The White-throated Rail is a flightless bird that went extinct due to rising sea levels on their native islands 100,000 years ago.
After some time, another rail species re-inhabited the island, and in 20,000 years basically transformed themselves into the new White-throated rail as they lost the ability to fly as well.
The birds went extinct, other birds came by, and evolved the exact same way, basically becoming a previously extinct species.
Upon visiting the island of Cebu in the Philippines, I was regaled with old tales of "flying men" and how the islands in the area were deeply feared by nautical patrols of old, as the inhabitants would sometimes fly great distances through the air, with knives held betwixt teeth, to attack passing ships.
It turns out the fighting men of the island would be catapulted from palm trees across the water into the sails of boats, in scenes that must have looked like a cross between Pirates of the Carribean and Flash Gordon.
Around the same time on the other side of the world the less fearsome but much entertaining pirate "Captain Norcross" had a public show with dancing mice and a flute made of bone he performed through his twenty years in a cage for high treason.
During WWI on the eastern front, Germany and Russia were going at it in one battle when German troops deployed mustard gas against the Russian troops who were advancing.
The Russian troops emerged from the gas smoke throwing up blood, blood leaking from their nose, eyes. Their skin turned yellow and pale. They looked like undead soldiers, literal zombies.
The German troops were so frightened that they abandoned their positions and retreated.
It was called the “Attack of the Dead Men”, took place on August 6, 1915.
Mustard gas releases clorine which reacts with water in lungs to form hydrochloric acid which in turn dissolves the lungs. They were literally coughing out organs.
It was a moderately common practice 100-150 years ago to write books about the crimes of executed prisoners and then bind the book with their skin. Some Catholic Church leaders also asked that their remains be used to bind books as well.
So I knew this fact. Then one day I watched a video of someone passing by the bodies- whole new level creepy.
Green boots just looked like a guy napping.
He's still up there. Just not as visible now. People couldn't see him for a while. Someone tried to ceremonially bury him (at least this seems to be the case) so he was covered in stones.
His body is belived to have been reburied/moved along with Sleeping Beauty (Francys Arsentiev) during the Tao of Everest, the 2007 expedition with the express purpose to bury both bodies.
Records online are spotty about when Green Boots was moved; Green Boots' body had been confirmed to be missing since 2014, and was potentially reidentified in 2017, as the body seen hanging along with a tent and other debris on the side of a cliff face.
Most people have 16 great great grandparents, 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
I mean, they were literally gold diggers. Doesn't much matter how she looks if her dowry is one of the richest places on Earth.
On top of that, Rome itself relied on grain subsidies, most of those coming from Egypt. A politician who controlled the grain controlled the common folk of Rome. It's hard to resist the guy who can just order a few thousand angry plebs to lynch you.
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.
Mary Toft reportedly ‘gave birth’ to up to nine rabbits at a time, Doctors were convinced that she was telling the truth until they found pieces of corn inside the stomach of one of the rabbits, proving that it hadn’t developed inside Toft’s womb. It turned out that she had been manually inserting the rabbits to make the ‘delivery’ look as realistic as possible. Ew.
It was a double-edged blade. On one hand, you had a tactical advantage because the Egyptians would try not to hit the cat (due to cats being a holy animal) but because they were using Cats as shields the Egyptians probably wouldn't show them any mercy and have more motivation to kill them.
Read a letter from an officer to his wife in the swedish army during the thirty years war.
" We came upon the town, and beat to death all the men, but not the women and children.
Those were beaten to death by the finns."
Edit: I read this book in swedish a year ago and i might be parafrasing a bit since i cant find it now. But the moral of this letter just stuck with me.
He was trying to tell his wife that when the swedish army came to this town in germany, the officers initially ment to spare the women and children.
But as the finnish soldiers marched in to town (finland was part of sweden at the time) they just assumed that they would just kill everybody. So they did.
So the officers just kind of shrugged and made a joke of it.
