Robert Mugabe

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Predjama Castle

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Mugabe's hyperinflation peaked in November 2008 at 89.7 sextillion percent monthly; Zimbabwe issued a $100 trillion banknote that could not buy a bus ticket, while life expectancy fell to 37 — the world's lowest.

The greatest tactical mind of his era — a man who beat Rome repeatedly — was killed by a clay roof tile hurled by an anonymous old woman from a balcony in Argos. He was 46.

Athens voted in 415 BC to conquer Sicily — 38,000 men, 200 ships — based on flawed intelligence and civilian fever. Every ship and every soldier was lost; the expedition ended the Athenian Empire.

Twenty-one women artists gutted an abandoned Hollywood mansion in 1972, turning each room into a staged female nightmare — one lined entirely with fried-egg ceramics evoking fried breasts. Whose domestic life were they actually describing?

In 1221, Mongol forces killed an estimated 700,000 people at Merv in a single week — then cut the qanats that had kept Central Asia's largest city alive for centuries. The desert never gave it back.

Built directly into the mouth of a vertical cave high on a cliff face in Slovenia, Predjama Castle housed a rebel knight named Erasmus of Lueg who held off a siege for over a year by receiving supplies through a secret tunnel.

The sea bunny's fluffy white 'ears' are rhinophores chemically reading seawater molecules; its spotted coat broadcasts toxin harvested from the sponges it eats — softness as a warning label.

KKR, Vornado, and Bain Capital bought Toys 'R' Us in 2005 for $6.6 billion, immediately saddled it with $5 billion in debt, and spent 13 years watching 33,000 employees lose jobs as the debt ate the stores.

Vidkun Quisling seized the Norwegian government by radio announcement on the night of Germany's 1940 invasion. He was executed by firing squad in 1945 — and his surname had already entered the dictionary as the universal word for traitor.