July 21, in the 356 BC, the temple was burned by Herostratus.
Enter Herostratus- a guy so desperate for fame
he would do anything to achieve it.
When the people of Ephesus saw the smoking ruins of the temple, Herostratus made certain they knew that he was the guy responsible.
This meant that Herostratus' name was stricken from all official records,
and the mention of his name was forbidden, either by word or in writing, on pain of death.
But the jokes on the Greek lawmakers because his name was Herostratus, and in 2017, he has a pretty solid Wikipedia page,
which is pretty much the secret to immortality.
Herostratus did not try to evade capture for his heinous act, rather he
openly bragged about his crime, and his name became synonymous with a certain type of fame-seeker still very prevalent today.
On July 21, 356 B.C.E., a man named Herostratus deliberately set fire to the Temple of Artemis
at Ephesus in modern-day Turkey, a beloved architectural marvel that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
In spite of the risk, Herostratus' name
and heinous act of arson was recorded by the historian Theopompus, and his name lived on as a term to describe someone who commits a crime for the sole purpose of the resulting notoriety.