East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry

Tupac Shakur (right) and The Notorious B.I.G. (left), the two main figures of the East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry, prior to the conflict in 1993 in Los Angeles. The image was also used in the 2002 feature-length documentary film…

Illustrated Jonah from the 15th-century Kennicott Bible

Anthony "Tino" De Angelis

East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry

By 1997, two of rap's biggest figures were dead and their labels were in ruin. What began as promotional rivalry between Death Row and Bad Boy became geography that determined whose side you were on at gunpoint.

Vermin Supreme

Vermin Supreme has campaigned in every U.S. presidential race since 1992 wearing a rubber boot as a hat, promising mandatory tooth-brushing laws and one free government pony for every American citizen.

Joe Gallo

Joey Gallo was shot four times at Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy at 4 a.m. on April 7, 1972 — his own 43rd birthday dinner, his new wife and daughter at the table.

Book of Jonah

Jonah, swallowed by a fish, sulks when God spares the city he hated — and then weeps over a dead plant. Scholars now classify it as deliberate comic fiction targeting 5th-century Jewish nationalism.

1919 United States anarchist bombings

In April 1919, thirty-six mail bombs were posted simultaneously to US senators, a Supreme Court justice, and John D. Rockefeller. Most were intercepted by a postal worker who noticed the postage due. Justice nearly by accident.

Salad oil scandal

Tino De Angelis filled vast New Jersey tanks mostly with seawater, floated a thin film of soybean oil on top for inspectors, and borrowed $175 million against it. The 1963 collapse took down two Wall Street firms in a single afternoon.

Superconducting Super Collider

Congress approved a supercollider larger than the LHC, dug 23 km of tunnel under Waxahachie, Texas, then cancelled it in 1993 mid-bore — $2 billion already spent, hole still in the ground.

Bodo League massacre

In the summer of 1950, South Korea's own government executed between 60,000 and 100,000 suspected leftist civilians — teachers, farmers, prisoners — in mass graves nationwide, before the North ever reached them.

Manic Miner

Matthew Smith coded Manic Miner alone at 17, released it in 1983, earned enough to vanish from society entirely — disappearing to Amsterdam for years before resurfacing at a 2002 retro convention, visibly rattled.