gnostek1 / 2Line graph illustrating the yields of 30-year US Treasury bonds over 1994. Yields for these bonds rose from 6.17% on January 12 to 8.16% on November 4.
01By 2019, Venezuela's GDP had contracted 65% from its 2013 peak — a collapse deeper than the U.S. Great Depression.
02In 2017, the average Venezuelan lost 11 kg (24 lbs) of body weight due to food scarcity — the 'Maduro diet.'
03Venezuela defaulted on $65 billion in sovereign and PDVSA bonds while maintaining diplomatic flights stocked with luxury goods.
gnostek1 / 2
01Lorz was photographed accepting a laurel wreath from Alice Roosevelt before the fraud was discovered.
02He was initially disqualified for life, then reinstated within months and won the 1905 Boston Marathon legitimately.
03The actual 1904 Olympic marathon winner, Thomas Hicks, was fed strychnine and brandy mid-race by his handlers.
gnostek1 / 8
01The 72 objects included a scalpel, a whip, honey, a feather, a rose, and one loaded pistol.
02By hour four, a stranger had cut her throat with a razor blade and licked the blood.
03She was weeping silently when the six hours ended — unaware she had been crying the whole time.
gnostek1 / 3
01The original Xbox was bundled with Halo: Combat Evolved, selling 8 million units in its first two years.
02Bungie designed the ring's open landscapes specifically to make players feel dwarfed by alien architecture.
03The Flood parasite, introduced midgame without warning, pivoted the entire tone of the campaign in a single corridor.
gnostek1 / 4Facsimile of the Einstein–Szilard letter
01Einstein later called signing the letter 'the one great mistake of my life.'
02Szilárd drafted the letter; Einstein signed it — lending the weight of his name alone.
03Roosevelt's response was to appoint a Uranium Committee within weeks of receiving it.
gnostek1 / 8
01The last log entry, dated November 25, 1872, placed the ship near the Azores; she was found 400 miles off course.
02Captain Benjamin Briggs had brought his wife and two-year-old daughter aboard; all three vanished with the crew.
03Nine of the 1,701 alcohol barrels were found empty on inspection — the only anomaly in an otherwise untouched cargo.
gnostek1 / 3
01Schwarzman's 2007 birthday party at the Park Avenue Armory cost an estimated $3 million and featured Rod Stewart.
02Blackstone's IPO that same year valued Schwarzman's personal stake at roughly $7.8 billion.
03He later donated $100 million to Yale, $150 million to MIT, and $188 million to Oxford — each naming a building.
gnostek1 / 9Kurt 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…
01Wernher von Braun, architect of the Saturn V moon rocket, had been an SS officer who used slave labor at Mittelwerk.
02The State Department and DOJ were deliberately kept out of early recruitment to bypass immigration law.
03Operation Paperclip files were classified until 1999; some scientists died with full U.S. military pensions.
gnostek1 / 28
01Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX were wiped out in 9 AD — those numbers were never reused by Rome.
02Germanic leader Arminius had served in the Roman army and used insider knowledge to spring the trap.
03Roman skulls with embedded nails were still being found at Kalkriese field in the 1980s excavations.