gnostek1 / 5Coat 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
01Mississippi Company shares rose from 500 livres in 1719 to 18,000 livres by January 1720 — a 3,500% gain in eight months.
02Law deliberately scattered fake reports of gold nuggets found in Louisiana to sustain investor hysteria in Paris coffeehouses.
03When the bubble burst, France's credit market collapsed so completely that the word 'bank' became a profanity in French for decades.
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01Castra Regina was built in 179 CE to garrison Legio III Italica on the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire.
02The fort's massive sandstone corner tower, the Porta Praetoria, still rises above street level in central Regensburg today.
03Regensburg's medieval street grid follows the Roman fort's internal axes — the legionary plan still organizes a living city.
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01The Wyoming Stock Growers Association paid each hired gun five dollars a day plus a $50 bonus per kill.
02The invaders killed Nate Champion and Nick Ray at the KC Ranch on April 9, 1892; Champion wrote in a diary while under siege.
03The U.S. Army's 6th Cavalry arrived and arrested the invaders — who were then released without trial.
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01Schneemann performed 'Interior Scroll' naked, reading aloud while unspooling paper from her vagina in front of a live audience.
02The text she read attacked what she called 'the leaky slit' — filmmakers' dismissal of her work as too bodily, too female.
03She was already 36 and a decade into her career before this 1975 performance made her internationally infamous.
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01Donaghy placed or received bets on 57 games between 2005 and 2007, including playoffs he was assigned to work.
02He was identified not by the NBA but by an FBI investigation into organized crime connections.
03After release, Donaghy alleged in a lawsuit that NBA officials instructed referees to extend a 2002 Western Conference Finals series.
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01The Treasury Department ruled that U.S. lawyers required a special license to legally represent al-Awlaki in court.
02A federal judge dismissed his father's lawsuit to remove him from the kill list, citing lack of standing.
03The Justice Department's legal memo authorizing the killing was classified for three years after his death.
gnostek1 / 5A Coleman white gas lantern mantle glowing at full brightness
01Gas mantles contained thorium-232, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 14 billion years.
02A single crushed mantle released radioactive dust directly into the breathing air of the room.
03Thorium mantles were still legally sold in camping supply shops in the United States into the 1990s.
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01Temperatures hit −35 °C; rifle bolts froze, morphine syrettes had to be thawed in mouths before use.
02The 1st Marine Division suffered 4,418 battle casualties and 7,338 frostbite casualties in 17 days.
03General Oliver Smith called it not a retreat but 'attacking in a different direction' — 78 miles to the coast.
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01Bertelsmann suppressed its own commissioned 1998 history after it misrepresented the company's wartime role.
02An independent commission found the company profited from the forced labor of Jewish prisoners during WWII.
03Today Bertelsmann owns Penguin Random House, RTL Group, and BMG — reaching billions of readers and viewers.