Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

The Anatomical Zodiac Man

The Apicius manuscript (ca. 900 AD) of the monastery of Fulda in Germany, which was acquired in 1929 by the New York Academy of Medicine

Front page cover of the newspaper L'Aurore for Thursday 13 January 1898, with the letter J'Accuse...! , written by Émile Zola about the Dreyfus affair . The headline reads I Accuse...! Letter to the President of the Republic .

Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Painted between 1412 and 1416 for the Duke of Berry, the February calendar page of the Très Riches Heures shows a peasant warming bare legs by a fire — the oldest surviving painted snow scene, accurate enough that meteorologists have studied it.

Apicius

Marcus Gavius Apicius spent a fortune building Rome's most extravagant culinary reputation, then calculated his remaining wealth and drank poison — the reduced budget made life not worth living.

J'Accuse...!

Zola's open letter, published across the front page of L'Aurore on 13 January 1898, named eleven army and government officials by name. The editor printed 300,000 copies; Paris sold out before noon.

Javed Iqbal (serial killer)

Javed Iqbal dissolved 100 boys in vats of acid in Lahore, then mailed a handwritten confession and a diary to police. He was sentenced to be killed by acid in the same vat — a sentence never carried out.

Bloodgate

Harlequins winger Tom Williams bit a fake blood capsule to fake an injury; team physio Steph Brennan then sliced his lip with a scalpel to cover it up. A doctor lost her medical license over a substitution rule.

Russell Wasendorf

Russell Wasendorf Sr. forged every single bank statement for Peregrine Financial Group — alone, with a scanner and a P.O. box — for twenty years. He confessed in a suicide note left running in a car outside his Iowa headquarters in 2012.

Murder of Yeardley Love

UVA lacrosse captain George Huguely V beat teammate Yeardley Love to death in her apartment hours before their 2010 graduation. He was convicted of second-degree murder; her family later won a $7.5 million civil judgment.

Jean van de Velde (golfer)

Jean Van de Velde stood on the 18th hole of the 1999 Open Championship needing only a double bogey to win, then waded barefoot into the Barry Burn, made a seven, and lost in a playoff.

Velites

Rome's poorest soldiers, the Velites, strapped wolf skulls over their helmets to terrify enemies and help officers spot them in the chaos. They carried seven javelins each and ran ahead of the line.