On June 2, 2010, Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga retired 26 consecutive Cleveland Indians batters. He needed one more out. Jason Donald hit a routine ground ball to first baseman Miguel Cabrera, who flipped... Read More →
Only 13 horses have done it. Out of the thousands of Thoroughbreds foaled each year, out of the hundreds that enter the Kentucky Derby, out of the handful good enough to win the first... Read More →
Severus Snape opened Harry Potter’s first Potions lesson by telling a room of first-years that there would be little foolish wand-waving, that many of them would hardly believe this was magic, and that he... Read More →
Between 1975 and 2005, exactly 42 basketball players did something that sounds, in hindsight, completely insane: they skipped college entirely and entered the NBA Draft straight from high school. No March Madness. No college... Read More →
In June 1997 Bloomsbury printed 500 hardback copies of a first novel by an unknown author, and sent 300 of them straight to libraries. The name on the cover was not quite the author’s... Read More →
The gold letters over the door of Ollivanders read Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C., and the entire window display was one wand on a faded purple cushion. Harry Potter walked in on... Read More →
Professor Kettleburn, Dumbledore told the school, had ‘retired at the end of last year in order to enjoy more time with his remaining limbs’, and Care of Magical Creatures passed to the gamekeeper. Hagrid’s... Read More →
The explanation for a large part of this list is delivered in Dumbledore’s office in Harry’s sixth year, straight after a Pensieve memory in which Tom Riddle, by then Voldemort, asks him for a... Read More →
At the end of Harry’s fourth year, in the hospital wing, Severus Snape pulled up his left sleeve and showed the Minister for Magic what was on his forearm. The Dark Mark, he told... Read More →
A book in the Hogwarts library called Magick Moste Evile brings up Horcruxes in its introduction and then declines to go on: “Of the Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor... Read More →
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