Robert Hanssen

Coat of arms of the Indies Company, with the reclining figure representing the Mississippi River taken from Law's Compagnie d'Occident , and the motto Florebo quocumque ferar taken from Louis XIV's East India Company

Chinese propaganda poster from the Korean War era: "Vaccinate everyone, to crush the germ warfare of US imperialism !"

Robert Hanssen attended Mass every morning, carried a rosary, and sold the FBI's deepest secrets to Moscow for 22 years. He betrayed at least three Soviet double agents who were subsequently executed.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was hauled off an Air France plane at JFK in his underwear, May 2011, accused by hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo of assault — ending the near-certain next presidency of France.

Sheep wars

Wyoming and Colorado cattlemen declared open war on sheep, dynamiting camps and herding thousands of animals off cliff edges. In one 1909 raid on Spring Creek, raiders killed three sheepherders and clubbed nearly 4,000 sheep to death.

Sutton Hoo helmet

Buried in a Suffolk mound around 625 CE with a 27-metre ship and a king's full treasure, the Sutton Hoo helmet was found in 1939 in over 500 fragments — reconstructed, it still carries the pressed impression of a human face in its iron cheekplates.

Houston Astros sign stealing scandal

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.

John Law's Company

John Law sold France shares in the Louisiana Territory — mostly swamp — by convincing Paris that the Mississippi River ran through mountains of gold. Share prices rose 3,600% then fell to zero in 18 months.

Allegations of biological warfare in the Korean War

China charged the U.S. with dropping plague-infected fleas and cholera-laced clams over North Korea in 1952. Twenty-five captured American airmen confessed. Every confession was later recanted. The insects remain unresolved.

Ergotism

In 1951, an entire French village — Pont-Saint-Esprit — simultaneously hallucinated, convulsed, and attempted flight from windows after eating contaminated bread. A fungus called Claviceps purpurea may have fueled the Salem witch trials, too.

Murder of Tupac Shakur

Four bullets hit Tupac Shakur in a Las Vegas BMW on September 7, 1996; he died six days later at 25. No shooter was ever charged. The case remains open, the silence institutional.