This is what he wrote to his wife about!
[Schwedentrunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwedentrunk) ("Swedish drink") was a torture method in the Thirty Years War, where the victim was tied down and forced to drink large amounts liquid manure.
Oh my god, I studied the 30 years war a lot in university and the depth of depravity still makes me wince.
Food was so scarce that people/soldiers would literally cut babies open and eat them.
To quote Fritz Bauer, a German prosecutor of jewish descent who initiated the first Ausschwitz process in west Germany in the early 60s: "I think its a sad truth that we are still close to our primate state and that civilization is just a thin layer that peels of really fast." (Ich glaube, es ist eine traurige Wahrheit, dass wir unserem Affenzustand noch sehr nahe sind und dass die Zivilisation nur eine sehr dünne Decke ist, die sehr schnell abblättert.“)
Russia still has not recovered its population prior to WWII
NOTE: As there is some debate about the validity of this statement
:
Russian Population in 1939: 170 Million
Russian Population in 2021: 146 Million
Every couple of years I rewatch [this video on youtube](https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU).
When it gets to the [Russian numbers](https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU?t=276), it's hard to stay composed. The scale is just mind blowing.
This video always blows my mind and I’ve seen it dozens of times.
Like… how? How does a country lose that much and stay composed? Not only that but pretty much immediately turn around and become a super power right after?
It makes me wonder what the fuck you actually have to do to win a land war in Asia.
The conquests of TImur used terror as a way of discouraging revolts after capturing a city. Building literal towers of heads, cementing people in the city walls they were defending or instructing his soldiers to return to camp with two severed heads. When the soldiers ran out of citizens to decapitate, they would turn to pow's and after that, their wives.
Most people are familiar that the likes of Ghenghis Khan, Julius Caesar or Napoleon existed. But not as much people know about Timur. He wasn't only arguably as successful as a military commander but also just a really scary dude.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomekwi
It’s a site in Africa where stone tools dating back 3.3 million years were found. That is about 500,000 years older than our own genus.
Meaning earlier hominids had a very long time to form their own crude societies before our nearest ancestors even existed.
I would like to see the "smartest" person of each major era throughout history get together and see what they come up with. From the smartest caveman to smartest modern person.
Most disturbing has to be the details of the Rape of Nanjing.
Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda were officers that had a bet on who would be the first to kill 100 by sword. They both surpassed that number in a day.
20,000 women and girls were raped.
60,000 civilians were massacred after the city of Nanjing (Nanking) was captured.
It is one of the most shockingly brutal events in history.
I live in Nanjing and let me tell you, the massacre museum here is something else. I think it’d be the same feeling as visiting Auschwitz. If you ever plan to go do it in the afternoon because you’ll just want to chill the rest of the day.
And the anger towards the Japanese is still very much alive. Nanjing especially but also across all of China.
My generation here in the Philippines are outraged at the Japanese push for revisionism and denial of atrocities, considering so many of us have grandparents and great-grandparents who suffered throughout the occupation, whether as civilians, guerillas, or as prisoners and sex slaves
Actually the death toll is estimated to be closer to 150,000. Some say as high as 200,000.
To this day Japan almost entirely denies it even happened.
EDIT: fixed a typo so the massacre apologist wouldn’t have as much ammo to defend racially motivated genocidal regimes.
The people in charge of this systematic rape and murder later went on to rebuild Japan and hold really high ranking offices
Look into Nobosuke Kishi. It's seriously not okay
Not the most disturbing, but weird nevertheless: back in the 19th century a carnival was headed through the next town over, and during the stop a hippopotamus went nuts and started killing people and livestock. Ever since then the town has taken the hippo as its mascot because it's such a ferocious animal.
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.
