Col de Portet d'Aspet

Heracles , wearing his characteristic lion-skin, club in right hand, leash in left, presenting a three-headed Cerberus, snakes coiling from his snouts, necks and front paws, to a frightened Eurystheus hiding in a giant pot. Caeretan hydria…

The epitome of the Rohan Master's art is the " Lamentation of the Virgin " (f. 135, Pl. 57) from the Hours of the Cross. The grieving Virgin cannot be consoled by the Apostle John , who looks up in consternation at a saddened God.

01Caesar's soldiers killed roughly 10,000 Pompeians and captured 15,000 at Thapsus; the lopsided toll suggests a rout, not a battle.
02Ancient sources including Plutarch record Caesar falling into a seizure at the onset, carried to a nearby tower to recover while his army fought without him.
03After the battle, Caesar's own veterans executed several surrendered enemy officers on the spot — Caesar was reportedly unable to stop them.

Col de Portet d'Aspet

One descent on the Col de Portet d'Aspet killed Casartelli and a stone memorial marks the exact concrete block that ended him. Riders cross it every Tour, sometimes placing a hand on the monument.

Tom Horn

Tom Horn, ex-Army scout and Pinkerton agent, hired out his rifle at $500 per corpse — then drunkenly confessed the details to a deputy. He was hanged in 1903 on his own words.

Cerberus

Greeks slipped honey cakes called meli into the mouths of their dead to bribe Cerberus at the underworld gate. Virgil's Aeneas carries one. The three-headed dog's middle head was considered the most dangerous.

Rohan Hours

In the Rohan Hours, painted around 1420, a skeletal dying man lies naked on bare ground while God leans down from the sky to address him directly — a private conversation between a mortal and the divine, held across a page smaller than a hardback book.

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.

Iamblichus

He rose ten cubits off the ground — glowing gold — while his students watched twice. A Syrian Neoplatonist who made ritual magic philosophically respectable. What do you do with a man who keeps floating?

Peregrine falcon

At 240 mph, the peregrine falcon folds into a teardrop and becomes the fastest thing alive — its specially baffled nostrils managing airflow a jet engineer would envy. No animal on Earth has ever been clocked faster.

Wall Street crash of 1929

On October 24, 1929 — Black Thursday — 12.9 million shares changed hands before noon. The suicide of ruined investors became so expected that hotel clerks asked guests: 'For sleeping or jumping?'

Battle of Thapsus

Before Caesar gave the signal, his troops charged anyway — ancient sources say he may have collapsed in an epileptic seizure at the critical moment. The battle became a massacre Caesar could not fully control.