30 Terrifying Moments In Human History That Prove The Past Isn’t Always Pretty

When I was still in community college there was a young fella from Sierra Leone who was very friendly but not too savvy with computers. I stayed on campus between classes to work on projects and offered to help him since we were both in the computer lab anyway. Over the course of the semester I got to know him and asked him about his home country. He talked about how much he missed home because of how beautiful it is but he can't go home because he was orphaned due to the civil war. That hit me like a ton of bricks. Here is this young man striving for an education in a foreign country who was always smiling, kind, and generous to a fault with such a traumatic past. I truly admire his outlook on life and to the organization who brought him to the US and found him a good foster home, thank you for saving my friend. I learned so much about perspective and life in general from being half decent at Microsoft Excel.

This country was founded on greed, with a side of religious fanaticism. There's not much room in there for appreciating other cultures.

It wasn't that they looked different it because the Natives wanted to keep their land that the white people felt was their Manifest Destiny to own and control.

: Others need to make an effort to not step on your toes, to spell out their needs to you, to cater to your whim in the service industry, others are not allowed to speak to you/your child The other extreme is "freedom of speech", weaponized incompetence, others pressuring you to raise your children a certain way or face cps. Reality is more nuanced, both sides need to make an effort. Don't take things personally or find offense in everything. Try to look for unspoken signals. Treat people kindly regardless of job or dumb customer questions. And it takes a village to raise a child - others can comment on your parenting/children, but should not call cps for just letting your 10yo walk to school.

Of course knowing the terrible things that those before us have done doesn't weaken anything! NOT learning from it, is what makes someone or something (a country) weak.

Not sure why you were downvoted for your opinion... fixed that.

Killing. The word is killing. Welcome to BP.

"unaliving", what does that mean? Oh! It means "k ill ed", ooh, I'm so triggered!! Grow the f**k up BP.

Thank you! Words like Muhrder, Rhape and ded are censored? I thought BP was Lithuanian not Communist Chinese.

And chopping off hands for not meeting work quotas

Newspeak, not just fiction anymore.

This comment is hidden. Click here to view.

Some people have hurty feelings so you have chumps bowing down to the minority excluding the majority welcome to future. I would say grow a pair but no doubt that would be some form of phobia.

And why hitler? In terms of direct methods, yes stalin's kill count was "only" between 6-9 million....but factoring in the deaths stemming from his communist regime, he was responsible for the deaths of around 30 million people. What about Mao? Again, communist policies and his "great leap forward" resulted in a death toll of at least 40 million, and as high as 80 million. Why don't their victims count? Because they killed their own people? Because they "only" facilitated a long, slow painful death for those people due to starvation and disease?

I think it has more to do with Hitler starting a World War.

Probably more about being non european rather than colour per se. The further away, the less heard of. Having said that, this is appalling- I have never heard of this atrocity before. 15 effing million souls.

Congo 15 million.

This comment is hidden. Click here to view.

I hold the New York Times and the Pulitzer Prize Committee significantly responsible for the current war in Ukraine. Putin's strategy relied on receiving a significant amount of support from Ukrainians, which proved to have been absolute folly and resulted in immediately losing the vast majority of the Ukrainian land that he initially occupied. Anyone who knew what REALLY happened in the Holomodor would've known how absurd his expectations were, but the American newspaper of record and a committee which represented the "best and brightest" from the rest of American journalism told a story which corresponded exactly with the propaganda Putin was raised on. If not the U.S., who was going to credibly counter the Russian propaganda? I mean, you might think that as head of Russian intelligence, he might know from Russian sources that the intelligence was all fake, but his plans are evidence he didn't. And who in Russian intelligence would teach their then-subordinates, "you realize everything we're teaching you is just our own propaganda?" He might have suspected it was, but there it is in the Pulitzer-prize-winning New York Times!

He would certainly be impressed with such iron-fisted power, unfortunately. I see he has a few fans and/or trolls down below who love their country so much they'd like to fundamentally alter it.

I bet he'll outdo him, when he isn't too busy playing golf.

My word, some of you are obsessed with that man! Taking the worst famine in history and making it about the USA?!

This comment is hidden. Click here to view.

I love how you can have one party control the national news media, 94% of the voters (and jurors) in the capital city, the TV and movie industry, and endless billion-dollar, industry-shakedown-funded foundations and the guy who opposes massive government and state interference in social media is the guy who reminds you of Maoism. THIS IS WHY YOU LOST!!!

This comment is hidden. Click here to view.

You do remember that he already had 4yrs to F~up America but didn't did he he's actually entering his second term much worse than when he left it 4yrs ago. Funny that people forget about that.

That is awful. worked at a restaurant where the dishwasher/food prep guy couldn’t speak. Eventually I was told he had his tongue cut out in some conflict. He was Asian, possibly Cambodian. I felt so bad because the owner was a jerk to all of us and I’m sure he was a refugee and it was hard to find a job.

You're right! I had to look it up myself. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gassing-operations

I am sorry to have to correct you all about an import matter in this discussion. While it is true that there was a progression in the methods of trying to exterminate the Jewish people, the reason behind this is more complicated. It was found to be having a negative psychological impact on the Germans who had to remove the dead bodies from the vans. Likewise with the method of shooting large numbers of people beside open pits throughout the conquered territories of Europe. Too many German soldiers were becoming incapable of serving again, once having taken part in an "action". This is why the German High Command eventually came up with the Final Solution: the Death Camps. It is also why all the Death Camps were located outside of Germany itself. Efficiency was never a concern in regard to the goal of murdering Jews. This becomes very clear when reviewing the allocation of resources during the last six months of WWII.

the first attempt at the vans was simply routing the exhaust gas into the sealed cargo compartment. That was too slow so they went to gas vans, Then to gas chambers.

Yes. And if I'm not mistaken, more died in the gas vans than in the death factories. Zyklon B was also used in the vans. The vans were also not the first attempt, as it was determined that bullets and even half the bullets but tying them together next to a river were not efficient enough and cost too much. People really do not know enough of the history and the ethnic cleansing that followed the front lines east.

It's how octopii are killed. Simple momentum and force. And horrifyingly, because it's cheap.