There is no denying the power of a work of art, which can evoke certain feelings or even manipulate the viewer's emotions beyond his control.

But there are also works that rattle the very infrastructure of art and the idea of what it means to create. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, they shape our history.

We asked the experts at Paddle8, an online art auction house that hosts both themed and benefit sales, to help us curate a list of some of the most revolutionary artwork of all time. Since the complete history of art is so vast, we limited their selections to the last 200 years or so — the relatively recent Modern and Contemporary eras.

"The Third of May" by Francisco Goya (1808)

"Goya's depiction of the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 was a groundbreaking image of the horrors of war,"Paddle8's experts said. Goya broke out from other artists of his day by showing an unheroic scene in the conflict, with the rebels in a passive surrender, rather than a glorifying charge.

via Wikipedia

"Olympia" by Edouard Manet (1863)

"The frank sexuality and direct stare of Manet's subject, a prostitute, turned the idea of the 'male gaze' on its head," said Paddle8. "No longer was a reclining nude available only for the pleasure of the viewer; she was confronting him head on." Manet also met resistance based on the model he chose to paint. Unlike the ideal "Venus" of the time — soft, round, and glowing — this model was thinner, and presented in harsher lighting.

via Wikipedia

"The Bathers" by Paul Cezanne (1889–1905)

"The grandfather of Cubism, Cezanne intentionally painted works that were not easy to interpret or appealing to the fashion of the time," said Paddle8. "With 'The Bathers,' he created a work that was both timeless and abstract." It was his goal to draw artists away from "fad" styles of painting that he thought wouldn't last.

via Wikipedia

A small team of Russian photographers have quietly been creating some of the most detailed panoramas in the world

AirPano is made of eight team members, who have wide-ranging backgrounds (civil engineering and medical cybernetics, among others). The amateur photographers are currently traveling around the world, shooting major cities and other sites of interest. 

The group mainly shoots from helicopters, using a specialized rig that holds 3-4 cameras, arranged circularly. They also sometimes shoot from rooftops or use light jets, dirigibles, hot air balloons and radio-controlled helicopters. 

Sergey Semonov, who created a panorama of Manhattan that won first prize at the Epson International Photographic Pano Awards, told The Atlantic why he finds panoramic photography so interesting.

"I like new, progressive and unique things,” Semonov said.

The group has created over 700 panoramas already, which you can check out on their website. We’ve put together a selection of our favorites.

This is the shot of Central Park that won first prize at the Epson International Photographic Pano Awards. It became a mini-sensation earlier this year when it was first published.

All of the Russian photographers are amateurs and run AirPano for fun. For this one, they traveled to Churun-meru (Dragon) fall in Venezuela.

For this panorama of Mount Everest, photographer Ivan Roslyakov traveled to a record height above Everest at 23294 feet.

The tablet and smartphone have invaded the workplace and are changing everything about the way we work.

Office-bound employees are now free to roam and work on their personal devices. Road warriors and field workers now have a device as powerful as a PC that fits in their pockets.

A lot of attention is given to startups that create mobile apps for consumers (from Flipboard to Snapchat) but the companies on this list are focusing on a different, and huge, market: enterprises. Businesses will spend a whopping $340 billion on mobile products by 2017, says ABI Research.

We created this list by asking several enterprise venture capitalists to name the mobile startups they were most excited about, inside and outside their own investments. We also threw in a few picks of our own.

Clari: apps built from other cloud apps

Clari is a platform for enterprise developers for writing mobile apps.

It's still in beta but eventually it will helps them write beautiful apps that can easily tap into a lot of different cloud services like Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Chatter, Salesforce.com

Recommended by: A number of VCs named it as hot. Jim Goetz, Sequoia.

Why it's hot:Goetz says, "Mobile-first enterprise app and cloud service bringing consumer grade design to business applications. The team's had $1B+ in successful exits and has really strong customer traction pre-release.

Relationship: Investor.

Expensify: Easy expense reports

Expensify is an app that does your expense reports.

Snap a picture of your receipt and it inputs that info, so you don't have to type it all in by hand.

Recommended by: A VC that didn't want to be named.

Why it's hot: The Valley has been buzzing about Expensify since 2008, when its alpha product won a prize at a TechCrunch conference. In 2009, the entire Expensify team went to Istanbul for a month and wrote an award-winning Salesforce.com Expensify application. 

