Rai stones
Rai stones are large, circular stone disks carved out of limestone in the island of Yap, Micronesia. Locals have used these stones as a form of unusual currency.
Jacques Mesrine
Jacques Mesrine was a French criminal who was also briefly active in the United States and Canada. He was responsible for numerous bank robberies, burglaries, and kidnappings, and claimed in an autobiography he wrote from prison to have committed upwards of forty murders. He was adept at disguising himself (earning himself the moniker "The Man of a Hundred Faces") and making successful escapes from prison.
Lo-life
In 1987, New York City was home to two gangs, both utterly obsessed with the fashion label Ralph Lauren – and neither was made up of WASPY, country club types. There was Ralphie’s Kids from St John’s and Utica in Crown Heights, and the amusingly titled United Shoplifters Association hailing from Marcus Garvey Village in Brownsville. They would occasionally pass each other, exchanging knowing nods or stopping to pose for group pictures, until the following year when members Thirstin Howl the 3rd and Rack-Lo would bring the two parties together. Their respective names were ditched and the Lo Lifes were born – a tribe of stylish young men with a love of Polo by Ralph Lauren.
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich is an organized crime boss believed by European and United States federal law enforcement agencies to be the "boss of bosses" of most Russian Mafia syndicates in the world. Mogilevich is nicknamed "The Brainy Don" because of his business acumen and his degree in economics from Lviv University.
Lake Peigneur
Lake Peigneur was a 3-meter deep freshwater lake popular with sportsmen until an unusual man-made disaster on November 20, 1980 changed the structure of the lake and surrounding land. The lake then drained into the hole, expanding the size of that hole as the soil and salt were washed into the mine by the rushing water, filling the enormous caverns left by the removal of salt over the years. The resultant whirlpool sucked in the drilling platform, eleven barges, many trees and 65 acres (260,000 m2) of the surrounding terrain.
Sawney Bean
Sawney Bean was the legendary head of a 48-member clan in 15th- or 16th-century Scotland, reportedly executed for the mass murder and cannibalization of over 1,000 people.
Rollie Free
Rollie Free was a motorcycle racer who broke the American motorcycle land speed record in 1948. He was prone to wearing a bathing suit.
Atavism
Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type. In biology, an atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations before.
Howard Marks
For 20 years, one man - Oxford-educated Howard Marks - was responsible for running an international drug market that shipped marijuana into the US by the ton.
Seawise Giant
Seawise Giant was a supertanker and the longest ship ever built, and possessed the greatest deadweight tonnage ever recorded. Fully laden, her displacement was 657,019 tonnes.