Mountain Meadows Massacre

The DU penetrator of a 30 mm round from the GAU-8 Avenger

Anthony "Tino" De Angelis

A 13th–14th-century scroll of the Book of Esther from Fez, Morocco , held at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris . Traditionally, a scroll of Esther is given only one roller, fixed to its lefthand side, rather than the two used for a Torah…

Ferrofluid on glass, with a neodymium magnet underneath

Takifugu in a tank

Mountain Meadows Massacre

In 1857, Mormon militiamen and Paiute allies killed 120 Arkansas emigrants at Mountain Meadows, Utah — then blamed the Paiutes for twenty years. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever executed, in 1877, shot at the site.

Depleted uranium

The US Army fired roughly 300 tons of depleted uranium rounds into Iraq and Kuwait, then left the radioactive debris in the sand. Birth defect rates in Basra spiked in the years that followed.

Salad oil scandal

Tino De Angelis filled vast New Jersey tanks mostly with seawater, floated a thin film of soybean oil on top for inspectors, and borrowed $175 million against it. The 1963 collapse took down two Wall Street firms in a single afternoon.

Book of Esther

God's name never appears in the Book of Esther — the only biblical book with this omission. The plot hinges on a beauty contest for a drunk king and a eunuch's wounded pride.

Ferrofluid

Ferrofluid — iron nanoparticles suspended in oil — erupts into precise black spikes the instant a magnet approaches, each spike a tiny compass needle fighting surface tension. Remove the magnet and the spikes vanish instantly.

Estelle Ishigo

Estelle Ishigo was white, American-born, and under no legal obligation to be interned. She followed her Japanese American husband Arthur into Poston, Arizona, anyway — and drew what she saw. Her sketches are among the only civilian visual records of camp life.

Samuel Doe

Master Sergeant Samuel Doe — ninth-grade dropout — overthrew Liberia's government in 1980, then had 13 cabinet ministers stripped, tied to telephone poles on a Monrovia beach, and shot before a crowd.

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.

Fugu

A single fugu pufferfish carries tetrodotoxin enough to kill 30 adults; there is no antidote. Japanese chefs must train three years and pass a written and practical exam — the failure rate exceeds 35%.