Paul Pelliot

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Paul Pelliot read 6,000 manuscripts by candlelight in the Dunhuang cave over three weeks in 1908, selecting the best 10,000 pages for France. The monk who sold them was paid £130.

Kendrick Lamar accused Drake of grooming minors, named him a predator over a beat, then watched it hit number one — a Billboard chart-topper built on a criminal allegation.

Olympic champion Fabio Casartelli, 24, hit a concrete bollard at 88 km/h on the Col de Portet d'Aspet in 1995 — without a helmet. His teammates rode the next stage in silence, no one sprinting.

Published anonymously in Hamburg in 1670, Spinoza's Tractatus argued Scripture was human-authored propaganda. Within a year, four separate European governments banned it; it circulated in disguise as a medical textbook.

Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1895 with 17,700 troops marching in four columns so widely separated they could not support each other. The Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II annihilated them at Adwa with 100,000 soldiers — ending European colonialism's air of invincibility.

The swordfish heats its own eyes and brain to 28°C above the surrounding ocean, running a biological furnace to keep vision razor-sharp at depth and speed. It is a warm-eyed predator in a cold, dark sea.

Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem's Temple in 70 AD, wept on any evening he'd performed no act of generosity, reportedly saying, 'Friends, I have lost a day.' He reigned only two years before dying at 41.

Houston Astros players watched a live camera feed of the catcher's signals and banged a trash can once or twice to tell batters what pitch was coming. They won the World Series doing it.

In a 1947 memo, MacArthur's command confirmed immunity for all Unit 731 officers. The general who tried Japanese officers for war crimes at Manila simultaneously shielded Japan's worst war criminals from Tokyo.