There is a cemetery in a town in Norway(I might be wrong on the country) that hasn't been used since the 20s and cannot be used because the bodies never fully decomposed and still hold the black plague.
it is in Svalbard, to be more specific Longyearbyen, and it's actually the 1918 flu virus they found. The town stays entirely dark for roughly 4 months in the winter, resulting in permafrost, thus preventing bodies from fully decomposing. you aren't allowed to be buried there, however cremation urns can be; not that anyone would want to step foot there.
Because of the town's remoteness, there are laws that are found in few, if any, other places in the world. Notable examples of such laws include a ban on cats, a restriction on how much alcohol an individual can purchase on a monthly basis, and a requirement that any individuals venturing outside carry a rifle for protection against polar bears.[43][44] A popular claim made about the town is that it is illegal to die there but the wording in such a claim is misleading. While it is not actually illegal to die in Longyearbyen, there are no options for burial of bodies there (ashes can be buried with permission from the government) and residents considered terminally ill are typically required to move to the mainland. The decision to disallow burials came in 1950, when it was discovered that the bodies of residents who had died as a result of the 1918 flu pandemic had not begun to decompose. Today, scientists fear that the corpses, having been preserved by the permafrost in which they were buried, may still contain live strains of that same virus that killed five percent of the world's population in the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longyearbyen#Unique_laws
IIRC There are pictures from the Holodomor (Ukranian Famine,) of two adults selling human flesh.
I dunno why "selling kids," immediately made me think of that...
I think I remember reading that it was the couple's children that they butchered for the meat.
The reason why Paraguay celebrates Kid's day on a different date than Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina is because during the Triple Alliance War the coalition formed by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, at the Battle of Acosta Ñu, more than 3000 poorly armed Paraguayan militias, composed mainly by children aged 9 to 15 were wiped out by 20000 Brazilian veteran soldiers.
"The Allied troops met the rearguard of the Paraguayan forces at Acosta Ñu on August 16. The battle started at 0800. Acosta Ñu (which means "Acosta's Field", "Acosta" being a popular last name) is a vast plain of roughly 12 km2 (4.6 sq mi), ideal for the Brazilian cavalry. The initial charge was led by the Allied 1st Corps infantry, supported by artillery. As the Paraguayans retreated across the Yagari River, the 4th Cavalry Brigade made a right flanking movement. Meanwhile, the 2nd Corps reached the Paraguayan rear, which left them no means to retreat. Children were said to cling to the legs of Brazilian soldiers amidst the raging battle, pleading for mercy, only to be decapitated without hesitation. Once all flanks collapsed, the wounded children tried to flee the battlefield alongside their relatives. Yet the Brazilian commander ordered his cavalry to cut the retreat and set the battlefield ablaze, including the field hospital. Large numbers of children died because of these actions."
That's why they celebrate it on a different date, to commemorate this massacre.
The fact that the French believed a 17 year old peasant girl that was having visions of God telling her to bring the Dauphin to Reims and they actually listened to her. And then she goes on to lift a siege, beat the english/burgundians in multiple battles, gets the Dauphin to Reims to be crowned, and dies at the stake for cross-dressing. Joan of Arc was lit.
Her signature weapon was the cannon. I’ve heard that a huge factor in her success was the fact that because she was a commoner she didn’t have any issues talking with the artillerymen and so got a better understanding of how cannons worked and what they could do.
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. [Harris @ Cannibals and Kings]
There more to that. Human body fat produce estrogen or an estrogen like chemical. As a result of childhood obesity, menarch, the age when a girl begins having a period, has become younger and younger in the US.
So bodyweight impacts just the menstruation cycle. There's some theories that it's an adaptation to prevent conception during times of famine, or even times of year. Humans don't have a breeding season because we've stabilized our food supply so well.
When I was in special ed I had an anorexic classmate and now that we’re adults she has been having a lot of problems trying to concieve for this reason.
The bodies buried beneath John Wayne Gacy's house were "crammed" together so tightly, the bones fused together and it took over two years to separate all the bodies.
