gnostek1 / 6Zimbabwean 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.
01By November 2008, Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate was officially 89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000% — 89.7 sextillion percent.
02The Reserve Bank issued a 100-trillion-dollar note; it bought roughly three eggs at the time of printing.
03Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency entirely in 2009, making the US dollar and South African rand legal tender.
gnostek1 / 12Wall Street during the bank panic in October 1907. Federal Hall National Memorial , with its statue of George Washington , is seen on the right.
01Morgan held senior bankers captive in his private library at 36th Street; the doors were locked from the outside by his staff.
02The panic began with the collapse of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, which lost $8 million in deposits in three hours.
03The 1907 crisis directly inspired the creation of the Federal Reserve, established six years later in 1913.
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01Edison Manufacturing Company filmed Topsy's electrocution; the film, 'Electrocuting an Elephant,' was commercially distributed that same year.
02Topsy killed three men in three years, including an abusive trainer who fed her a lit cigarette.
03She was given cyanide-laced carrots, then 6,600 volts — organizers had originally planned to hang her publicly.
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01Aum Shinrikyo's 1995 Tokyo subway attack killed 13, injured 50 severely, and affected nearly 1,000 commuters.
02Asahara charged disciples $2,000 to drink his bathwater, marketed as 'Miracle Pond,' for spiritual initiation.
03His group also released sarin in Matsumoto in 1994, killing 8 — a less-known earlier attack.
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01Colonel Connor reported 224 Shoshone dead; tribal oral histories count closer to 400, including infants.
02Soldiers destroyed 75 lodges and seized 1,000 bushels of grain, leaving survivors to freeze in January cold.
03Connor was promoted to brigadier general and praised in San Francisco newspapers within weeks of the massacre.
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01Koevoet members received a cash bonus for each confirmed SWAPO guerrilla killed; body parts sometimes served as confirmation.
02The unit operated under the South African Police, not the military, deliberately shielding it from the Geneva Convention's oversight.
03Koevoet's kill-to-contact ratio was the highest of any counterinsurgency unit in the Namibian bush war — approximately 1,000 kills per year at peak.
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01Winchester built continuously for 38 years, from 1884 until her death in 1922, reportedly guided by nightly séances.
02The house has 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, and at least 3 doors opening directly onto exterior walls or sheer drops.
03Sarah inherited $20 million and roughly 50% of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company after her husband's death in 1881.
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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.
gnostek
01Getty's grandson John Paul Getty III was 16 when kidnapped in Rome in July 1973.
02The severed ear and a lock of hair arrived at a Rome newspaper six weeks into the standoff.
03Getty Sr. lent his son the final ransom sum at 4% interest — repayment was contractually required.