Relationship: No relation, just thinks the company is cool.

Workspot

Workspot lets enterprises instantly and securely give employees access corporate apps on a mobile devices.

It has even issued a challenge: Give them 60 seconds and they can get any enterprise app running on a mobile device.

Recommended by: Jerry Chen, Greylock Partners

Why it's hot: Chen says, "They are building enterprise app access for a mobile-first world. They do the important job of securing mobile access to legacy enterprise apps in addition to email and newer apps."

Relation: No relation, just thinks the company is cool.

Humans are fascinating creatures, and 2013 has been an eventful year.

Amid tragedies, triumphs, the war Syria, and the Snowden Saga, people have also created peculiar works and moments.

Some seem bizarre because they are from a foreign culture. Others are simply strange.

Reuters has a gallery called "Oddities," so we picked some of our favorites so far.

Benedict Evans is an analyst at Enders Analysis and a freelance consultant. 

He's well known for his quick bits of insight on Twitter and his ability to find deeper meaning within data and then clearly express it visually, as shown by the many posts on his blog (which brings in over 100,000 readers a month.)

Last week he shared a new presentation that he's been showing to clients that shows how mobile is taking over the digital landscape and looks at what that might mean for future tech businesses and companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. He was kind enough to let us share it with you here.

With thousands of apps available at your fingertips, it can be hard to sort through the noise to decide which ones you really want and need. 

You can find an app to fulfill almost any purpose, but we wanted to narrow down a list that will help you plan and execute an amazing day. 

These apps will make your daily schedule more simple, exciting, and fun.

Good morning, sunshine! Use Sleepbot to wake up as well-rested as possible:

If you get a lousy night's sleep, you're more likely to have a lousy day. 

Set an alarm with Sleepbot and the app will wake you up when you're sleeping the lightest within a 30 minute window so you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go. Plus, it can track your movements and record noise (so you'll know if you, well, screamed in your sleep, or something). 

Before you head out into the great, wide world, make sure you know what to expect from the skies with Yahoo Weather.

Although Apple's iOS7 release vamped up its built-in weather app, you should check out Yahoo's gorgeous weather app if you're an Android owner. The super-accurate hourly forecast will ensure that you leave home prepped for whatever the day's weather will bring. 

BONUS: Live in New York City? Sign up for Poncho and skip the hourly list of temperatures to instead receive a daily text message or email with actionable advice on how to dress for the weather. 

Once you're dressed and ready to go, use CoffeeGuru to start the day with a caffeine fix.

Yes, there is a Starbucks on every block. No, you don't have to succumb to those $5 peppermint lattes.

If you'd rather support an independent coffee shops than a big chain, download CoffeeGuru for $1.99 to help you find the best local Joe. 

CoffeeGuru is only available for iOS, so if you've got a Droid, try Beanhunter to find the greatest java haunt in town. 

Between companies like Tesla and ZipCar and any number of other transportation-related startups, the way we get from A to B is changing.

But the bicycle is still around, and it only takes a quick walk around most major cities to see that it's thriving.

Of course it's come a long way since the iconic penny farthing – the old-timey bike with a huge front wheel – but a number of designers are at work to teach our pedal-powered friends some new tricks.

Newer, better bikes are being conceived all the time. Electric motors for expanded range, windshields for comfort, maybe even make it a foldable design for easy transport.

Let's take a look at the future of pedal-powered transportation.

If you want something built for speed, check out Ilya Vostrikov's design. It's a reimagining of a bike by Specialized called TT, and the dropped handlebars keep your body in a position optimized for speed.

This heavy-duty trike looks ready for some off-road rides – three wheels instead of two make for a more stable ride. It even folds down small for carrying it around.

How about a bike that doesn't have a rear hub? Designs like this will be adapted to carry luggage where the hub used to be. By storing things below the bike's center of gravity like this, it makes for a much safer and steadier ride.

One in every 978 U.S. homes received a foreclosure filing in October, according to the latest foreclosure data from RealtyTrac.

Foreclosure filings were down 28% from a year ago, but up 2% from the previous month.

At the state level, Florida, Nevada, Maryland, Ohio and Illinois posted the highest foreclosure rates.

"The backlog of delayed judicial foreclosures  continues to make its way through the pipeline, with many of these properties  now being scheduled for the public auction after starting the foreclosure  process last year or earlier this year," said Daren Blomquist, vice president  at RealtyTrac.

