GSG 9

Corybantian dance , the type of dance most likely danced on Gymnopedia festivals (image from Smith 's Dictionary of Antiquities ).

Heracles , wearing his characteristic lion-skin, club in right hand, leash in left, presenting a three-headed Cerberus, snakes coiling from his snouts, necks and front paws, to a frightened Eurystheus hiding in a giant pot. Caeretan hydria…

Red Bird – watercolour on paper

Created in 1973 after German police used untrained officers at Munich and got nine hostages killed, GSG 9 made its debut four years later by storming a hijacked 737 in Mogadishu and losing no one.

Axolotl

The axolotl never undergoes metamorphosis — it breeds, ages, and dies as a permanent larva — and can regenerate a functional heart, spinal cord, and portions of brain within weeks.

Gymnopaedia

At the Gymnopaedia, naked Spartan youths danced in full summer sun on the Spartan agora for days — a festival honoring the dead of Thyreatis. The audience was the entire citizen body.

1I/ʻOumuamua

In 2017 a cigar-shaped object tumbled through our solar system accelerating beyond what solar radiation pressure could explain. Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb argued in print it might be alien technology.

Barney F. Hajiro

On October 19, 1944, Barney Hajiro charged two machine-gun nests and killed a sniper — alone, without orders. He was awarded the Medal of Honor 55 years later.

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Published anonymously in Hamburg in 1670, Spinoza's Tractatus argued Scripture was human-authored propaganda. Within a year, four separate European governments banned it; it circulated in disguise as a medical textbook.

Shoko Asahara

Before releasing sarin on the Tokyo subway in 1995, Shoko Asahara sold his bathwater to followers for $800 a cup. He convinced a physician to murder members who tried to leave. He was hanged in 2018.

Cerberus

Greeks slipped honey cakes called meli into the mouths of their dead to bribe Cerberus at the underworld gate. Virgil's Aeneas carries one. The three-headed dog's middle head was considered the most dangerous.

Chris Ofili

Ofili painted the Virgin Mary with a clump of elephant dung as one breast and pornographic collage for her halo. Mayor Giuliani called it 'disgusting' and tried to evict the Brooklyn Museum in 1999.