Battle of Blood River

01The Boers made a covenant with God the night before the battle: if victorious, they and their descendants would observe the anniversary as a holy day forever.
02The Ncome River ran red with Zulu blood — giving Blood River its name; 3,000 Zulu dead were counted against zero Boer fatalities.
03December 16 became a national holiday in South Africa as 'Day of the Covenant' — later renamed 'Day of the Vow,' then 'Day of Reconciliation' in 1994.

The epitome of the Rohan Master's art is the " Lamentation of the Virgin " (f. 135, Pl. 57) from the Hours of the Cross. The grieving Virgin cannot be consoled by the Apostle John , who looks up in consternation at a saddened God.

Storefront display of Body Worlds exhibition in Amsterdam (2016)

Battle of Blood River

On December 16, 1838, 464 Boer settlers formed a wagon circle at Blood River and killed 3,000 Zulu warriors in two hours. Boer casualties: zero. They had made a vow to God the night before. They called it a miracle.

Bill W.

Bill Wilson co-founded AA on the principle of complete abstinence, then took LSD with Aldous Huxley in 1956 and spent years lobbying AA's board to adopt it as a sobriety tool. The board said no. He kept taking it.

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.

Golden eagle

At 150 mph in a stoop, the golden eagle strikes with talons exerting 750 psi — roughly the grip of a hydraulic press on a soda can. Civilizations from the Mongols to Rome named themselves by this bird.

Killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

Sixteen-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen eating dinner in Yemen, was killed by a drone two weeks after his father. The Obama administration later said it was a mistake. His grandfather asked why.

Palace of the Parliament

Ceaușescu bulldozed a fifth of Bucharest — 40,000 homes, 19 Orthodox churches, 6 synagogues — to build a palace so heavy the ground beneath Bucharest still sinks. It has 1,100 rooms no one uses.

Iamblichus

He rose ten cubits off the ground — glowing gold — while his students watched twice. A Syrian Neoplatonist who made ritual magic philosophically respectable. What do you do with a man who keeps floating?

Rohan Hours

In the Rohan Hours, painted around 1420, a skeletal dying man lies naked on bare ground while God leans down from the sky to address him directly — a private conversation between a mortal and the divine, held across a page smaller than a hardback book.

Body Worlds

Body Worlds exhibits real human cadavers with skin removed, posed mid-stride or holding their own lungs — over 47 million visitors have paid to walk among them since 1995.