We drew on RealtyTrac's report to highlight the 14 metros with the highest foreclosure rate.

Note: The metros are ranked by foreclosure rate, i.e., one in every X homes received a foreclosure filing.

Dayton, Ohio

One in every 423 homes received a foreclosure filing in October 2013

Properties with foreclosure filings:
910

Change from September 2013:
+51.67%

Change from October 2012:
-1.52%

Source: RealtyTrac

Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent, Florida

One in every 413 homes received a foreclosure filing in October 2013

Properties with foreclosure filings:
486

Change from September 2013:
+24.94%

Change from October 2012:
+26.89%

Source: RealtyTrac

Ocala, Florida

One in every 400 homes received a foreclosure filing in October 2013

Properties with foreclosure filings:
408

Change from September 2013:
+5.70%

Change from October 2012:
-24.30%

Source: RealtyTrac

This weekend, Venezuela seized an electronics supplier after they "illicitly" raised prices.

This summer, Venezuelans began procuring dollars en masse abroad and bringing them back home to take advantage of their government's currency controls by selling the greenbacks on the black market at a premium.

It's just one of the many odd, unique things that have occurred in the Bolivarian Republic since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998 and promptly flipped the country's regime from democratic to socialist.

We've gone back and looked at 19 other instances where Venezuelan society appears to have wandered away from how most countries do things.

There's no Coke Zero — it was banned in 2009 for containing artificial sweeteners.

Source: AP

Golf was banned for being too bourgeois.

Source: New York Times

Though a few years later, President Chavez congratulated Jhonnatan Vegas for winning the Bob Hope Classic.

Source: Cybergolf

It's not just Occupy Wall Street protesters that are worried about wealth and income inequality.

Now people like Bill Gross, manager of the world's largest bond fund at Pimco, are warning that the problem is making the U.S. less productive, while star investors like Jim Chanos worry that people will have less incentive to participate in the economy if they have decided that "the game isn't fair," reports  The Wall Street Journal's Justin Lahart.

As noted by Société Générale strategist Albert Edwards, "you don't have to be a communist to conclude that high levels of inequality not only adversely affects long-term growth, but also increases the economy’s vulnerability to recession."

Despite this growing consensus, wealth and income inequality in America is still getting worse by many measures. To see what's really happening, we encourage everyone to view our new series of charts.

The share of U.S. wealth held by the top 1% has soared in recent decades from 20% to 35%.

The ratio of the wealthiest 1% to median wealth is at a record 225:1.

The bottom 80% of Americans hold only 11% of the wealth and a mere 5% of the financial wealth.

We watch sports for the thrill, excitement, and passion we feel for our favorite teams.

But let's face it: Sex appeal is a huge part of which athletes and sports we end up following.

Bottom-tier athletes can become stars on the sheer force of their sexiness, and star players can become crossover celebrities with enough good looks.

So who are the sexiest athletes alive?

Go straight to the athletes »

We chose 50 men and women from across the sports landscape who are astonishingly good-looking and still relevant to their sports. They are sexy because of their abs, smiles, eyes, hair, pecs, and biceps, but also because of their dance moves, fashion choices, and bubbly senses of humor.

They each have a unique brand of sexiness that grabbed the attention of the public and helped them become more popular than they might have been otherwise.

Go to our Sexiest Athletes home page to read about how some of these sports studs spend their money, who they're dating, and more »

#50 Hope Solo

U.S. Women's National Team (soccer)

Age: 32

She's one of the more polarizing female athletes in sports, and is prone to confrontations with the media. But she doesn't get that status without the sex appeal that — combined with her goaltending in the 2011 World Cup — made her a mainstream star in the first place.

#49 Tally Hall

Houston Dynamo (soccer)

Age: 28

Soccer players might be in better shape than any other collection of athletes. Hall is no exception.

He's one of the top goalies in MLS and he looks darn good doing it.

#48 Dustin Johnson

Golfer

Age: 29

Johnson has one of the most consistent five o'clock shadows on tour. He's also dating Wayne Gretzky's often scantily-clad daughter Paulina Gretzky.

"Shark Tank" has been making a splash on ABC since its premiere in 2009, however, it's far from the original version of the series.

There are at least nine other versions of the series throughout the world.

