Khun Sa
Khun Sa was a Burmese warlord. He was also dubbed the "Opium King" due to his opium trading in the so-called Golden Triangle.
Purple Rain Riot
Purple Rain Riot was an anti-apartheid protest held in Cape Town on September 2, 1989, four days before South Africa's racially segregated parliament held its elections. A police water cannon with purple dye was turned on thousands of Mass Democratic Movement supporters who poured into the city in an attempt to march on South Africa's Parliament. White office blocks adjacent to Greenmarket Square were sprayed purple four stories high as a protester leapt onto the roof of the water cannon vehicle, seized the nozzle and attempted to turn the jet away from the crowds.
Maurice Bavaud
Maurice Bavaud was a Swiss theology student who in 1938 attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Willie Francis
Willie Francis is best known for being the first recipient of a failed execution by electrocution in the United States. He was a black man sentenced to death by electrocution by the state of Louisiana in 1945 (at age 16) for murdering Andrew Thomas, a Cajun drugstore owner in St. Martinville who had once employed him.
The Ice Block Expedition Of 1959
The Ice Block Expedition Of 1959 was a publicity stunt carried out by the Norwegian insulation material producer Glassvatt. Responding to a challenge from the radio station Radio Luxembourg, Glassvatt decided to equip a truck to bring a three-ton block of ice from the Arctic Circle to the Equator. There was no form of refrigeration applied, and the expedition was intended to display the efficiency of the insulating glass wool used. Crossing the Sahara, where the truck repeatedly got stuck in the sand, proved both a dangerous and laborious task. Once the truck had made it through the desert, however, and reached its final destination, it was revealed that the ice block had lost no more than 11% of its original weight. The expedition was an enormous success, judged both by the end result and by the media attention generated for the company, and has been called “the world’s greatest publicity stunt”.
La Castiglione
La Castiglione was an Italian courtesan and secret agent who achieved notoriety as a mistress of Emperor Napoleon III of France. She was an advocate for Italian unification through the influence she had upon the Emperor. She was also a significant figure in the early history of photography as a collaborator of photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson.
Solovetsky Islands
The Solovetsky Islands of northern Russia are probably best known for the Solovetsky Monastery, a great medieval monastery that became a notorious Soviet prison camp. But these remote islands were sacred for thousands of years before the monastery's foundation in 1429, as evidenced by an array of stone alignments, circles, and mysterious labyrinths that can still be seen there today.
Sarah Baartman
Sarah Baartman was the most famous of at least two hoikhoi women who were exhibited as freak show attractions in 19th-century Europe.
Victorian microscope slides
A microscope slide was originally a slider made of ivory or bone, containing specimens held between disks of translucent mica. These were popular in Victorian England until the Royal Microscopical Society introduced the standardized microscope slide in the form of a thin sheet of glass used to hold objects for examination under a microscope.
Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins
A world-worn roughneck with a fascination for Eastern philosophy and art, Norman Collins chased adventure from the California foothills to the gangster-run streets of Chicago and across the wide open China sea to Asia before settling in the remote Hawai’ian Islands. Then, from his tiny tattoo shop in Honolulu’s gritty Chinatown, he shaped and cussed it all into a pure, American folk art that redefined tattooing forever.