The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Ecclesiastes 3 in the Leningrad Codex

Gasoline in a glass jar

U.S. representative Michael Myers , second from left, holds an envelope containing $50,000 that he just received from undercover FBI agents

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.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Link turns into a wolf in a world drained of color, guided by a sharp-tongued imp named Midna who rides his back and slowly, reluctantly, becomes his closest companion. The friendship arrives before you notice it.

Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes uses the word 'hebel'—breath, vapor, nothing—38 times in 12 chapters. Its conclusion that all human effort is meaningless is so extreme the rabbis debated pulling it from the canon entirely.

Gasoline

Thomas Midgley Jr. invented both leaded gasoline in 1921 and Freon in 1928 — one poisoned global blood lead levels for fifty years, one carved a hole in the ozone layer. One man, two planetary-scale mistakes.

Heck Thomas

Deputy marshal Heck Thomas tracked Bill Doolin through Oklahoma darkness and killed him with a shotgun. Then he propped the outlaw's corpse upright in an open casket for newspaper photographers — proof of payment.

Luis Ocaña

Ocaña led Eddy Merckx by 9 minutes — the greatest gap in Tour history — when a Pyrenean thunderstorm dissolved the road under him in 1971. He crashed; Merckx refused to wear yellow the next day.

Agathocles of Syracuse

Besieged in Syracuse, Agathocles loaded 14,000 men onto ships and invaded Carthage directly — turning his own siege inside out. He reputedly drank from enemy skulls and rose from a potter's wheel to a throne.

Abscam

FBI agents dressed as Arab oil sheikhs invited seven U.S. congressmen to a fake Washington townhouse and filmed them pocketing cash bribes — one congressman stuffed $25,000 into his suit pockets on camera and said, 'I'm gonna keep this.'

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.

Rostam Farrokhzad

Rostam Farrokhzad held the Sasanian line at Qadisiyyah for four days in 636 AD; legend gives his sister armor and a horse when his corpse reached her — the last cavalry charge of Persian antiquity.