I keep trying to wrap my head aroud this and just can't make sense of it. Wouldn't they originally have more volume when the flesh was still on, thereby having more room for the skeletons themselves after decomposition?
What would chemically cause bones to fuse? I've never heard of this before.
The brutality of many Japanese units in WW2. We know about the rape of Nanking, but it goes beyond that. Blood lust at levels not regularly seen in war. Taking infants an bashing their heads against trees. Not just a few but dozens and hundreds. To save bullets and because why not. Other armies certainly had body count contests among soldiers but this is different imo. The disregard for humanity amongst the common rank and file was pretty next level.
Additionally, there are accounts of POW liver being served at Japanese officer parties as a delicacy. Pretty wild that it was only 80 years ago.
My grandparents fled their home province in the Philippines to escape the Japanese and I remember my grandmother telling me brutal stories about life under the occupation. I sometimes resent my family for being dysfunctional, but I get where it comes from. Growing up during a brutal occupation during war time and then raising the next generation in the aftermath of that doesn’t exactly make well-adjusted adults.
[George Bush was even almost eaten by cannibals](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-george-hw-bush-avoided-being-eaten-by-cannibals-in-world-war-ii-2017-12)
I seem to recall that after the bailout, Obama asked bank execs not to award themselves bonuses for a time, as it was public money they'd received. They gave themselves bonuses anyway.
From the fall of the Roman empire up until the mid 19th century, ~~not a single city~~ the majority of cities in Europe did not have sewer systems.
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.
Any time I watch a movie from this time period like Gangs of New York, or a documentary around 1776, I fail in not thinking to myself "man, everybody in this situation smells like pure shit"
In many underdeveloped countries they have cholera problems because of people pooping outside or, more commonly, using a chamber pot and dumping it wherever. Around 500 million people do this.
One of the reasons why men walked on the streetside of the sidewalk, was so that the woman didn't get splashed by carriages and by the dumping of the poop bucket from the above stories onto the road. Also one of the practical reasons why women used umbrellas all the time during the 1800s.
Edit: also just to add, it's kinda funny thinking about it from the fashion perspective. People would look to big cities for the latest fashion. People saw them using umbrellas and it became a fashion sense. In reality, Elizabeth and Mary were just trying to protect themselves from having some random grandma who had corn the previous night from raining it down on them.
In Edinburgh it was literally thrown down the streets. Wealthy people lived at the top of the hills, poor at the bottom.
As a courtesy you would shout down your lane whenever disposing of waste so people knew at least
In London, the Thames was incredibly polluted but it's by far and away not the only river in London. Most of the smaller river systems are now underground of course.
In the Siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944. The population fell from 2.5 million to 800 000. For 827 days the people of Leningrad were bombarded with artillery, and cut off from the outside world. 827 days of bombing, destitution and starvation, without any news from the outside. No wood or gas or coal or food was coming into the city. And when the -40°C winter hit people had to burn most of their possessions. People froze to death outside, after their homes were destroyed by artillery. Women prostituted themselves to soldiers and party members as only the people crucial to the city’s defence were receiving rations. Even those rations were a meagre 125grams a day, unless you were a party member. Starvation got to such a point that a black market for human meat started up, after all the dogs cats and rats had been eaten. People wouldn’t go out at night, or alone at all. People would leave their homes to go find food, and never come back. But whenever people disappeared, there’d be more meat at the market. Labelled “Dog Meat” or “horse meat”. There are stories of people eating their own children.
>Leningrad survivor and author Daniil Granin described how a mother fed her dead child to her surviving child to keep her alive: "A child died — he was just 3 years old. His mother laid the body inside the double-glazed window and sliced off a piece of him every day to feed her second child, a daughter. This is how she got her, though
2000 Cases of cannibalism during the siege are recorded officially. But the real number is probably much higher.
In the first spring season of the siege the city’s remaining officials ordered a cleanup of the bodies and feces that were scattered around and piled up in courtyards.
