gnostek1 / 3Medieval 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…
01Tally sticks recorded English government debt from the 12th century until 1826, outlasting empires.
02The notch width indicated denomination: a thumb-width notch meant £1,000; a barleycorn-width meant one penny.
03In 1834, burning obsolete tally sticks in a furnace set fire to the Houses of Parliament, destroying them.
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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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01Bertelsmann suppressed its own commissioned 1998 history after it misrepresented the company's wartime role.
02An independent commission found the company profited from the forced labor of Jewish prisoners during WWII.
03Today Bertelsmann owns Penguin Random House, RTL Group, and BMG — reaching billions of readers and viewers.
gnostek1 / 17Piles of new Notgeld banknotes awaiting distribution at the Reichsbank during the hyperinflation
01Weimar inflation peaked at 29,500% per month in October 1923; a postage stamp cost 10 billion marks.
02The German government printed money to pay World War I reparations; by 1923, paper notes were cheaper as fuel than firewood.
03A new currency, the Rentenmark, was introduced November 15, 1923 — one Rentenmark exchanged for one trillion old marks.
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01Hughes's personal aides maintained a written codeine injection schedule; the intervals were never allowed to exceed four hours.
02He acquired Air West, Summa Corporation, and multiple Las Vegas casinos during the peak years of his dependency.
03By 1970 Hughes weighed under 100 pounds; his business lawyers conducted negotiations they could not confirm he authorized.
gnostek1 / 9A bile bear in a "crush cage" on Huizhou Farm, Huizhou , China
01An estimated 20,000 bears are currently held on bile farms in China and Vietnam, many in 'crush cages.'
02Bear bile contains ursodeoxycholic acid — a compound now synthesized cheaply in labs, making farming medically redundant.
03Moon bears on farms are often declawed and defanged at capture; some have been caged since cubhood.
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01In 310 BC, Agathocles invaded Africa while Carthage besieged his city — the first European to attack Carthage on home soil.
02He started as a literal potter, was exiled twice for sedition, then seized Syracuse with a sword.
03He declared himself King of Sicily in 304 BC, the first Western ruler to adopt that specific Hellenistic title.
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01Powell's February 5, 2003 presentation included a small vial he waved to illustrate anthrax quantities — it was theater.
02The Downing Street Memo, written months earlier, had already confirmed intelligence was being 'fixed around the policy.'
03Powell spent five years writing his memoirs partly to document how CIA chief George Tenet personally vouched for the data.
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01Hapilon's 2014 bayah to al-Baghdadi was among the earliest Southeast Asian pledges to the Islamic State.
02The pledge reframed Abu Sayyaf's criminal ransom operations as acts of caliphate warfare.
03By 2017, the alliance produced the Marawi siege — the largest urban ISIS battle outside the Middle East.