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30 Of The Weirdest And The Most Disturbing Facts From Known History, Shared By People In This Online Group
History lessons in school may have seemed boring to some, but it is useful to know how far we’ve come and where we came from. It may seem boring because the events took place a very long time ago or they just don’t seem relevant to us personally. But the history that is taught at school isn’t the only truth and doesn’t encompass all the things that happened in the past.
There are so many events and people that we don’t get to hear about and maybe they didn’t have a big impact on the world, but those stories are so interesting to listen to or read about. Today you will find out some history facts that you may not have heard of before, and they come with a twist, as Redditor Doyouareisstupid asked, “What is the weirdest/most disturbing fact about our world’s history that you know?” It’s a perfect read for the spooky season we are now in because people have knowledge about some unbelievable things that occurred years ago. So enjoy and upvote the answers that surprised you the most.
More info: Reddit
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#1
Most people have 16 great great parents, Cleopatra had 2. She's lucky to have developed working lungs, let alone be competent enough to accomplish anything. That was a family tree was a wreath
RELATED:
#2
40% of all homeless people in America still goes to work every day
#3
That literally ever race of people that have ever existed on this planet have been slaves to another at some point in history and most of them have overlapping time frames with other races.
And this is never talked about.
#5
Adolph hitler was an animal rights advocate who banned the live boiling of lobsters.
#7
There are books in the Harvard University library which are bound in human flesh
Nicolas Schirvel 3 years ago
One is titled : "How to cover a book in human skin and get away with it"
#8
The US Government has a literal gigantic dossier of classified operations hidden from the public, no brainer. What's shocking are things they've actually declassified.
Among these documents is the detailing of one of the largest human experiments in history, when the US dropped a bacteria-infused fog on the city of San Francisco to test how well "germ-based" biological warfare could prove by masking it with natural fog, which occurred back in the 1950s.
It was widely successful. A specific case is that of Edward Nevin, who passed away from Serratia marcescens, a bacteria that makes bread turn red. It had spread to his heart from a UTI and he passed away
In 1977, the government released a thoroughly detailed report at the testament of Nevin's grandson. Nevin's grandson tried to sue the government for wrongful death, but the court held that the government was immune to a lawsuit for negligence and that they were justified in conducting tests without subjects' knowledge. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Army stated that infections must have occurred inside the hospital and the US Attorney argued that they had to conduct tests in a populated area to see how a biological agent would affect that area.
Imagine what they're hiding.
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
Gee, you mean nations commit horrible atrocities even on their own citizens? Gasp, shock, faint ----- and, yes, that was sarcasm.
#9
Some ancient cultures knew that they could control population growth by denying fertile females both fats and carbohydrates. This process guaranteed that embryos would not mature in the womb due to the lack of food energy derived from carrying mothers. The embryos would self-abort. A certain ratio of body fat is required for successful pregnancies.
#10
There are more people in slavery today than at any other time in history.
Barbara L Bristow 3 years ago
here's a list: As of 2018, the countries with the most slaves were: India (18.4 million), China (3.86 million), Pakistan (3.19 million), North Korea (2.64 million), Nigeria (1.39 million), Indonesia (1.22 million), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1 million), Russia (794,000) and the Philippines (784,000).
Aliquid 3 years ago
There are more people that are NOT slaves today than in any other time in history. There are more people with beards than in any other time in history. There are more carpenters than in any point in history... there are more PEOPLE than in any point in history.
Candia Lee 3 years ago (edited)
There are more people alive than at any other time in history. The proportion of people enslaved is half what it was at its highest, if I recall correctly. Doesn't make it okay, just a diff perspective.
Lady of the Mountains 3 years ago
i think the picture is of a guy cleaning out his birdcage????
8Yorkies-and-57cats 3 years ago
Well... in a small way... he is a slave to his parrot because he has to clean the cage, right? Also, the parrot doesn't pay him for that, so...
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Essex Eagle 3 years ago
Hmmm, of course these numbers are using a definition of "modern slavery" not the slavery that most people would describe it as.
An Co 3 years ago
Note, their is reasonable argument against calling most of the modern slaves slaves. While for most practical purposes it is still slavery, almost all of the modern slaves have legal rights that are being ignored rather than not having them at all. The rape of debt slaves is illegal, but it happens. I.E. This is not a case of slavery being illegal, but instead of massive criminal enterprises breaking the law while the government looks the other way. This means that new laws do little to fix the problem, instead they need cultural changes where the police ignore the patently obvious lies and just arrest the slave owners, rather than accepting at face value that a) the 'indentured servant' actually agreed to the indenture, b) that of course the servant LIED about being raped, etc. etc. etc.
