Syagrius

Possible extent of Syagrius's kingdom

Zimbabwean banknotes ranging from 10 dollars to 100 billion dollars printed within a one-year period. The magnitude of the currency scalars signifies the extent of the hyperinflation.

After Rome collapsed, one man in Gaul kept issuing Roman coins and commanding Roman troops. Syagrius called himself 'King of the Romans' until Clovis hunted him down in 486 CE and severed his head.

Brennus (leader of the Senones)

After sacking Rome in 390 BC — the only time the city fell for eight centuries — Brennus tossed his sword onto the ransom scales and sneered 'Vae victis': woe to the conquered.

Chris Burden

In 1971 Burden asked an assistant to shoot him in the left arm with a .22 rifle inside a Santa Ana garage. The bullet grazed the bone. The event lasted five seconds and was witnessed by a handful of people.

Thomson's lamp

Switch a lamp on and off — once per second, then half a second, then a quarter — completing infinite switches in two minutes flat. Mathematics gives no answer to whether it's on or off at minute two.

Ortolan bunting

French presidents draped napkins over their heads to eat ortolan buntings whole — bones, organs, beak — hiding the act from God's sight. Mitterrand ate two at his final meal, eight days before he died.

Book of Kells

Created around 800 CE on the island of Iona, the Book of Kells contains 680 vellum pages in which no two decorated initials repeat — hidden faces, serpents, and cats nursing kittens emerge under magnification, invisible to the naked eye.

Leonarda Cianciulli

Leonarda Cianciulli boiled three women into soap and stirred their fat into teacakes she served to neighbors in Correggio. Her motive: she believed human sacrifice would protect her son from dying in World War II.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

When New York's legislature sided against him in an 1867 rail dispute, Cornelius Vanderbilt cut all rail connections into Manhattan in January — mid-winter — strangling the city's supply lines until Albany capitulated.

Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe's central bank printed a one-hundred-trillion-dollar note in January 2009 — worth roughly $0.40 at issue. Three months later the currency was abandoned entirely. The note now sells for $20 on eBay.