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History isn’t just about heroic battles, grand adventures, moving speeches, scientific inventions, and social progress. For good and for ill, people are very complicated and nuanced beings… with a dash of depravity and lust thrown in. Human history is full of truly shocking, dark, and terrifying events, but some books skim over the more disturbing details.
The r/AskReddit community recently shared some pieces of history that would even make many adults do a double-take. Scroll down to have a read.
But be warned, some of these historical facts are definitely not for the faint of heart, while others might make you feel very uncomfortable.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
The Battle of Blair Mountain. Coal miners wanted to unionize and mine owners wanted more money. A million rounds of ammunition were fired and the National Guard had to intervene.
That's a shamefully short summary of it, but it was literally a war for labor rights.
To quote Robert Evans on Behind the Bastards (Part 1 on YouTube [here](https://youtu.be/XWvVdjmBhHc?si=ekzrYcd3taBhmSg0)):
>We never talk about the time they got bombed and gassed and shot at by machine guns. We just leave that out of history books. The 8-hour work day was entirely gained by polite people with signs protesting. That's how we have a weekend, not the men who charged machine gun nests and sniped at corporate guards.
>All these things we consider just a part of life like the fact that you're supposed to get a weekend; all of these things were bought in blood by men who are willing to kill for these rights who are willing to die for these things. And we don't talk about that even though it's cool and interesting because it might give people ideas.
Gabriele Alfredo Pini 3 months ago
Rednecks with their red bandana against the corporations and the oligarchs. How times are changed!
#2
>One of Columbus’ men, Bartolome De Las Casas, was so mortified by Columbus’ brutal atrocities against the native peoples, that he quit working for Columbus and became a Catholic priest. He described how the Spaniards under Columbus’ command cut off the legs of children who ran from them, to test the sharpness of their blades. According to De Las Casas, the men made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. He says that Columbus’ men poured people full of boiling soap. In a single day, De Las Casas was an eye witness as the Spanish soldiers dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 native people. “Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel,” De Las Casas wrote. “My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write.”
Source: "Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery." by Eric Kasum, published October 11, 2010
It feels like a conspiracy theory, but I swear they teach us about Columbus when we are too young to be exposed to his atrocities (witnessed first hand, as well as documented in his own hand in his journals) so that he will be a "controversial figure" who "might have gotten a couple things wrong about what country he was in" rather than "a f*****g horrendous vile human being on par with the worst shitheads in history.".
Kira Okah 3 months ago (edited)
Bartolomé de Las Casas' accounts only mention Christopher Columbus on his visiting entourage, where he had seven natives with him in Seville. He was only nine when this visit happened. From what I can find of de la Casas' book (History of the Indies, Book 2), the accounts of the atrocities are very real, but they were not ordered by Columbus, but under Governor Bobadilla and Nicolás de Ovando (the two governors AFTER Columbus). Columbus was a prick, but putting other prick's crimes under his name is absolving those who actually did do the crime.
#3
796 babies bodies found in a septic tank in Galway, Ireland.
796. Babies.
Orko90:
I think the pertinent info you're missing is that the septic tank belonged to a "Home" for unmarried mothers that was owned and operated by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of Catholic nuns.
Dani 3 months ago
The despair caused by these institutions all over Ireland and indeed the world is unimaginable. I don't think I know of a single person here in Ireland who doesn't have a grandmother or a great aunt or family friend who was affected by these "mother and baby homes" such a shameful chapter of both the Catholic church's history and the pervasive culture of shame around unwed mothers. Heartbreaking.
Seduction, love, cheating, betrayal, lust, and longing are as much a part of history as war and famine, conquests and rebellions, progress and repressions. However, for some folks, talking about brutality, warfare, political backstabbing, and complex statesmanship is more palatable than ever even hinting that s-e-x exists.
That’s one of those little ironies of modern life: some topics are considered taboo even though they’re objectively part and parcel of the human condition, like other things.
#4
The Radium Girls from the United States. Just read a book on them and it was horrific! The radium poisoning made their jaw bones fall out with their teeth. Not to mention all the sarcomas and the one girl who hemmoraghed and bled out because the poison ate through her jugular. They were told the Radium was safe despite there being known health risks as early as 1901. There were still radium factories being operated as of 1978.
FlamingoPanda 3 months ago
Dark but well written: https://www.kate-moore.com/the-radium-girls Give it a read if you want to know more about this tragedy.