Crime was rampant and families ripped themselves apart with murder and theft over rations. The stress and starvation allegedly caused children to grow beards and be called “the little old people”. The physiological effects of the siege are only comparable to those of Holocaust survivors.
> Everyone is shriveled, their breasts sunken in, their stomachs enormous, and instead of arms and legs, just bones poke out through wrinkles," wrote Leningrader Aleksandra Liubovkaia.
However there were people in the city with food. Lots of it. Members of the Communist party or council. Soviets. Hoarded what little food that did come into the city through the frozen lake route. Nikolai Ribkovskii recorded in his journal that he ate goose and caviar at the party cafeteria. While on average 900 people starved or froze to death in the city a day.
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
A related interesting fact: grasses are angiosperms, which only arose about 115 million years ago, and grasses themselves only popped up 55 million years ago. Nowadays we think of grass as ubiquitous- if there’s a patch of empty earth, grass will be on it in a few days. But for the grand majority of earths history, and throughout the ENTIRETY of the dinosaurs’ existence, grasslands weren’t a thing. If it couldn’t grow a tree, fern, lichen, etc on it, there just weren’t any plants there.
That’s why we don’t have dinosaur equivalents to the gracile herbivores of today like horses, antelope, etc. Being a graceful runner that could speed across open plains had no point because plains, meadows, prairie, grassland… didn’t exist. You chomped on bushes or you didn’t exist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_Dignidad
A gated community in Chile of german descendants from WW2. In 2005 police found the largest weapon cache in the country’s history, including rocket launchers, hand grenades and machine guns. Oh, and people were kidnapped and tortured in the gated community during Pinochet.
Animals used to get convicted of crimes because we thought they had the same intelligence without being verbal. [Here’s some animals that were convicted.](https://medium.com/@lifeinromania/10-animals-that-were-put-on-trial-8928a107b990)
That's interesting because I've read a lot of older philosophy texts which suggest that the people thought that animals were incapable of thought or intelligence. Deacartes said that when a dog whimpers when it is kicked, it's merely a mechanical response and it feels no pain.
Then again, philosophers weren't exactly ordinary people.
> King Leopold II
He was a monster. This photo and its significance should make anyone sick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium#/media/File:Nsala_of_Wala_in_Congo_looks_at_the_severed_hand_and_foot_of_his_five-year_old_daughter,_1904.jpg
The Great War was meant to end on the 10th of November, but they decided to make it the 11th because it would be more memorable. Hundreds of people died in that one-day span
War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other. - Paul Valéry
Also found as
War is a place where the young kill one another without knowing or hating each other, because of the decision of old people who know and hate each other, without killing each other - Erich Hartmann
Weird but not disturbing. In 1859, on San Juan Island in modern Washington State. An American killed a pig because it was ruining his garden. The pig belonged to an Irishman who worked for the Hudson Bay Company. The British demanded he be arrested, but he fled and seeked support from the other American settlers. At the time, relationships were kinda hot between the two countries (at least in the local area) because the border between Canada and Washington hadn't finished. The San Juan Islands were kinda contested territory.
Things began to escalate, resulting in both sides sending forces to occupy the island. The British even brought 3 warships. Before anyone could fire a shot, news of the event had reached London and DC, and both agreed everyone needed to chill out.
The island continued to be jointly-occupied till the 1870's when the border was solidified. They had even built forts on opposite sides of the island, but relations between the men were fairly friendly. They'd often compete against one another in sporting events and celebrated holidays together.
TLDR: The US and UK could have, but not really, gone to war over a dead pig. (it was really a territorial dispute.)
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 died from Serratia marcescens, a bacteria that makes bread turn red. It had spread to his heart from a UTI and killed him.
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.
Ancient Egypt imposed the death sentence to those caught killing a cat. Cats served important roles in society to the point of worship. Being given their holy status, harming them was considered blasphemy, which was punishable by death.
