Gruesome Ends
“Do not disturb my circles!” cried this Greek mathematician, who insisted on completing a problem after Roman soldiers barged into his home during the Siege of Syracuse; they subsequently slew him.
Who was Archimedes of Syracuse?
This group of mystic Islamic practices has been regularly persecuted by Muslim governments; adherents organize themselves in tariqa, religious orders led by a murshid (guide) to achieve self-purification and communion with God.
What is Sufism?
This German artist never actually saw an Indian rhinoceros, but his woodcut of one in 1515 stimulated the imaginations of Europe for more than two centuries, when more accurate illustrations became available.
Who was Albrecht Dürer?
Al Capone numbered among this prison’s 85,000 inmates across nearly 150 years, initially revolutionary for its solitary confinement system, but later shut down in 1971 and lay abandoned for nearly two decades.
What is the Eastern State Penitentiary?
Produced with a budget of $300,000, 1978’s Halloween, directed by this man, grossed $70,000,000, making it one of the most profitable independent films of all time and codifying the “slasher” genre.
Who is John Carpenter?
One popular story about Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, holds that he, in his quest for immortality, drank an alchemical elixir containing this element and died shortly after; supposedly, rivers of the same substance flowed through his terracotta-guarded tomb.
What is mercury/quicksilver?
This Italian philosopher and hermeticist challenged church doctrine by reaffirming the heliocentric model and asserting further that the universe was infinite and populated by infinite worlds; Pope Clement VIII ordered his death at the stake in 1600.
Who was Giordano Bruno?
“Canst thou draw out [this creature] with an hook?” asks God to Job, referring to this creature which became associated with chaos and the Devil and which the Gnostics believed encapsulated the entire world.
What is Leviathan?
This Norse explorer was exiled from Iceland in 982 and discovered the island he would name “Greenland”, establishing a settlement which would last for 400 years before mysteriously collapsing in the 1400s.
Who was Erik the Red?
Irish immigrants to America adopted the pumpkin as their jack-o’-lantern vessel, as it was much easier to carve than this vegetable, which some still use in their home country.
What is the rutabaga/swede/neep/turnip?
After eating an enormous quantity of cherries and iced milk at a July 4th fundraising event, this United States president came down with an unknown stomach disease and died five days later, making his presidential term the third-shortest in history.
Who was Zachary Taylor?
Although more well-known for his philosophical and psychological works, this man also wrote widely on mysticism and spiritualism, cofounding the oldest parapsychological research society in the United States.
Who was William James?
During this Gilded Age conflict, paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh sought to outdo one another in hunting fossils, employing such tactics as stealing and destroying each other’s finds.
What was the Bone Wars?
The exact origin of the Darvaza Gas Crater, located in this country, is unknown. Whether it collapsed naturally in the 1960s or after Soviet oil drilling in the 1970s, the perpetually burning gas field has been called “the Doors to Hell”.
What is Turkmenistan?
Although the Mexican Día de los Muertos corresponds with the same Christian season as Halloween, some scholars also believe it derives from Aztec practices, particularly manifesting in the ancestral altar, known under this name in Spanish.
What is the ofrenda?
Franz Reichelt, an Austro-Hungarian tailor, repeatedly petitioned authorities to test his novel wearable parachute by jumping off this structure. He got his wish, but did not fly; his fatal 1912 plummet was recorded on newsreel.
What is the Eiffel Tower?
The Hymn to Demeter describes the abduction and eventual (intermittent) return of Persephone, alongside the origin of these religious rites dedicated to the divine mother-daughter pair.
What were the Eleusinian mysteries?
Man hunted this flightless bird to extinction, whether for food or for its grey down feathers; the last of its kind was spotted in 1852, though 78 skins are preserved today, mostly in museums.
What was the Great Auk?
Captain Ambrose Cowley supposedly discovered “Pepys Island”, named after the English diarist and politician, but modern scholars believe it to have been a “phantom island”, mistaken with this archipelago.
Alongside Allhallowtide, one of the major influences on Halloween was Samhain, a Gaelic festival marking the onset of winter. The equinoxial opposite of Samhain is this festival, the Gaelic “May Day”.
What is Beltane?
Captain Robert Falcon Scott led this scientific expedition to reach the geographic South Pole; Roald Amundsen beat them by 34 days, and Scott’s party perished on the return journey, but they did recover the first discovered Antarctic fossils.
What was the Terra Nova Expedition?
Some have disputed the supposed astronomical expertise of these people, indigenous to Mali and Burkina Faso; French anthropologist Marcel Griaule noted their seeming knowledge of the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter.
Who are the Dogon people?
This circus elephant crushed a spectator who had harassed her at the Forepaugh Circus, and she was subsequently electrocuted to death in 1903; the Edison Studios film of her execution still exists today.
Who was Topsy the Elephant?
This theater, located in the Pigalle district of Paris, specialized in shocking and often lurid horror shows from 1897 until its closure in 1962, employing low-tech special effects for particularly gory displays.
What is the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol?
Union sympathizers rushed the statehood process for this then-territory, which became a state on Halloween, in time for the 1864 presidential election, although Lincoln ultimately didn’t need its help for re-election.
What is Nevada?