On March 24, 1863, at midnight, Peter escaped captivity from the Louisiana plantation of Capt. John Lyons. Lyons owned 3,000 acres and 38 enslaved people in St. Landry Parish. Peter traveled through swamps and rivers, covering miles of dangerous terrain. His goal was to reach Union forces stationed in Baton Rouge.

Macropinna microstoma, also known as the barreleye fish, was first described in 1939, but for decades, little was known about it. This deep-sea fish lives at depths of 600 to 800 meters (2,000 to 2,600 feet) in the Pacific Ocean, where sunlight barely reaches.

On November 9, 1970, a 45-foot (14 m) sperm whale washed ashore near Florence, Oregon. The massive carcass began to rot, emitting a foul odor. Local officials debated how to remove it, ultimately deciding to use dynamite to disintegrate the remains.

In June 1936, a shipyard worker named August Landmesser stood among a crowd at the Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg. While hundreds raised their arms in the Nazi salute during the launch of the naval training vessel Horst Wessel, Landmesser stood with his arms crossed, refusing to salute.

In 1947, the U.S. Air Force began experiments to study how the human body withstands extreme deceleration, aiming to improve aircraft safety. Dr. John Stapp volunteered for the high-speed rocket sled tests, experiencing forces no human had endured before.

In April 1961, Soviet surgeon Leonid Rogozov was stationed at the remote Novolazarevskaya research station in Antarctica. At 27 years old, he was the only doctor among the 12-member team.

On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and Russian envoy Baron Edouard de Stoeckl signed the Treaty of Cession. For $7.2 million, Tsar Alexander II ceded Alaska to the United States, ending Russia’s 125-year presence in North America.

In 1996, Alan Sokal, a physics professor, submitted a nonsensical paper titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” to the cultural studies journal Social Text. The paper argued that quantum gravity was a social construct and was filled with jargon and flattering references to postmodernist thinkers.

The Speyer Bottle, or Römerwein aus Speyer, was found in 1867 during the excavation of a 4th-century Roman tomb near Speyer, Germany. The bottle, sealed for over 1,600 years, was buried alongside a Roman noble, likely as part of a burial ritual.

During World War I, Adrian de Wiart was shot in the face, losing his left eye and part of his ear. Despite this, he returned to combat and continued leading troops on the battlefield.