Bill Buckner

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)…

The Zimmermann telegram as it was sent from Washington, D.C. , to Ambassador Heinrich von Eckardt , the German ambassador to Mexico .

Kurt Debus (front row, third from the left), a former V-2 rocket scientist and SS officer who became a NASA director, sitting between US president John F. Kennedy and US vice president Lyndon B. Johnson in 1962 at a briefing at Blockhouse…

Mookie Wilson's routine grounder rolled through Bill Buckner's legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, scoring Ray Knight and handing the Mets a win. Boston had been one out from their first title since 1918.

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.

Patty Hearst

The Symbionese Liberation Army demanded $6 million in free food as Patty Hearst's ransom — then she picked up a rifle, renamed herself 'Tania,' and robbed a San Francisco bank with them 10 weeks later.

Dik-dik

The dik-dik marks territory by pressing a preorbital gland — located millimetres from its eyeball — directly onto twigs, essentially staking claim with its own face, one poke at a time.

Mary (elephant)

A five-ton circus elephant named Mary was hanged by a crane in Erwin, Tennessee, 1916 — the first chain snapped under her weight. She had killed her trainer the day before. A town decided justice required a railroad derrick.

Zimmermann telegram

German Foreign Secretary Zimmermann telegraphed Mexico in January 1917, proposing a wartime alliance and the return of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. British codebreakers intercepted it; Congress voted for war within weeks.

Project Ozma

In April 1960, Frank Drake aimed the 85-foot Green Bank telescope at Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani for six hours a day and heard nothing but a passing aircraft. He called it Project Ozma.

Operation Paperclip

After 1945, the U.S. Army recruited 1,600 Nazi scientists — including men who used concentration camp prisoners as test subjects — then falsified or destroyed their SS and war crime records to grant them visas.

Anwar al-Awlaki

Anwar al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico, was placed on a presidential kill list, denied due process in U.S. courts, and killed by CIA drone in Yemen in September 2011. His lawyers were told they needed a license to represent him.