gnostek‹›1 / 8The Zimmermann telegram as it was sent from Washington, D.C. , to Ambassador Heinrich von Eckardt , the German ambassador to Mexico .Zimmermann telegram700%Moments when a single email changed historyGerman Foreign Secretary Zimmermann telegraphed Mexico in January 1917, proposing a wartime alliance and the return of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. British codebreakers intercepted it; Congress voted for war within weeks.+ See More01The telegram was decoded by British Naval Intelligence's Room 40, which had cracked German ciphers.02Germany offered Mexico its 'lost territory' — Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona — as a wartime inducement.03Zimmermann publicly confirmed the telegram's authenticity, making denial impossible and enraging American public opinion.
gnostek‹›1 / 4Mario Kart Wii4025%Wii games that make you miss childhoodNintendo packed a cheap plastic steering wheel into every Mario Kart Wii box, and 37 million families snapped it around their Wii remotes — suddenly the living room floor was a race circuit and everyone had a wheel.+ See More01Mario Kart Wii sold 37.38 million copies, making it the best-selling Mario Kart entry in the series.02The included Wii Wheel cost Nintendo almost nothing to manufacture, yet players consistently rated it as satisfying.03Online play via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection let players race strangers worldwide — a first for console Mario Kart.
gnostek‹›1 / 5R. Budd Dwyer700%Disgraced PoliticiansTreasurer Budd Dwyer called a press conference, handed out envelopes to reporters, then pulled a .357 Magnum from a manila folder and fired it through the roof of his mouth — live, on Pennsylvania state television, January 22, 1987.+ See More01Dwyer distributed sealed envelopes to reporters moments before shooting — they contained a suicide note and an organ donor card.02The .357 Magnum was legally purchased; the footage aired uncut on several Pennsylvania news broadcasts before editors intervened.03He maintained innocence in a $300,000 bribery conviction until the moment he died — a later FBI informant corroborated his story.
gnostek+32‹›1 / 39Douglas MacArthur600%Japanese unit 731In 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.+ See More01MacArthur personally approved the immunity agreement in 1947, confirmed in a declassified memo held at the National Archives.02He presided over the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal while simultaneously ensuring Unit 731 staff were never named in it.03The US paid Ishii's team $250,000 in cash for their complete experimental archive — equivalent to roughly $3 million today.
gnostek‹›1 / 3Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar300%space and astrophysics rabbitholesAt 19, aboard a steamship to England, Chandrasekhar calculated that stars above 1.4 solar masses must collapse catastrophically. Arthur Eddington publicly mocked him; 52 years later, the Nobel committee agreed with the teenager.+ See More01Chandrasekhar derived the 1.4 solar-mass limit — now called the Chandrasekhar limit — during the 1930 voyage to Cambridge.02Arthur Eddington called the result 'stellar buffoonery' at the 1935 Royal Astronomical Society meeting, derailing his career for decades.03He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 — 53 years after the steamship calculation.
gnostekKathy Acker400%Revolutionaries in Queer TheoryAcker lifted pages of Dickens verbatim, inserted orgies and gang rapes, and called it literary theory. Arrested for obscenity in the UK in 1984; the charges were dropped.+ See More01Acker's 'Great Expectations' (1982) plagiarized Dickens, Proust, and Harold Robbins in a single text without quotation marks.02She had breast implants removed on camera in the 1990s and wrote about it as a theory of bodily authorship.03Her novel 'Blood and Guts in High School' was banned in West Germany for explicit illustrations she drew herself.
gnostekKilling of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki3805%drone strikes with civilian casualtiesSixteen-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen eating dinner in Yemen, was killed by a drone two weeks after his father. The Obama administration later said it was a mistake. His grandfather asked why.+ See More01Abdulrahman was born in Denver, Colorado — an American citizen by birth, killed by American order.02He had run away from home to find his father; he never made it back alive.03White House press secretary Robert Gibbs suggested Abdulrahman should have 'had a more responsible father.'
gnostek+2‹›1 / 9Wall Street crash of 1929600%Top economic collapsesOn October 24, 1929 — Black Thursday — 12.9 million shares changed hands before noon. The suicide of ruined investors became so expected that hotel clerks asked guests: 'For sleeping or jumping?'+ See More01Black Tuesday, October 29, saw 16 million shares sold; the Dow lost 12% of its value in a single session.02U.S. GDP fell 30% between 1929 and 1933; unemployment reached 25% — one in four American workers.03The crash wiped out roughly $30 billion in market value within two weeks, equivalent to the entire U.S. GDP at the time.
gnostek+7‹›1 / 14Idi Amin000%Nuttiest African republic and their leadersIdi Amin awarded himself the Conqueror of the British Empire medal, the Victoria Cross, and a 'Last King of Scotland' title — all self-issued — while between 100,000 and 500,000 Ugandans died under his rule.+ See More01Amin's full self-declared title ran to 43 words, including 'Last King of Scotland' and 'CBE.'02His regime expelled all 60,000 Asians from Uganda in 90 days in 1972, collapsing the economy.03He ruled for eight years before a Tanzanian military invasion removed him in April 1979.