In 1953, Joseph Stalin suffered a stroke which would lead to his death. The chance of his survival were very low due to several reasons. “The Doctors Plot” had be occurring for the last two years, in which Jewish doctors in the Soviet Union were falsely accused of conspiring to kill high ranking Soviets. This led to the imprisonment and death of many of the Soviet Union’s doctors. In fact, the KGB were currently torturing Stalin’s own personal doctor. High Ranking Soviets were also very weary of calling any doctors that were left due to the fear that Stalin may accuse them of trying to usurp power or anything really and have them killed or imprisoned if he got better. Basically everyone was kinda sick of him and knew that eventually it would be them on the chopping block. When doctors were finally called, it was too late. Barely anyone dared to even enter his room. When his maid finally did, she found him face down on the floor.

During much of the XVII and XVIII centuries women were not allowed to sing in choirs and opera. So in Italy boys who showed a lot of singing talent as kids were transformed into "castrati", in other words, they were castrated before puberty in order to prevent their voices to turn deeper so they could play women and characters with higher voices in opera, or be sopranos and mezzosopranos in choirs. In the process of castration many were administred near lethal doses of opium, causing many of them to die in the process.

The last of the castrati was a man called Alessandro Moreschi, who used to sang in the vatican choir. He died in the 1920s, and in fact he recorded himself singing in the early 1900s, leading to the only surviving archives of a castrati.

Context: The Tree of Ténéré was considered to be the most isolated tree in the world. The tree survived for around 300 years in one of the harshest environments in the world. It resided in the Sahara Desert where it was the only tree around for 250 miles. The tree overcame all odds by spreading it’s roots 100 ft below the surface in order to reach the water table that laid below. It was notable for being a well known landmark for travelers in a harsh and unforgiving environment. It also stood as a testament to the once green Sahara that later became the barren wasteland we know today.

In 1973, a drunk driver smashed into it, snapping its trunk, killing the tree. The driver became known as the man who managed to crash into the only obstacle in miles.

"Imamura was detained at Rabaul by the Australian Army, as he and troops under his command were accused of war crimes, including the execution of Allied prisoners of war. One infamous example highlighted how the prisoners captured in eastern Java were locked up in bamboo cattle cages and thrown overboard into shark-infested waters. In April 1946, Imamura wrote to the Australian commander at Rabaul, requesting that his own trial for war crimes be expedited in order to speed the prosecution of war criminals under his command. Imamura was charged with "unlawfully [disregarding and failing] to discharge his duty ... to control the members of his command, whereby they committed brutal atrocities and other high crimes ...". He was tried by an Australian military court at Rabaul on 1–16 May 1947; he was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for ten years. Imamura served his imprisonment at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo until he was released in 1954. As he found that his imprisonment was too light with respect to his responsibility for the crimes of his subordinates, he had a replica of the prison built in his garden, and he stayed there until his death.

One of unit 731 many experiments was to freeze people then splash them with boiling water they figured out the best temperature for treatment.