"Shark Tank" isn't the first wildly successful show that saw its start in another country.

Programs like "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" and "American Idol" took off in the United Kingdom before coming across the pond. Other shows had more surprising beginnings.

Long before Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran were receiving business pitches on "Shark Tank" ...

... there was "Money Tigers" in Japan.

The Japanese series first aired in 2001. It only lasted for three years, but its concept of having a row of seated investors getting pitched ideas was adapted in other versions of the show.

"Money Tigers" was picked up as "Dragon's Den" in the United Kingdom in 2005, eventually making its way to the United States in 2009 with the name "Shark Tank."

Though Claire Danes and Damian Lewis star in Showtime's drama-thriller "Homeland" ...

Every industry has its movers and shakers.

Men and women who, by virtue of their chutzpah and determination, built new companies, saved them from the brink of extinction, or forged new paths for others to follow.

To celebrate their creativity and bold innovation, we rounded up the business leaders who were major game-changers in tech, retail, entertainment, media, and finance this year.

Angela Ahrendts

Retail Chief, Apple

The new Retail Chief at Apple recently left her cushy position as CEO of Burberry, but not before taking the luxury brand digital. Under Ahrendts' leadership, Burberry has built some incredibly tech-savvy retail stores where people can use their smartphones to learn more about a product.

On the brand side, Ahrendts, an American, turned Burberry from a label previously associated with stodgy outerwear to the biggest high-fashion brand in the U.K., worth an estimated $10.4 billion. 

All eyes are on her as she steps into her new role at Apple. Rumors that she'll be next in line for the CEO position have already started circulating.

Dan Akerson

CEO, General Motors

Cadillac has heavily renovated and created new versions of its ATS, XTS, and CTS sedans over the past two years, and the effort shows.

In May of this year, Cadillac sold 13,808 cars in the U.S.— a 40% increase from the year before. It's the fastest the brand has grown in nearly 40 years, according to a GM executive.

Akerson is credited with taking the Cadillac from being "Seinfeld's dad's car" to a luxury car maker on par with the likes of Audi and BMW.

Jeff Bezos

CEO, Amazon

Amazon is growing at breakneck speed. The e-commerce giant, which was once a two-dimensional book selling website, now sells nearly everything under the sun. And that may soon include cell phones.

Word has gotten out that Amazon has been working with HTC on a series of smartphones, one of which is in "an advanced stage of development,"a source tells the Financial Times. It's a different — and bigger — beast from making and selling Kindles, as now Amazon will have the support of service carriers behind them.

Amazon did $17.1 billion in net sales in the third quarter, with a 19% increase in active users.

A new book documenting the history of Amazon's birth and growth was released earlier this month, and it's given us a bunch of new information about Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of the company.

Entitled "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon," the book touches upon both Bezos' life and the rise of the online retail giant. While Brad Stone, the book's author, wasn't able to conduct extensive interviews with Bezos himself, he had direct access to many of his friends, family, and coworkers.

The resulting book gives numerous anecdotes and stories of Jeff Bezos' intelligence, drive, and focus on the customer. We've heard many of them in one form or another elsewhere, but some were new even to those of us who've been following him for some time.

At age 3, Jeff Bezos actually took apart his crib with a screwdriver because he wanted to sleep in a real bed.

Bezos' biological father was, at one point, a circus performer. Bezo's mother told him to stay out of their lives when he was four. When Brad Stone interviewed his father, the man had no idea who his son had become.

Bezos has always been a space nerd. In his high-school valedictorian speech, he described “his dream of saving humanity by creating permanent colonies in orbiting space stations while turning the planet into an enormous nature preserve.”

Kyle Ayers, a New York City writer and comedian, was enjoying an evening on his Brooklyn rooftop when a couple started having a huge fight in front of him.

Instead of leaving the awkward situation, Ayers decided to live tweet the break up with the hashtag #roofbreakup. His tweets of what the couple screamed at each other — from "I will not discuss love on a roof in Brooklyn" to "You don't need to see my phone to trust me"  — have since gone viral.

Read his full Storify post and tweets below (WARNING: Explicit language).

Join the conversation about this story »

Week eleven of the NFL season is nearly over. While we wait for the Monday Night Football game, let's take another look back at the best highlights from Sunday's action.

This week's collection includes a brutal hit on Drew Brees, crazy wind in Buffalo, and a frustrated mascot.

