Monique Wittig

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Radium painters working in a factory

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'Lesbians are not women' — Monique Wittig said it plainly in 1981 at the MLA conference, scandalizing the room. She meant: woman is a class, and lesbians have already defected.

David Blaine stood sealed inside a block of ice for 63 hours in Times Square in 2000. His legs swelled to the point of compartment syndrome; surgeons nearly amputated both. He called it a magic trick.

The Mirdita, a highland Catholic Albanian clan, rose against the Serbian army in 1921 — not over nationalism or religion, but because Serbian officers had violated blood-feud protocols that predated any state they recognized.

One descent on the Col de Portet d'Aspet killed Casartelli and a stone memorial marks the exact concrete block that ended him. Riders cross it every Tour, sometimes placing a hand on the monument.

Young women at the US Radium Corporation painted watch dials with their lips to point the brush; their jaws later crumbled and fell out. Company doctors falsified medical records while executives stockpiled internal warnings.

Brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht split their German grocery chain in 1961 along the Ruhr River — one taking the north, one the south — and never reconciled. Two global empires grew from a single family silence.

Houston Astros players watched a live camera feed of the catcher's signals and banged a trash can once or twice to tell batters what pitch was coming. They won the World Series doing it.

In July 1936, Barcelona's anarchists collectivized every barbershop, hotel, and tram line within weeks of Franco's coup. Waiters became co-owners. One journalist noted the menu prices hadn't changed, but the waiters walked differently.

The swordfish heats its own eyes and brain to 28°C above the surrounding ocean, running a biological furnace to keep vision razor-sharp at depth and speed. It is a warm-eyed predator in a cold, dark sea.