#5
When then President of Indonesia Soekarno visited the Soviet Union the KGB thought that it would be a good idea to send a honey trap. They hired two escorts to "entertain" him and recorded the acts using a spy camera. then blackmailed President Soekarno laughed at the agents and asked them to send him the tapes so that he can watch it back home.
#6
Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, apparently lost her virginity on her mother’s grave.
DudebroggieHouser:
Mary Shelly and Lord Byron put all modern goth couples to absolute shame.
At the time of writing, according to the ‘Worldometer,’ nearly 8.2 billion people live on Earth. Or almost 8.173 billion, to be more precise.
The United Nations predicts that we should have 9 billion people living on the planet by the year 2037. Furthermore, the world population should balloon up to 10 billion by 2060. Of course, these projections can and will change. Predicting the future is always difficult. No matter how much data you have, no statistical model can account for every eventuality or circumstance.
#7
Gandhi was racist and kind of a p*do. While people say he “outgrew his racism” he unquestionably slept naked in the same bed as naked teenagers, one being his grandniece to “test himself” which even if all he did was sleep is still incredibly unsettling. I detest the British colonialism as much as the next guy but it seems Gandhi is only ever remembered for the good things he did and not the extremely morally questionable things.
#8
The absolute atrocities that Japan committed during World War II not only the decimation of the Chinese people but also on their own turf.
Examples being the horrific stuff done at Unit 731 s**t should give you nightmares.
Zedrapazia 3 months ago
I wonder how many more of these horrors exist without ever having been uncovered. I mean, we only know about what happened in Japan and Germany because these two lost the wars and were in public focus.
#9
The reason informed consent is legally required in study participation, The Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
In 1932 a group of 600 impoverished Black men were part of an experiment to observe untreated syphilis. 399 of these men had syphilis while the rest were used as a control group, all participating with the promise of free medical care. The men who had syphilis were never told they had it. Instead they were gaslit and offered placebos to treat "bad blood" while the researchers told local Black doctors to deny them treatment.
It was supposed to last 6 months.
It lasted 40 years, and even though penicillin was used as an effective treatment 15 years after the start of the study, it was never offered to them.
During WWII 256 infected men were drafted and diagnosed by the military, unfit to serve without treatment. The researchers got them excluded from the draft to continue the experiment unbothered.
It only stopped after news of the study was leaked to the press in 1972. 128 of the men had died directly or indirectly from a completely treatable disease they were never told they had, and 59 relatives of the men contracted or were born with syphilis as a result.
Snazzy Smurf 3 months ago
The movie Miss Evers' Boys is based off of this topic. Experiments were conducted more than people know. Many pioneering gyn surgeries were performed on those that could not resist or run away.
Estimating how many people have ever lived on Earth over humanity’s roughly 200,000-year history is a tough nut to crack. Being too specific is never going to work because we lack the records, so we have to make educated guesses. A 2022 article on PRB estimates that around 117 billion members of our species have been born on our planet.
There were around 8 billion human beings living on the planet in 2022, which accounted for around 7% of the total number of people who have ever lived. This is a huge chunk of the total historical human population! And every person who has ever been born has added to the rich tapestry of history, one way or another.
#10
The Olsen twins countdown clock. You had grown men obsessing about this.
Slow_D-oh:
Same with:
Emma Watson
Britney Spears (who was asked repeatedly if she was still a virgin when underage.)
Anna Kournikova
and likely any popular female singer/actor who was over 15 in the 90s (at least) until very recently.
Also, just because I don't like the guy. Jerry Seinfeld had a 17-year-old girlfriend when he was 38.
#11
We would have more mummies nowadays if the victorians didn’t eat them all.
#12
Baby farmers.
In Victorian (and previously one assumes) unmarried mothers were of course looked down upon and if you were in service and knocked up by the son of the owner you were a bit f****d as no-one else would give a single mother a job. The solution? Baby Farmers!
Baby farmers were basically an industry to “adopt” (for a fee of course) these babies. Of course, some of these farmers realised that it was somewhat noisy and expensive looking after a whole bunch of babies and so they used a tonic called Godfrey’s Cordial. Said tonic contained opium which knocked out the babies and they were fed it by a few unscrupulous baby farmers until they starved to death. They then disposed of baby, advertised again and the cycle begins again.
