John Law's Company

Coat of arms of the Indies Company, with the reclining figure representing the Mississippi River taken from Law's Compagnie d'Occident , and the motto Florebo quocumque ferar taken from Louis XIV's East India Company

Exterior view of the building known as Ransom Room, in Cajamarca where the Inca Atahualpa was confined.

The Kwakwaka'wakw continue the practice of potlatch. Illustrated here is Wawadit'la in Thunderbird Park , Victoria, B.C. , a big house built by Chief Mungo Martin in 1953. Wealthy, prominent hosts would have a Big House specifically for…

John Law's Company

John Law — a Scottish gambler who killed a man in a duel — convinced France to replace gold with paper backed by Louisiana swampland. Within two years, the word 'millionaire' was coined, then the crash.

Ransom Room

Atahualpa filled a 22-foot room once with gold and twice with silver to purchase his freedom. Pizarro accepted the metal, pocketed the treasure, then had the Inca emperor strangled anyway in 1533.

Temple Grandin

Temple Grandin designed curved cattle chutes that now move a third of U.S. livestock more calmly — by imagining the animal's eye-level view of shadows, dead ends, and unexpected sounds. She drew the first blueprints at her aunt's Colorado ranch.

John J. Muccio

A 1950 letter signed by U.S. Ambassador John Muccio authorized American soldiers to fire on Korean civilian refugees approaching front lines. The paper trail survived. An ally's civilians, cleared for killing by a diplomat's signature.

Amelio Robles Ávila

Amelio Robles Ávila rode with Emiliano Zapata's forces through the Mexican Revolution, earning the rank of colonel through combat — then lived openly as a man for eight more decades, receiving veterans' recognition from the Mexican government in his nineties.

Potlatch

Pacific Northwest chiefs burned blankets, smashed canoes, and gave away slaves to humiliate rivals — the more you destroyed, the higher your rank. Canada banned the ceremony in 1885.

Estelle Ishigo

Estelle Ishigo was white, American-born, and under no legal obligation to be interned. She followed her Japanese American husband Arthur into Poston, Arizona, anyway — and drew what she saw. Her sketches are among the only civilian visual records of camp life.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Link turns into a wolf in a world drained of color, guided by a sharp-tongued imp named Midna who rides his back and slowly, reluctantly, becomes his closest companion. The friendship arrives before you notice it.

Hobby Lobby

A craft-store chain generating $7 billion annually tithed tens of millions to build a biblical museum in Washington D.C. — then watched federal agents seize 5,500 smuggled Iraqi antiquities from its own collection.