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This week, there is as much violence and mystery as you could want on a Monday morning.

July 19, 64 AD: The Great Fire of Rome started, and no one knows how. One of the more sensationalist rumours was that Nero, the Emperor at the time, had started the fire so he could rebuild the city the way he wanted it. This theory has been largely discredited because the site of the fire was at least a kilometre away from where Nero eventually built a new palace. The limited evidence suggests that the fire was accidental – Rome seems to have been prone to these, as there were at least two more that made it into the books. You’d think they might have learned.

July 21, 1873: In this week’s daring plot, Jesse James and his gang pulled off the first successful train robbery in the American Old West. Their plan was quite simple: derail the train, steal the shipment of gold it was carrying, and run away. The first bit worked, but when they got the safe open they found out the shipment had been delayed, so they just robbed the passengers of their valuables. The escapade caused multiple injuries and the death of the train’s engineer, but for some reason is celebrated to this day with parades and re-enactments.

July 20, 1960: The head of the Israel Institute of Technology’s physics department was arrested for espionage. Allegedly, he had been transmitting secret information to “an unidentified foreign power,” and if that wasn’t mysterious enough, the trial was held in complete secrecy – no one ever mentioned anything more about what the information might have been. The professor was a known expert in cosmic radiation, which is clearly more suspect than it might sound.

July 21, 1984: The US recorded its first “robot-related fatality,” which does have a nice ring to it despite being inherently depressing. The robot was a factory machine and caused the death when its operator went inside its work area and was crushed. As unfortunate as it was, it probably led to a lot of ridiculous panic about robots potentially being a great danger to humankind, likely to kill us all … all the usual stuff. Presumably more attention was subsequently paid to workplace procedure, though.

July 15, 1988: The first Die Hard film premiered, and spawned a legacy that is still evident 25 years later. Critical reaction to the sequels has varied, as is usually the case, but the first one is still often labelled the greatest action film of all time. Yippee ki-yay, and so on.