Tally stick

Medieval English split tally stick ( front and reverse view). The stick is notched and inscribed to record a debt owed to the rural dean of Preston Candover , Hampshire, of a tithe of 20 d each on 32 sheep, amounting to a total sum of £2…

Sir Geoffrey Luttrell , mounted, being assisted by his wife and daughter-in-law. Folio 202v.

1920 advertisement for the Thor electric washing machine.

For 700 years, the English Exchequer split hazel sticks to record royal debts — the king kept one half, the creditor the other. In 1834, Parliament burned the old sticks and accidentally set Westminster on fire.

Buckminsterfullerene

Sixty carbon atoms arranged as a perfect truncated icosahedron — identical to a FIFA football — were discovered in 1985 by Harry Kroto inside the soot of a carbon arc, winning a Nobel Prize eleven years later.

Taichang Emperor

The Taichang Emperor reigned 29 days before dying — reportedly after swallowing red pills supplied by a court official named Li Kezhuo, whose formula was never fully disclosed.

Luttrell Psalter

Commissioned around 1320 for Sir Geoffrey Luttrell of Lincolnshire, the Luttrell Psalter fills its psalm margins with plowing serfs, acrobats, hybrid monsters, and a armored snail attacking a knight — 309 pages where medieval England's daily life sits beside its absurdist imagination.

Paris Commune

Paris workers governed themselves for 72 days in 1871, burning the Tuileries Palace on their way out. The French army then shot an estimated 10,000 Communards in one week. Self-rule ended in a mass grave.

Doom (1993 video game)

id Software built Doom in a rented suite above a pizza shop in Mesquite, Texas, in 1993 — John Carmack's renderer was so fast it broke every benchmark tool the team tried to measure it with.

Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall spent months sitting motionless in Tanzania's Gombe forest until a chimpanzee she named David Greybeard allowed her to approach — the first time a wild chimp accepted a human. She was twenty-six, had no university degree, and had been in Africa five months.

Thor washing machine

The 1908 Thor washing machine married bare copper wiring to a full tub of water and called it progress. Its inventor, Alva Fisher, left the ground wire out entirely. It sold briskly.

Dawn Brancheau

Dawn Brancheau, SeaWorld Orlando's most senior trainer, was pulled into the water and killed by orca Tilikum in front of an audience on February 24, 2010. She had 16 years of experience. The show had just ended.