Best Party

A 13th–14th-century scroll of the Book of Esther from Fez, Morocco , held at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris . Traditionally, a scroll of Esther is given only one roller, fixed to its lefthand side, rather than the two used for a Torah…

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.

Messenia , homeland of Sparta's helot population, from Mount Ithome .

Iceland's Best Party ran on free towels at city pools, a polar bear for the zoo, and a promise to be 'the best party' — and won Reykjavík's city hall in 2010 with 34.7% of the vote.

Marshall Applewhite

Marshall Applewhite convinced 38 members to voluntarily castrate themselves, then drink phenobarbital-laced pudding to 'shed their containers' and board a spacecraft trailing Comet Hale-Bopp. Five had already been surgically castrated.

Vidkun Quisling

Vidkun Quisling seized the Norwegian government by radio announcement on the night of Germany's 1940 invasion. He was executed by firing squad in 1945 — and his surname had already entered the dictionary as the universal word for traitor.

Book of Esther

God's name never appears in the Book of Esther — the only biblical book with this omission. The plot hinges on a beauty contest for a drunk king and a eunuch's wounded pride.

Houston Astros sign stealing scandal

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.

Laika

Soviet engineers gave Laika a one-way ticket in Sputnik 2, 1957 — her cabin had no re-entry capsule. She died within hours of launch from overheating, not the planned euthanasia. The USSR announced her alive for days.

Battle of Thapsus

Before Caesar gave the signal, his troops charged anyway — ancient sources say he may have collapsed in an epileptic seizure at the critical moment. The battle became a massacre Caesar could not fully control.

Crypteia

Spartan boys earned citizenship by stalking and murdering helot slaves at night, alone, with a knife. The state called it education. The helots called it nothing — they left no record.

Prey (2017 video game)

Every object aboard Talos I — coffee mugs, chairs, potted plants — could be a Mimic alien holding its shape until you step close. The station's 300+ rooms become a sustained meditation on trust, perception, and the architecture of dread.