For a particularly notorious example look up Amelia Dyer or John and Sarah Makin.
Huddo's sister 3 months ago
I remember reading a really interesting book about this when I was about 14. It was fiction, but included all the facts mentioned about them.
#13
Victor Hugo was so popular with Parisian pr*stitutes that most brothels in Paris closed down for a day of mourning and many SWs stood outside to pay tribute.
#14
Winston Churchill's entire career outside of WW2 was basically monstrous. He had concentration camps in South Africa, was a eugenicist, and used ex-military police to crack down on the anti-colonial movement in Ireland.
Say what you want about the guy, he obviously has a major role in WW2, but he was basically just a coin flip away from being a British fascist.
#15
In 1944, 9 American airmen were shot down over the Japanese island Chichijima in the Bonin Islands. 8 were captured by Japanese troops, and were then beaten, tortured, and executed by beheading. Their remains were cannibalized by Japanese officers. The ritual cannibalism included eating the livers of freshly killed prisoners, and eating living prisoners over several days, amputating limbs to keep the meat fresh.
This case was investigated in 1947 in a war crimes trial, and of the 30 Japanese soldiers prosecuted, four officers were found guilty and hanged. All enlisted men were released within eight years.
Vice Admiral Mori Kunizo, commander of the Chichi-Jima air base believed hat consumption of human liver had medical benefits. He was initially sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the incident, but was sentenced to death and hanged after a separate trial for other war crimes.
The 9th airman who successfully evaded capture was eventually rescued. 45 years later he was elected President of the United States.
Rafael 3 months ago
True, but if anyone else got that impression, GW Bush was never near the cannibals, he escaped the aircraft and was rescued by a sub. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichijima_incident
Uncle Schmickle 3 months ago
Barbaric for what had been an old and civilised nation. I really don't know why Japanese behaved in such an abhorrent manner WW2 ? Such shocking cruelty.
Turanga Leela 3 months ago (edited)
Civilised when it came to their own people maybe, but the Japanese superiority complex and belief that all other "races" were worth less than animals fed into their abhorrent behaviour in WWII. It's not at all surprising when you read other than the sanitised texts about Japanese society. After WWII Japan had to work hard to shift their view of the world and themselves, but there is still very much xenophobia left. For example, many Japanese still don't want their children marrying foreigners.
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Lady Snowfall 3 months ago (edited)
My grandad was in the US Navy is ww2, the sailors would rescue the Japanese soldiers from their sunken ships, only to tie them naked, spread eagled, on the deck of their ship. My grandad would sneak them water and shade when no one was looking. One of the survivinng Japanese soldiers tracked him down after the war and thanked him.
Kaedyn Walsh 2 months ago
Your grandpa's care toward those men proves he knew what Being Human was all about. War is a stupid gambling game set into motion by a few angry men having temper tantrums - which ends up getting innocent soldiers on both/all sides killed or fecked up for life. Those angry baby men don't suffer for what they start. "War NEVER decides who is right. It only decides who is left." That saying chilled me when I first read it. '... Who is left' of course meaning 'who is left alive.' So stupid and unnecessary, war is. Wish it'd stop the world over cuz it's always the innocent citizens and most soldiers who suffer for it.
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Aminah Khan 3 months ago
My soldier grandfather and his Indian colleagues often came across the remains of cannibalised soldiers. They often went out on patrol with Gurkhas and all were ordered not to listen to the voices in the jungle asking, "Such-and-such regiment, come this way." They were Japanese inviting them to dine.
Smilodon, a Bad Cat 3 months ago
Gurkhas are the best, scariest troops I ever met- and that was in the '80s. Nice guys, don't get on their wrong side.
Load More Replies... Kaedyn Walsh 2 months ago
Jesus christ. :o The more posts I read in this article, the more angry, disgusted and disturbed I get by how absolutely fecking cruel and disturbed some humans are against other humans.
Binky Melnik 3 months ago
That final sentence sure was a kick in the head; I was not expecting that!
Kaedyn Walsh 2 months ago (edited)
I wish it was false. So grotesque to even think about, but sadly It's 100% true. Go fact check. Oh, also, I'm not being sarcastic or mean with the 'go fact check', I promise. You may end up falling down a rabbit hole - the Japanese military did far worse than that to prisoners during that war. They were absolutely brutal.
