Fabio Casartelli

01Chinese prisoners captured at Talas in 751 AD transmitted papermaking to the Islamic world — the technology spread faster than any army.
02Baghdad's first paper mill opened around 793 AD; by 900, Islamic scholars were producing books on a scale China alone had managed.
03Europe's first paper mill appeared in Fabriano, Italy, in 1276 — 525 years after Talas, and only after Moorish Spain passed the technique.

Zimbabwean banknotes ranging from 10 dollars to 100 billion dollars printed within a one-year period. The magnitude of the currency scalars signifies the extent of the hyperinflation.

Fabio Casartelli

An Olympic gold medalist struck his unprotected skull on a stone culvert at 88 km/h on Stage 15, 1995. Teammates crossed the finish line the next day holding his bicycle above their heads.

Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging

The AWB's tri-legged swastika flag flew at rallies where Eugene Terre'Blanche rode a white horse before crowds of 50,000 — a movement that threatened civil war, then imploded when apartheid ended anyway.

Paper

At the Battle of Talas in 751 AD, Tang China lost to an Abbasid army — and among the Chinese prisoners were papermakers. Within 50 years, Baghdad had its first paper mill. Rome had none for another 400 years.

LIGO

LIGO's mirrors must hold still to one-ten-thousandth the width of a proton. That precision, costing $1.1 billion, caught the first gravitational wave in September 2015 — a collision 1.3 billion years old.

The hand of God

Maradona punched the ball into England's net with his left fist in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal, then told reporters God's hand had done it. Argentina won 2–1 and went on to lift the trophy.

Public Universal Friend

After a near-death fever in 1776, the Public Universal Friend declared the person born Jemima Wilkinson had died and only a genderless spiritual vessel remained — then gathered thousands of followers across colonial New England and founded a settlement in upstate New York.

Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

At its worst, Zimbabwe's inflation hit 89.7 sextillion percent annually. Workers were paid twice a day so they could spend wages before lunch erased the value.

Paris Commune

Paris workers governed themselves for 72 days in 1871, burning the Tuileries Palace on their way out. The French army then shot an estimated 10,000 Communards in one week. Self-rule ended in a mass grave.

Michael Rockefeller

Michael Rockefeller, son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, treaded water off New Guinea for hours in 1961 before swimming toward shore. The Asmat people there practiced ritual cannibalism.