John Law's Company

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

A map of Belgic Gaul in the first century BC, showing the relative position of the Nervii

01The Nervii reportedly forbade wine and merchants among themselves to keep their warriors undiluted by Roman goods or influence.
02Caesar describes grabbing a shield from an anonymous soldier and entering the front rank personally — he did not know the man's name.
03The Nervii, once 60,000 warriors strong by Caesar's count, were reduced to 500 fighting men and three chieftains after the battle at the Sabis.

Illustrated Jonah from the 15th-century Kennicott Bible

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.

Nikolai Dzhumagaliev

Soviet serial killer Nikolai Dzhumagaliev served human meat kebabs to guests at dinner parties in 1980s Kazakhstan, his metal front teeth gleaming. At least seven women were killed and partially eaten before a guest found a head in his fridge.

Killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

Sixteen-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen eating dinner in Yemen, was killed by a drone two weeks after his father. The Obama administration later said it was a mistake. His grandfather asked why.

Nervii

The Nervii attacked so fast that Roman soldiers were still tying their helmet straps when the spears hit. Caesar snatched a shield from a passing soldier and stood in the front line himself — without a helmet.

Carthage

Carthage's triple walls sheltered stables for 300 war elephants and 4,000 horses within their mass; Rome's demolition in 146 BCE was so absolute that archaeologists still argue over where the walls stood.

Abu Sayyaf

In 2014, Isnilon Hapilon pledged bayah — formal oath of allegiance — to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, absorbing his Abu Sayyaf faction into the Islamic State's caliphate project. The pledge turned a kidnap-for-ransom gang into an ISIS province.

Book of Jonah

Jonah, swallowed by a fish, sulks when God spares the city he hated — and then weeps over a dead plant. Scholars now classify it as deliberate comic fiction targeting 5th-century Jewish nationalism.

Large Hadron Collider

The LHC accelerates protons to 99.9999991% of light speed inside a 27 km ring cooled to −271°C — colder than deep space — to smash them into the Higgs boson's first confirmed appearance.

Virginia Tech shooting

Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty across two Virginia Tech buildings in 109 minutes, mailing a manifesto to NBC between the first and second attacks. The deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history rewrote federal gun-purchase law.