Ben Walker

In​ 1598, shortly before his death, the Japanese leader, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, established the Council of Five Elders, a group of daimyo (feudal lords) who would govern until his son Hideyori came of age. It took just two years for one of the five, Tokugawa Ieyasu, to oust the seven-year-old ruler and unify Japan under his own banner. The Tokugawa shogunate governed Japan for the next 250...

On​ the baseball fields of America in the first half of the 20th century Bill Klem was the law. As an umpire between 1905 and 1941 he worked eighteen World Series. His nickname was the Old Arbitrator, and the decisions he made were absolute. He is said to have been the first umpire to communicate to the crowd in the stands as well as the players on the field. He didn’t just announce...

In October​ 2007, someone going by the name okaywhatever51838 posted a comment on the forum SteadyHealth.com under the headline ‘Weird sensation feels good’:

theres no real trigger for it. it just happenes randomly. its been happening since i was a kid and i’m 21 now … i’ll just be sitting or whatever doing whatever and it happens. its like in my head and all...

In​ Le Désordre AZERTY (2014), a collection of writings based on the layout of a French computer keyboard, the novelist Éric Chevillard wrote:

Literature, more than the zoo, makes it its mission to be a conservatory of animal life … could anybody go without this vocabulary: warthog, elephant, orangutan, gorilla, stork, anaconda, babirusa, dugong, manatee, beetle,...

Buzz Lightyear​ is naked, save for his standard-issue purple balaclava and a banana taped to his hairy stomach. He stands in front of the white wall of an art gallery; a label to his left reads ‘The Impossible Dream of a Pubic Fruit’ and an audience looks up at his giant grey legs. The image is one of five thousand that make up the digital artist Beeple’s collage Everydays:...