Coronation of Bokassa I and Catherine

Langton's ant after 11,000 steps. A red pixel shows the ant's location.

A tulip, known as "the Viceroy" ( viseroij ), displayed in the 1637 Dutch catalogue Verzameling van een Meenigte Tulipaanen ("Collection of a Crowd of Tulips"). Its bulb was offered for sale for between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders (florins)…

Coronation of Bokassa I and Catherine

Bokassa's 1977 coronation cost $22 million — roughly one-third of the Central African Republic's annual GDP — including a diamond-encrusted crown, 6,000 bottles of Moët, and a throne shaped like a golden eagle.

John Law (economist)

A Scottish duelist who killed a man in 1694 talked his way into running France's entire money supply — then collapsed it. He fled Paris in a stolen carriage, died broke in Venice.

Langton's ant

Langton's Ant flips squares black or white under two rules. For 10,000 steps it scrambles randomly. Then, without warning, it locks into a diagonal highway and marches forever. Nobody has proved why.

Battle of the Crater

Union engineers dug 511 feet of tunnel, packed it with 8,000 pounds of powder, and blew a perfect 170-foot crater in Confederate lines — then sent infantry into the hole, where they were slaughtered like livestock in a pit.

Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer's 1969 NYC mayoral run proposed making New York City the 51st state, hosting jousting tournaments in Central Park to settle civic disputes, and banning private cars from Manhattan — losing with just 5% of the primary vote.

Timothy Wilson Spencer

Timothy Spencer was executed in Virginia in 1994 as the first person in U.S. history put to death on DNA evidence alone — evidence that also exonerated David Vasquez, who had already confessed and pled guilty to one of Spencer's murders.

Neutron star

Manhattan's mass compressed into two kilometers: a neutron star's surface gravity is 200 billion times Earth's, turning atoms into nuclear paste. What exactly is left when matter can't get any denser?

Travis (chimpanzee)

Travis, a 200-pound chimpanzee raised as a human child in Stamford, Connecticut, mauled neighbor Charla Nash in 2009, leaving her without a face or hands. His owner called 911 mid-attack, saying: 'He's eating her.'

Tulip mania

In 1637 Amsterdam, a single Semper Augustus tulip bulb sold for 10,000 guilders — enough to buy a canal house. The market collapsed in one week in February, leaving traders holding contracts for flowers that didn't exist.