Load More Replies... #16
In Ancient Pompeii, the way they would direct you towards the nearest brothel was with a d**k engraved into the pavement and walls pointing the way towards it.
The engravings survived the volcanic eruption, so if you go to Pompeii today you will find the paths literally paved with d***s.
danylp:
When I was there we stopped by a group led by a guide lady at the exact moment she showed them the carvings and asked them what they thought it was. Everyone said some mild things like "leaf", "boat" etc. and I was like "That definitely looks like a penis!" and the lady turned to me: "Yes, exactly, thank you!". It was fun.
The Scout 3 months ago
Everybody seems to wonder why in Pompeji there is an abundance of phalli and erotic images, while rome and similar cities do have much less of those. The reason is quite simple: The pendulum swang back in later times to some kind of nearly victorian prudishness. The erotical imagery and all those markers simly were erased - but at that time, Pompeji already was under a few feet of sooth, so it did not get the same cleanup.
#17
The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin was founded in 1919 and was the first of it's kind to research trans, gay and intersex individuals. It housed an enormous collection of notes and books on sexual research and was one of the first targets of the nazi bookburnings. Everyone's seen the pictures but very few people know what was actually burned.
Sky Render 3 months ago
And now modern fascists are citing "lack of historical evidence" as a weapon against LGBTQIA. You know, the evidence that their predecessors burned. Pure unadulterated (cl)a*s right there.
#18
King Ferdinand I, or Ferrante, of Naples kept a so called black museum of the mummified remains of his personal and political enemies. He had them dressed and arranged in various scenes and would often show off the museum to potential rivals/enemies he hadn’t yet killed off. So yeah, pretty messed up.
iseefractals 3 months ago
We should bring this back for murders and pedo's. No jail, no "treatment" just straight to the mummy museum
#19
Charlie Chaplin impregnated a 15-year-old girl when he was 35. She (Lita Grey) was 8 when he met her.
Tamra 3 months ago
It's interesting to me how some people are getting hung up on "it was a different time", or some legal "age of consent" nonsense. This was a full-grown adult man who impregnated a CHILD. I don't give two $hits about it being a different time or age of consent. It's wrong, no matter when or where it happens.
#20
A couple of NASA interns several years ago stole a huge number of moonrocks brought back during the Apollo missions, spread them out on a motel bed and had s*x on them, just so they could say they’d had s*x on the Moon.
#21
They didn't start using anesthesia on babies until the late 1980s. It wasn't until 1987 that the American Academy of Pediactrics declared it unethical to operate on infants without the use of anesthesia. Mother's were doing everything to convince doctors that their babies could feel pain, but since the doctors said they would have no long-term memory at that point, then it wasn't as important. That's not very long ago!
From wiki-, "In the late nineteenth, and first half of the twentieth century[citation needed], doctors were taught that babies did not experience pain and were treating their young patients accordingly. From needle sticks to tonsillectomies to heart operations were done with no anaesthesia or analgesia, other than muscle relaxation for the surgery.[citation needed] The belief was that in babies the expression of pain was reflexive and, owing to the immaturity of the infant brain, the pain could not really matter."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies.
Stephanie Did It 3 months ago
Can confirm this. In 1982, neonatal doctors performed a surgical procedure on my newborn premature son and tossed my frantic protests aside with "Oh, he'll never remember it." Two years later when he fell and broke his two front teeth, A dentist literally dug them out of his gums with the exact same statement as he was forcibly held down.
#22
My all time favorite - it seems there was some super important Chinese empress who made emissaries and foreign dignataries go down on her at least partly as a sign of dominance.
#23
Shakespeare was not some high-brow fancy cultural icon. He was the trash Hollywood movies of his time. People would go to the theatres to get p**s drunk, yell at actors and solicit women who were advertising themselves in the standing sections. Also, the content of his plays (and poems but that’s not my focal point here) were not rated E for everyone lol I actually can’t believe some of the plays that are taught in school. Sure, it’s easy to miss all the sex and penis jokes if you’re just reading it but a good actor will find them and play them out.
Annik Perrot 3 months ago
If his plays survived for centuries, then they must have been better than mere trash, whatever the theater-going crowd's habits were at the time.
#24
The inventor of the polygraph also created Wonder Woman, who was based on his wife and the college student the two of them had a polyamorous relationship with.
