John Law (economist)

Predjama Castle

Wall Street during the bank panic in October 1907. Federal Hall National Memorial , with its statue of George Washington , is seen on the right.

Figure 1. The arrangement of hydrogen atoms (black circles) about oxygen atoms (open circles) in ice. Two hydrogen atoms (bottom ones) are close to the central oxygen atom while two of them (top ones) are far and closer to the two other…

John Law (economist)

A Scottish duelist who killed a man in 1694 talked his way into running France's entire money supply — then collapsed it. He fled Paris in a stolen carriage, died broke in Venice.

Fall of Singapore

Britain's 'impregnable' Singapore fortress had fifteen-inch coastal guns pointed permanently seaward. Japan's 30,000 troops arrived on bicycles from the Malayan jungle to the north and accepted the surrender of 80,000 Allied soldiers.

Cretto di Burri

Alberto Burri entombed the ruins of Gibellina — destroyed by a 1968 earthquake that killed 231 — in white concrete, preserving every street and foundation. The town-shaped slab is now a kilometer-long sculpture no one lives in.

Predjama Castle

Built directly into the mouth of a vertical cave high on a cliff face in Slovenia, Predjama Castle housed a rebel knight named Erasmus of Lueg who held off a siege for over a year by receiving supplies through a secret tunnel.

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma left his 1733 Montagnana cello — valued at $2.5 million — in a New York taxi trunk in 1999. The cab company traced the driver within an hour. He played the cello at the reunion press conference.

Panic of 1907

In October 1907, J.P. Morgan physically locked the nation's top bankers inside his Manhattan library at midnight and refused to open the doors until they signed a $25 million rescue pledge at 4:45 a.m.

Spin ice

In dysprosium titanate crystals cooled near absolute zero, magnetic charges separate and move independently — behaving exactly like isolated north-only monopoles that physics said could not exist as free particles.

Anwar al-Awlaki

Anwar al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico, was placed on a presidential kill list, denied due process in U.S. courts, and killed by CIA drone in Yemen in September 2011. His lawyers were told they needed a license to represent him.

Ali Hassan al-Majid

"Chemical Ali" ordered nerve-agent strikes on Kurdish villages, killing up to 100,000 people, then calmly signed the paperwork annexing Kuwait. He was hanged in 2010, convicted four times over.