Donald Holder 3 years ago (edited)
This is a true fact only because the population of the world is huge (7.2billion) compared to say 1950 when it was only 2.6 billion. 1918 was only 1.8 billion. During the time of the Pharaohs it's was only 1.5 Million.
Channon Doughty 3 years ago
There are more people than at any time in history, so that value is meaningless. What are the past and current percentages?
El muerto 3 years ago
slavery never got away, it just became unfashionable, so people hide it and make it a black market. like sex workers and more...did you know that most of the rare minerals needed to make your phone are extracted by child slave labor? that's how phones are affordable, slave labor
BorPand8 3 years ago
And agriculture, which is one of the largest slave-using businesses.
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Anders Hernandez Kristiansen 2 years ago
Makes sense, there are more people on earth now than any other time in history, we havent change much
Susan Widomski 2 years ago
A sad statistic...but is this due to more people on earth - or just more slaves % wise?
James Frost 3 years ago
There are more people alive today than at any other time in history. It's the ratio that tells the true story and there is less slavery to population now. We just need to keep working on it.
James Frost 3 years ago
There are more people alive now than ever before. Do we still have work today? Abso-bloody-lutely. That doesn't mean it's not better now than it was before.
Rei 3 years ago (edited)
Sounds terrible, but about 1000 years ago there weren't almost 8 billion people on earth either, so it would be important to include the percentage of slaves for the whole earth during one particular period in time. Would be quite difficult though to find sources like that.
Mich 3 years ago
I’d be Interested to understand the definition of slaves for this example. In egalitarian societies, the concept of domestic workers is abhorrent and they consider them slaves. In developing countries, domestic workers are vital to the economy, as well as to the family of the workers, and they are paid a decent wage and treated with respect, even affection like an additional family member.
#11
That we've been on the brink of a global nuclear exchange several times. And that in one case (Cuban blockade), it was only because a single man (Vasily Arkhipov), disagreed with standing orders, that a nuclear exchange was likely averted.
#12
Due to Fresh drinking water being so scarce on the Galápagos Islands, some bird species, such as the Galapagos Hawk, have adapted by drinking the blood of other animals.
#13
Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landing than to the building of the pyramids.
Mary Rose Kent 3 years ago
That’s insane. I remember watching Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon.
#14
From the fall of the Roman empire up until the mid 19th century, not a single city in Europe had a sewer system to dispose of human feces.
City planners didn't build sewers until it was proven in 1855 that the cause for all the cholera epidemics was drinking water contaminated by human feces.
#15
The Mayans partied hard. They would take alcohol and hallucinogenic enemas.
In Social Studies they had us watch a special on them and I vividly remember an artists rendering of a Mayan doing a handstand while getting an enema.
The original keg-stand.
#16
Russia still has not recovered its population prior to WWII
Tim Pillinger 3 years ago
Ireland hasn't recovered from the potatoes famine. There were 8 million in Ireland in 1841, now there are about 6.
#17
Up until the early 1980s doctors did not think newborn babies could feel pain. They didn't use anesthetic only used muscle relaxers on newborns.
#18
Rainbow Valley of Mount Everest is named for the rainbow colors of clothing of passed away people there
#19
Spartans bathed their newborn babies in red wine instead of warm water
Otter 3 years ago
And the babies slept very quietly after their baths! But seriously, water was often contaminated in the ancient world, and alcohol killed bacteria so it might actually have been a good idea. Did you know that Roman army was able to conquer much of the known world because they carried huge vats of low-quality wine and mixed it with whatever drinking water they found? It killed enough pathenogenic microbia that the armies didn't get sick en masse in dubious areas.
#20
The United States injected unknowing Puerto Rican’s with cancer cells to see how the illness worked
Mary Rose Kent 3 years ago
In the Tuskegee Study, the U.S. government injected African Americans with syphilis so that they could find how it spreads and works its way through the body. And they just left them infected rather than giving them penicillin afterwards.
#22
The founding fathers of the USA didn't know dinosaurs existed.
Mary Rose Kent 3 years ago
And it took even longer from that point to now to work out that we still have dinosaurs in the form of birds and reptiles.
#23
The ability to tell time (circadian rythm) is an evolutionary reaponse.
Cells that learned to replicate at night and rest during the day ultimately survived.
I'm bastardizing it but I find that amazing.
