Battle of Cannae

01An estimated 70,000 Romans died at Cannae on August 2, 216 BC — approximately one Roman male in six of military age killed in a single afternoon.
02Hannibal's double-envelopment tactic left Romans so tightly compressed they could not draw weapons; many suffocated or were stabbed from behind.
03Livy records that three bushels of gold rings were sent to Carthage — rings stripped from the fingers of dead Roman knights and senators.

Exterior view of the building known as Ransom Room, in Cajamarca where the Inca Atahualpa was confined.

01'Kubla Khan' was written in a single opium-induced session in 1797; Coleridge claimed an interruption by 'a person from Porlock' broke the trance.
02By 1816 Coleridge was consuming up to two quarts of laudanum per week, documented in letters to his physician James Gillman.
03Wordsworth formally ended their friendship partly over Coleridge's unreliability — lectures cancelled, manuscripts undelivered, debts accumulated.

Hannibal encircled 70,000 Roman soldiers at Cannae in 216 BC and compressed them so tightly they couldn't raise their sword arms. They were stabbed to death standing upright, packed too close to fall. The battle took four hours.