gnostek1 / 11A tulip, known as "the Viceroy" ( viseroij ), displayed in the 1637 Dutch catalogue Verzameling van een Meenigte Tulipaanen ("Collection of a Crowd of Tulips"). Its bulb was offered for sale for between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders (florins)…
01The Semper Augustus, the most prized tulip, fetched 10,000 guilders in early 1637 — roughly 10 years of a skilled craftsman's wages.
02Futures contracts for tulip bulbs still underground were being traded in taverns; buyers never saw the actual bulb.
03By May 1637, Haarlem courts ruled tulip contracts unenforceable, effectively wiping out every outstanding futures position.
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01Tesem hounds received individual name-stelae — engraved stone markers — inside royal Egyptian tombs.
02Amenhotep II had four Tesem dogs buried alongside him in his tomb at the Valley of the Kings.
03Pre-dynastic pottery from 4000 BCE shows Tesem dogs on leashes — among the earliest leash depictions on Earth.
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01Hayashi killed 19 enemy soldiers in one engagement near Tendola, Italy, in April 1945.
02His Medal of Honor was withheld for 55 years; a 1996 law ordered a review of all Japanese American WWII awards.
03He was one of 21 Japanese Americans upgraded to Medal of Honor in a single White House ceremony in June 2000.
gnostek
01Foucault planned six volumes; he finished three before dying of AIDS in 1984 at age 57.
02He argued the 19th-century confession booth and the psychiatrist's couch were the same machine, producing the sexual subject.
03Volume One, published 1976, sold over a million copies — extraordinary for a book dense with Nietzsche and Bentham.
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01The tape was recorded September 2005 but sat in NBC archives for eleven years before leaking.
02Billy Bush was fired from the Today show within days; Trump was elected president weeks later.
03Trump called it 'locker room talk' — a phrase that entered political vocabulary as a category of defense.
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01The 1281 invasion fleet numbered an estimated 4,400 ships — one of history's largest amphibious forces.
02Japanese defenders held the Mongols at bay for 53 days before the typhoon finished the job.
03The word 'kamikaze' was born here — then repurposed by Japanese pilots 663 years later.
gnostek
01CIH was written by Taiwanese student Chen Ing-hau while attending Tatung University in 1998.
02It triggered on April 26, the Chernobyl disaster anniversary, earning the nickname "Chernobyl virus."
03Unlike most viruses, CIH overwrote BIOS firmware, making infected machines unable to boot at all.
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01Caesar's inner wall (contravallation) was 11 miles; his outer wall (circumvallation) was 14 miles — both built in under six weeks.
02The relief army of roughly 250,000 Gauls attacked both walls at once; Caesar personally rode to plug a breach, his red cloak used as a field signal.
03When the relief army failed, Vercingetorix surrendered 80,000 starving survivors — and the 20,000 Mandubii civilians Caesar had refused to feed died in the gap between the walls.
gnostek
01She underwent nine cosmetic surgeries between 1990 and 1993, all filmed and transmitted to galleries worldwide.
02During operations she read aloud from Lacan, Artaud, and Kristeva — refusing general anesthesia so she could perform.
03One implant placed a bump above each eyebrow; she modeled them on a Renaissance Venus and Diana.