Here are our 15 favorites.

The wind was so bad in Buffalo that this kick started left and ended up missing 20 yards to the right.

Jason Babin didn't appear to feel too bad about ripping out Andre Ellington's hair.

Terry Bradshaw looked crazy flying a remote control helicopter.

via @GoldAndOrSmith

When The Guinness Book of World Records certified Scott Wiener's pizza box collection last week as the largest in the world, he had 595.

As of this weekend, Wiener has reached more than 600 pizza boxes.

The new boxes came from Chicago, where Wiener is currently publicizing this month's release of his first book, "Viva La Pizza." It features 112 of the boxes from his collection and an explanation of how each one fits into the history of the pizza box.

He even tracked down and interviewed some of the artists behind the colorful boxes. Turns out, pizza boxes from around the world can look incredibly different: Italians work more in pastels, while Americans work more in computer graphic design. There has also been a shift from single-ply cardboard to corrugated.

"I wanted to make it an academic pursuit," Wiener told Business Insider. "With the book out, my collection looks less like this thing a weirdo spent his time doing." 

Wiener's journey to becoming the pizza box expert began when he started his New York City pizza tour company in 2008. He knew starting his own business would mean investing every bit of free time into it, so he decided to take one last trip to Israel.

"I saw pizza boxes I'd never seen before," Wiener said to Business Insider. These weren't the typical American design featuring a nondescript Italian village or a jovial chef on a white background — instead, these boxes were bright yellow with blue writing.

Since then, Weiner hasn't gone out of his way to travel for a pizza box — he lets the boxes find him. But his collection maintains an international feel thanks to the network of fellow pizza experts he has met while giving pizza tours around NYC neighborhoods or through the regular column he writes for Pizza Today magazine.

And while no two boxes are exactly alike, Wiener has found there are similarities around the world. "I love the image of the fat chef," Wiener said. "But I get really excited when I see slightly different variations of it. A Russian fat chef looks completely different than an Australian fat chef." 

If Wiener reads about a novelty box online, he'll often ask a friend in that country to bring it to him. Like when he heard Domino's in Japan would feature a hologram of Hatsune Miku on their boxes that would dance when viewed through a special app, Wiener had a friend bring it to a pizza convention they were both attending in Las Vegas.  

And for those wondering where Wiener stores his 600+ pizza boxes, they all fit in a closet in his New York City apartment. He simply breaks them down to save space and occasionally uses a dehumidifier to keep them in tip-top shape.

"I always thought I'd be a record producer," Wiener said, "But it looks like the only thing I held on to from my days of playing in a rock band was obsessively eating and thinking about pizza." 

SEE ALSO: The Best Pizza In 10 Big Cities Around The US

Join the conversation about this story »

Can you guess the classic movie by the old technology used in the film?

Some of these are harder than others, but some you'll be able to answer right away.

No matter what, all of these movies are awesome, even if the tech used in them is out of style and out of date.

How many of these will you get right?

Do you remember this movie from 1987?

It's 'Wall Street'!

The star of this film is also in 'Gravity'.

Finnish gaming company Supercell has been creating a lot of hype lately.

It is a $3 billion company largely in part to the success of its games Hay Day and Clash of Clans.

Clash of Clans and Hay Day are both among the top-ten grossing apps in the iTunes Store, according to AppData. Supercell generates over $2.4 million per day in revenue, on average, according to data released earlier this year.

Business Insider recently had the chance to visit Supercell in Helsinki.

Note: Supercell would not allow us to take photos of its employees, nor their screens.

Disclosure: Finnish funding agency Tekes and Finnfacts, a non-profit media service organization in Finland, paid for my trip to Helsinki to explore the startup scene.

Supercell has space at Itämerenkatu 11 in Helsinki, Finland.

Here's the view from the inside. Only a couple of startups currently occupy the building. Another notable startup that resides here is Jolla, a smartphone company that spun out of Nokia.

When you first walk inside Supercell, you'll see an interactive screen that displays real-time user logins.

Mike Forsythe, the Bloomberg reporter who is at the center of a controversy about Bloomberg curtailing its investigative reporting has left the company. It had been previously reported that Forsythe had been suspended from Bloomberg news after details leaked about Bloomberg's plan in China.

For a reminder of what this is all about, this Taiwan Animation is a great recap.