Revolt of the Batavi

"Queens" of Mysore : left, Krishnaraja Wadiyar III 's first wife, Devajammani has a discoloration around the mouth, thought to be due to the blowing of variolation dust in the nose ("nasal insufflation"). Right, his second wife shows the…

Heracles , wearing his characteristic lion-skin, club in right hand, leash in left, presenting a three-headed Cerberus, snakes coiling from his snouts, necks and front paws, to a frightened Eurystheus hiding in a giant pot. Caeretan hydria…

Revolt of the Batavi

The Batavians were Rome's most trusted cavalry — exempt from taxes, garrisoned near the emperor — until 69 AD, when their commander Julius Civilis led them to annihilate five Roman legions in a single revolt.

Fallout 3

Megaton, a settlement of innocent NPCs, can be detonated with a nuclear bomb the player plants in its center. The explosion has a custom orchestral score. The quest giver hands you a penthouse overlooking the crater.

Copper Scroll

Inscribed on a sheet of copper rolled up with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Copper Scroll lists 64 treasure locations holding tons of gold and silver. Scholars dispute whether any of it was real.

Iamblichus

He rose ten cubits off the ground — glowing gold — while his students watched twice. A Syrian Neoplatonist who made ritual magic philosophically respectable. What do you do with a man who keeps floating?

Variolation

Ottoman physicians rubbed smallpox scabs into children's skin scratches centuries before Jenner's vaccine. The practice cut mortality from roughly 30% to under 2%, yet Europe called it barbarism until the death tolls reversed.

John Allen Muhammad

John Allen Muhammad recruited 15-year-old Lee Boyd Malvo and engineered the DC sniper campaign as cover for a planned single murder — his ex-wife — so a custody case would disappear. Ten strangers died for that calculation.

Planetarium hypothesis

Milan Ćirković's hypothesis: a god-tier intelligence has quarantined us inside a fake sky, letting us see only what it permits. Every telescope aimed at the stars reads a curated lie.

Manzanar

At Manzanar, California, fathers imprisoned behind barbed wire signed their sons' draft papers — sons already bleeding in Italy. Some fathers received notification of death before the paperwork came back.

Cerberus

Greeks slipped honey cakes called meli into the mouths of their dead to bribe Cerberus at the underworld gate. Virgil's Aeneas carries one. The three-headed dog's middle head was considered the most dangerous.