Alex Ruddies 3 months ago
This doesn't sound dark...just a really open relationship at a time that when it was looked down upon. I think worst thing was the polygraph in this part. Unless there's something I'm missing.
#25
The Romans f****d a natural birth control into extinction
I forget the details, but essentially there was an herb on some me Greek island that acted as a natural birth control. The Romans proceeded to f**k so often that said plant no longer exists.
JohnCavil01:
Silphium - while its effectiveness and even use as a contraceptive is debated it’s possibly been rediscovered and may in fact just had its name/identity drift overtime and has been hiding in plain sight.
#26
In ancient Greece, athletes used to compete in the Olympics completely naked. Imagine training your whole life, only to have your legacy reduced to 'the guy who dropped the javelin… and everything else...
m50d:
Pole vaulting incidents like this year's would've been more common.
troufaki13 3 months ago
Gymnasium comes from the greek word for naked. Gymnos or γυμνός in Greek.
#27
Queen Victoria spent quiet a lot of time writing about her sex life with Prince Albert in great detail. She was also known for being unnecessarily cruel to her daughters and actually survived at least 8 known assassination attempts.
Huddo's sister 3 months ago
Some of that is due to generational trauma. Her mother isolated her as a young child and was extremely strict. She installed a tutor who had the same ideals and they treated her like a six year old basically until she became queen. They wanted the power they knew she would one day get.
#28
The inventor of the autopilot crashed his plane while attempting to join the Mile High Club.
#30
Mozart. Loved. Farts and poop jokes. Loved 'em. Read some of his weird letters he sent to friends that were just filled with poop and fart jokes.
What's a NSFW piece of history everyone has forgotten about?
Charlotte A. 3 months ago
Seriously, why should humanity be ashamed of some historic character having a sex life? Or even kinks and fetishes? Maybe "lust" and "atrocities" shouldn't be listed on the same page...
Kangaroo 3 months ago
Some of them were. Some of them weren’t entirely accurate.
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BarkingSquirell 3 months ago (edited)
These were kind of painful. I just could not bring myself to upvote any of these posts, accurate or not.
Lace Neil 3 months ago
The Spanish branch of the Habsburg family went extinct due to inbreeding. Several times there were cousin marriages and also uncle and niece marriages. The last of the Spanish Hapsburgs was Carlos the second. He was so inbred his inbreeding quotant was higher than if his parents were brother and sister.
Moira Munguia 3 months ago
While the nuns were the tools in the abuse of other women, a lot of them were also victims. I don't excuse their behaviour AT ALL. They were bitter and twisted, SOME of them due to the fact that being a nun was forced on them. Having a nun or a priest in the family was seen as a status symbol. I know this, being the offspring of rural Irish catholic parents. My mother wanted a priest so bad. My sister and I were disappointments, as neither of us were going to be catholic let alone nuns.
Salty_Sasquatch 3 months ago
I couldn't get past #8. Accurate or not, not something I want to be reading.
JimSteve 3 months ago
The list will change order, which one are you talking about?
Load More Replies... Charlotte A. 3 months ago
Seriously, why should humanity be ashamed of some historic character having a sex life? Or even kinks and fetishes? Maybe "lust" and "atrocities" shouldn't be listed on the same page...
Kangaroo 3 months ago
Some of them were. Some of them weren’t entirely accurate.
Load More Replies... BarkingSquirell 3 months ago (edited)
These were kind of painful. I just could not bring myself to upvote any of these posts, accurate or not.
Lace Neil 3 months ago
The Spanish branch of the Habsburg family went extinct due to inbreeding. Several times there were cousin marriages and also uncle and niece marriages. The last of the Spanish Hapsburgs was Carlos the second. He was so inbred his inbreeding quotant was higher than if his parents were brother and sister.
Moira Munguia 3 months ago
While the nuns were the tools in the abuse of other women, a lot of them were also victims. I don't excuse their behaviour AT ALL. They were bitter and twisted, SOME of them due to the fact that being a nun was forced on them. Having a nun or a priest in the family was seen as a status symbol. I know this, being the offspring of rural Irish catholic parents. My mother wanted a priest so bad. My sister and I were disappointments, as neither of us were going to be catholic let alone nuns.
Salty_Sasquatch 3 months ago
I couldn't get past #8. Accurate or not, not something I want to be reading.
JimSteve 3 months ago
The list will change order, which one are you talking about?
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