Operation Rimau

In 1974, the Arecibo Observatory was used to send the first known intentional radio message transmission into space

01The 1974 Arecibo Message was aimed at globular cluster M13 — 25,000 light-years away, arrival date roughly 26,974 AD.
02Stephen Hawking publicly warned that contacting aliens could be analogous to Native Americans meeting Columbus — and we know how that ended.
03METI International transmitted 'Sonar' toward GJ 273, a nearby star, in 2017 without any international consensus or oversight body approving it.

A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicting Bishop Odo rallying Duke William 's army during the Battle of Hastings in 1066

The Severan Tondo , c. 199 AD tondo of the Severan family , with portraits of Septimius Severus , Julia Domna , and their sons Caracalla and Geta . The face of one of Severus' and Julia's sons has been erased; it may be Geta's, as a result…

Ivan Lyon returned to Singapore on a second mission with folding kayaks and a plan to sink more ships. Japanese forces compromised the team; Lyon died armed on a rubber raft, never reaching shore.

Active SETI

Some scientists call deliberately beaming our coordinates into space an act of civilizational recklessness — Stephen Hawking called it 'a little too risky.' The first intentional broadcast left Earth in 1974.

Irritator

Paleontologists named it 'Irritator' — formally, in the scientific literature — because a fossil smuggler had packed car body filler into the skull to counterfeit a complete specimen.

Bayeux Tapestry

Embroidered in wool on linen 70 metres long, the Bayeux Tapestry was likely stitched within twenty years of the 1066 invasion it records — by English hands, for a Norman patron, depicting the death of a king the embroiderers may have watched fall.

Neutron star merger

When two neutron stars collide — GW170817, August 2017 — the explosion forged gold, platinum, and uranium in seconds. Every piece of jewelry on Earth traces back to a dead-star crash.

Kommandokorps

Boys as young as ten are circumcised, sleep in the veld, and recite Afrikaner identity oaths at Kommandokorps camps — a private paramilitary operating openly in the post-apartheid state.

Damnatio memoriae

Rome could condemn a man to nonexistence: his face chiseled off statues, his name gouged from inscriptions, his coins melted down. Domitian's name was erased from 31 separate official monuments after his death.

Doom (1993 video game)

id Software built Doom in a rented suite above a pizza shop in Mesquite, Texas, in 1993 — John Carmack's renderer was so fast it broke every benchmark tool the team tried to measure it with.

Bessus

Bessus killed Darius III with a javelin, stitched on the royal title 'Artaxerxes V,' and lasted two years before Alexander's men pinned him to a tree and sliced off his nose and ears.