Wieliczka Salt Mine

A bile bear in a "crush cage" on Huizhou Farm, Huizhou , China

Tupac Shakur (right) and The Notorious B.I.G. (left), the two main figures of the East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry, prior to the conflict in 1993 in Los Angeles. The image was also used in the 2002 feature-length documentary film…

Wieliczka Salt Mine

Polish salt miners over seven centuries carved a full Gothic cathedral — complete with chandeliers, altarpieces, and bas-relief murals — entirely from grey salt, 101 metres below the earth's surface.

Bile bear

Bears on Chinese bile farms live for up to 25 years with permanent steel catheters punched through their abdomens, draining bile used in traditional medicine. Many develop liver cancer from the constant extraction.

East Coast–West Coast hip-hop rivalry

By 1997, two of rap's biggest figures were dead and their labels were in ruin. What began as promotional rivalry between Death Row and Bad Boy became geography that determined whose side you were on at gunpoint.

South African Police Service

Farm murder dockets vanish before trial; fewer than fifteen percent of farm-attack cases end in conviction — and the unit specifically created to investigate them was quietly dissolved in 2007.

Endless Ocean: Blue World

In Endless Ocean: Blue World, a player could hover beside a great white shark and hum softly through the controller's microphone until the shark slowed, turned, and drifted away peaceful. Kindness as the only mechanic.

Rod Blagojevich

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, phone tapped by the FBI, tried to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder — stating on tape, 'I've got this thing and it's fucking golden, and I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing.'

Battle of Chancellorsville

Lee's most brilliant tactical victory was also the shot that doomed the Confederacy: returning from a night reconnaissance, Stonewall Jackson was fired upon by his own men and died eight days later.

Katalonia

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.

Nikephoros II Phokas

The Byzantine emperor who reconquered Cilicia, Cyprus, and parts of Syria slept on a hair shirt on the floor and petitioned to have soldiers killed in battle canonized as martyrs by the Church.