's chief architect, Alcibiades, defected to Sparta before the fleet even arrived in Sicily.
02The entire Athenian force — roughly 38,000 men — was killed or enslaved by 413 BC.
03Thucydides called it the greatest single military disaster ever suffered by a Greek city-state.
gnostek1 / 3The Apicius manuscript (ca. 900 AD) of the monastery of Fulda in Germany, which was acquired in 1929 by the New York Academy of Medicine
01Apicius reportedly spent 100 million sestertii on food; when 10 million remained, he poisoned himself rather than eat cheaply.
02His cookbook, 'De Re Coquinaria,' lists recipes requiring flamingo tongue, dormouse stuffed with pine nuts, and roasted parrot.
03He reputedly drowned a live mullet in a fish sauce vat to watch it change color as it died, for aesthetic pleasure.
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01EO 9066 never named Japanese Americans — it authorized military commanders to designate 'exclusion zones' by geography.
02Roosevelt signed it just 74 days after Pearl Harbor, while Nisei were already serving in the U.S. Army.
03The order was used once to briefly exclude a handful of Italian and German Americans — then exclusively against Japanese Americans.
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01Vespasian levied a tax on urine collected from Rome's public latrines, sold to tanners and fullers.
02He rose from a family of tax collectors and mule-drivers to found the Flavian imperial dynasty.
03His final words were reportedly 'Vae, puto deus fio' — 'Oh dear, I think I'm becoming a god.'
gnostek
01Liu Ziye conscripted his own paternal aunts as concubines, publicly parading them through the inner palace.
02He was assassinated at age sixteen in 465 CE, stabbed by a servant acting on minister's orders.
03His brief reign produced a purge of officials who dared complain about his incestuous harem.
gnostek1 / 14Heracles , wearing his characteristic lion-skin, club in right hand, leash in left, presenting a three-headed Cerberus, snakes coiling from his snouts, necks and front paws, to a frightened Eurystheus hiding in a giant pot. Caeretan hydria…
01Honey cakes called 'meli' were physically placed in corpses' mouths as payment to pass Cerberus.
02Hercules' twelfth labor was to drag Cerberus from Hades alive — using no weapons.
03Orpheus bypassed Cerberus not with force but by playing his lyre until the dog fell asleep.
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01Caesar's soldiers killed roughly 10,000 Pompeians and captured 15,000 at Thapsus; the lopsided toll suggests a rout, not a battle.
02Ancient sources including Plutarch record Caesar falling into a seizure at the onset, carried to a nearby tower to recover while his army fought without him.
03After the battle, Caesar's own veterans executed several surrendered enemy officers on the spot — Caesar was reportedly unable to stop them.
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01U.S. troops killed an estimated 250–300 South Korean civilians over three days at No Gun Ri bridge.
02The Army initially denied the event entirely; the AP's 1999 investigation won a Pulitzer Prize exposing it.
03In 2001, President Clinton issued a formal statement of regret — the U.S. declined to call it an apology.