In 2005, World of Warcraft accidentally caused a virtual pandemic when a boss fight introduced a disease called Corrupted Blood. Players unknowingly carried it out of the dungeon and spread it through crowded cities, killing low level characters in seconds. Some players tried to help the infected, others deliberately spread it, and entire cities became death zones. The outbreak caused so much chaos that Blizzard had to intervene with server resets and patches. Epidemiologists later studied it as a model for how real pandemics spread.

The infamous "Dingo ate my baby" meme was, unfortunately, based on an actual incident in 1980, when a Seventh-Day Adventist couple camping near Ayers Rock lost their infant to a dingo. Seeing how calm and composed the couple were while grieving, and regarding Seventh-Day Adventists as little more than some weird American cult, the Australian public found it suspicious, and had them arrested and convicted of murdering the baby.

The couple were later exonerated when the dingoes were found in possession of incriminating evidence that they really did eat the baby.

To this day, the incident remains one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history.

The General Belgrano was originally built by the U.S. Navy as a Brooklyn class cruiser named USS Phoenix. USS Phoenix, survived the attack on Pearl Harbour and went on to earn 9 battle stars in the Pacific.

She was sold to Argentina in Oct 1951 and was renamed “17 de Octubre” after “Loyalty Day” an important date to then President Juan Perón. But was renamed General Belgrano in 1955, after Perón was overthrown in a coup.

On 2nd May 1982 Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror fired 3 21 inch mk8 mod 4 unguided torpedos at her. These torpedos had been in use since 1927 and were used because they were considered more reliable than newer torpedos. 2 of the 3 hit the Belgrano and caused enough damage that she began to sink very quickly.

Of 772 men aboard, 323 were killed. It was the first sinking of a ship by a nuclear powered submarine in history

During the Spanish Inquisition, inquisitors would commonly use wine as an indicator of if moriscos (recently converted Muslims) were genuine in their conversion. Many moriscos embraced this tradition so much that it became a social problem and Christian authorities had to issue decrees banning the sale of wine and limiting taverns.

On October 21, 1966, a coal slag heap in Aberfan, Wales, destabilized due to groundwater interference, causing an avalanche that buried an Elementary School. Over a hundred children were killed.

The disaster was entirely preventable, but Government officials of the National Coal Board had insisted on putting the coal-slag heap on top of a hill, directly uphill from an Elementary School, rather than somewhere more sensible.

After the avalanche, the government investigated the (government-run) National Coal Board and found it had done nothing wrong, giving the survivors of the disaster a pathetically small compensation. The Aberfan Disaster and its aftermath remains one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history.

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The poem you are referring to is an ancient Middle Persian (Pahlavi) text known as the Abar Madan ī Shah Wahrām ī Warzāwand ("The Advent of King Vahram the Virtuous"), often referred to in modern popular culture as the "Ballad of King Vahram".
Written a few decades after the 7th-century Arab-Muslim conquest of the Sasanian Empire, this text reflects the desperation of the surviving Zoroastrian Iranians. It functions as a messianic "wish-image," praying for a legendary savior named Shah Vahram to march from India with a massive army to overthrow Arab rule and restore Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage.

https://sites.uci.edu/sasanika/abar-madan-i-shah-wahram-i-warzawand/

Context: After discovering the Islands of Hawaii for the rest of the world, James Cook had them named the “Sandwich Islands”, in honor of the Earl of Sandwich, a great supporter of Cook