Eli Rockwell 3 years ago
One way that chronobiologists and sleep researchers have used to identify and study circadian rhythms is to spend extended periods isolated from natural light, temperature fluctuations, or other stimuli that could signal the time of day. Today, some laboratories have special facilities to achieve this isolation, but early researchers used caves. Nathaniel Kleitman conducted the first cave experiment in 1938 when he and a graduate student spent 32 days isolated from the outside world in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. The researchers imposed a 28-hour cycle on themselves consisting of ten hours of work, nine of leisure, and another nine hours of sleep. Bedtime shifted four hours later each day during the Mammoth Cave study. Despite the alternative schedule and the absence of external cues, Kleitman found that body temperature continued to fluctuate in an approximately 24-hour cycle, suggesting the existence of an endogenous clock.
#24
If you lined up this history of earth on a 12 hour clock, modern humans making an impact on the planet would be about 1/10 of a second ago.
#25
Adolf Hitler was saved from drowning at age nine in a fountain by a priest
#26
Not so much disturbing as it is funny (at least to me).
The Kettle War. Long story short, Spain (The Holy Roman Empire) and the Netherlands (The Seven Republics of the Netherlands) were beefing. One boat from Spain engaged in a fight with a Dutch naval ship. One shot was fired. The only victim of that cannonball was a pot of soup that was cooking. The Spanish ship then surrendered.
#27
Ireland exported potato’s during the great potato famine.
Otter 3 years ago
Someone won a Nobel Prize by doing large-scale research on large historical and current famines, and found the same pattern in every one: There was always enough food to feed everyone, but in a famine, large numbers of people just had no access to the food. They were either deprived of food, or weren't given enough resources to afford food.
#28
That in UK, some time in the 12th century, two children of unusual GREEN skin colour appeared in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England.
The girl later communicated she and her brother had come from Saint Martin's Land, a subterranean world inhabited by green people. This actually happened!
#29
The baltic states conquest was buried in history (not many people know it) because ww2 and the holocaust happened at about the same time.
#30
The Germans smuggling Lenin into Tsarist Russia, to bring it down.
What do you think ?
Elin Stenqvist 3 years ago
I usually like this type of lists but this one is seriously lacking credible sources and some entries are downright false.
Rissie 3 years ago
I always have this thing that if I find it interesting, I look it up to find out more about it. Cleopatra and the Dutch eating their prime-minister for instance. And those seem to check out. The latter a little less click baity as it is put there, but still very gruesome. The not anesthesising babies is sadly true. Homeless people still having jobs is a fact that's easily checked (not every homeless person is carless or roofless). And the rest just didn't really resonate. I mean, someone saved Hitler from drowning? Yeah. Well. Great. Whether it's true or not, it doesn't impact history.
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Marie Adamson 3 years ago
The only thing that stood out from this article was the appalling spelling mistakes.
bonnyatlast 3 years ago
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Clouds of radiation were released and the Pacific water was contaminated. The US had Navy ships that went through the radiation contaminated clouds. We had a family friend whose son was on one of those ships.
Jody Whitmarsh 2 years ago
With all these very modern government experiments and deprivation of their subjects, it amazed me that people today actually trust their politicians and will argue that the government knows what's best. Their advisors know what's best. Behind every despotic action in history is a scientist Dr type with a god complex to justify atrocities and societal breakdown
More Thinking Needed 3 years ago
In fairness, it would be nice to have a post where people shared all of the accomplishments and advances from world history.
Elin Stenqvist 3 years ago
I usually like this type of lists but this one is seriously lacking credible sources and some entries are downright false.
Rissie 3 years ago
I always have this thing that if I find it interesting, I look it up to find out more about it. Cleopatra and the Dutch eating their prime-minister for instance. And those seem to check out. The latter a little less click baity as it is put there, but still very gruesome. The not anesthesising babies is sadly true. Homeless people still having jobs is a fact that's easily checked (not every homeless person is carless or roofless). And the rest just didn't really resonate. I mean, someone saved Hitler from drowning? Yeah. Well. Great. Whether it's true or not, it doesn't impact history.
Load More Replies... Marie Adamson 3 years ago
The only thing that stood out from this article was the appalling spelling mistakes.
bonnyatlast 3 years ago
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Clouds of radiation were released and the Pacific water was contaminated. The US had Navy ships that went through the radiation contaminated clouds. We had a family friend whose son was on one of those ships.
Jody Whitmarsh 2 years ago
With all these very modern government experiments and deprivation of their subjects, it amazed me that people today actually trust their politicians and will argue that the government knows what's best. Their advisors know what's best. Behind every despotic action in history is a scientist Dr type with a god complex to justify atrocities and societal breakdown
More Thinking Needed 3 years ago
In fairness, it would be nice to have a post where people shared all of the accomplishments and advances from world history.
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