Pandora's Box

In Greek myth, Zeus was furious after Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, so he had Pandora created and sent to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus as a bride, along with a sealed container Pandora was warned never to open. Her curiosity won out, and opening it released sickness, death, and every other evil into the world, with only one thing left trapped inside afterward, usually translated as Hope. The story is recorded in Hesiod's Works and Days, from around the 7th or 8th century BC. The "box" itself is a mistranslation: the original Greek word was pithos, a large storage jar, and it only became a "box" through a 16th-century translation error.