Gabriel's horn

3D illustration of Gabriel's horn

01Tilikum was responsible for three human deaths: Keltie Byrne (1991), Daniel Dukes (1999), and Dawn Brancheau (2010).
02Despite the deaths, SeaWorld continued using Tilikum for breeding; he sired 21 calves, propagating his genes through the captive population.
03He was captured at age two, separated from his mother, and held in a concrete pool — trainers noted severe psychological deterioration over decades.

A 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)…

A Jake and Dinos Chapman fused mannequin piece from the exhibition Come and See at the Serpentine Gallery

Side and top view of A-, B-, and Z-DNA conformations.

Gabriel's Horn — the surface generated by rotating y=1/x — holds exactly π cubic units of paint, yet its inner wall has infinite area. Pour the paint in; it fills. Try to coat the walls; you never finish.

Tilikum (orca)

Tilikum, captured off Iceland at age two in 1983, killed three people across two marine parks over 21 years. SeaWorld used him as its primary breeding bull anyway — he fathered 21 of the park's captive orcas.

Against Our Will

Susan Brownmiller's 'Against Our Will' (1975) was the first book-length argument that rape was a political instrument, not a crime of passion — documented across war, slavery, marriage, and police precincts. It sold over a million copies.

Phineas Gage

In 1848, a 3.5-cm iron tamping rod blasted through Phineas Gage's left cheekbone and out the top of his skull. He survived, walked to a cart — and became an entirely different man.

Tulip mania

In 1637 Amsterdam, a single Semper Augustus tulip bulb sold for 10,000 guilders — enough to buy a canal house. The market collapsed in one week in February, leaving traders holding contracts for flowers that didn't exist.

Jake and Dinos Chapman

The Chapmans bought a complete set of Goya's 'Disasters of War' etchings — 80 prints of dismembered soldiers — and painted Ronald McDonald and clown faces over the victims' heads. They called it 'rectification.'

Zinedine Zidane

Zidane headbutted Marco Materazzi in the chest in extra time of the 2006 World Cup final, received a red card, and France lost on penalties — his last professional act ever.

Siad Barre

Siad Barre fled Mogadishu in a tank in January 1991, leaving behind a capital he had shelled into ruins; the artillery campaign against his own city killed thousands and destroyed Somalia's central state for a generation.

A-DNA

In 1952, Rosalind Franklin produced Photo 51 — the clearest X-ray of DNA's helix ever taken; her colleague Maurice Wilkins showed it to James Watson without her knowledge, and Watson and Crick won the 1962 Nobel.