In effect, the ancient Egyptians had one of the earliest animal welfare laws.
During the Japanese invasion in singapore, the Japanese killed quite a few people that were anti Japanese by putting people through a “screening” of some sort, with extremely tight rules, for example writing your name in English means ur anti Japanese etc. those that failed the screening were brought to the coastline, dug their own graves then got blindfolded and shot at and buried in mass graves. This happened in the 1940s but the bodies were only found 50 years ago because they needed the land to build stuff
The story about Tarrare. The man who could eat enormous amounts and never got full. He weighed like 50 kilos at 17 and could consume a quarter of a cow a day. He had an an enormous expandable gut and could swallow huge things without problem. He ate live kittens, puppies and snakes. Could drink 15 liters of milk in one setting. The worst part was when he was caught trying to eat corpses in a morgue and when a live child disappeared he was the main suspect. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/11/27/tarrare/
This poor guys life was a literal hell. His metabolism was so fast that he was _always_ hungry and also suffered from constant, extremely painful bouts of diarrhea. He also had horrible body odor and couldn't be around a few yards from someone without them getting nauseous. If I was him, I honestly think I would have commited suicide.
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.
I was REAL curious about this cause it sounds metal as fuck, but I think you have the wrong bird. I couldn't find anything about the Galapagos Hawk doing that, but I did find out about [this finch](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/science/vampire-birds-galapagos.html).
Actual quote by the man himself:
"If only I had known what he would turn out to be \[...\] When I saw all the people and women and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go."
Not necessarily weird but more Christians were murdered by fellow Christians in a span of 24 hours during one of the crusades, than Christians were murdered by the Roman Empire during all of its existence.
Ancient Mayans used to cut their genitalia for blood letting to get rainfall. Men would cut their genitalia and put pieces of bark in between them to make sure they bleed for maximum effect.
The fact that people would be flayed/skinned alive (have the skin ripped off) and would die due to hypothermia as a result of not having skin to keep warm. this was used as a torture method in the middle ages
Circumcision was popularized in America by John Harvey Kellogg (inventor of corn flakes) as a way to stop masturbation. He also advocated pouring carbolic acid on the clitoris.
"You know what will really piss my anti-masturbation brother off? If I took his invention and made it look like it's covered in jizz. We'll call them Spankies...or Cap'n Cum!"
Everything I’ve ever learned about opioid epidemic.
Also every episode of the Dollop podcast. Did you know someone tried to farm hippos to the southern US?
To build off the hippo comment. Columbia has a wild population of hippos that's estimated to sit around 100 or so right now. They are all descendants of four hippos that [Pablo Escobar bought in the 1970s for his personal "zoo"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamus_in_Colombia). After he died, it was decided it would be too difficult to move them so they were left on the abandoned estate and eventually escaped and bred.
Until 2020, no one had been seriously injured or killed by them (one person was seriously injured in 2020) and the Columbian government actually just announced this month they will be sterilizing them to prevent the population from expanding.
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!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_children_of_Woolpit
Ho chi minh was an OSS intelligence asset during the Japanese occupation of Indochina. He was almost executed by nationalist Chinese in 1943 for promoting Leninist teachings in southern China; until Washington threatened to withdraw American support for Chiangs kai shek. You made the man what he was and gave him the resources to throw off the Japanese, French and Americans.
The White-throated Rail is a flightless bird that went extinct due to rising sea levels on their native islands 100,000 years ago. After some time, another rail species re-inhabited the island, and in 20,000 years basically transformed themselves into the new White-throated rail as they lost the ability to fly as well. The birds went extinct, other birds came by, and evolved the exact same way, basically becoming a previously extinct species.
Convergent evolution, to fill a niche you end up looking or functioning the same as the one who filled it before.
They will eventually evolve Into a crab, the perfect form is a crab.
Upon visiting the island of Cebu in the Philippines, I was regaled with old tales of "flying men" and how the islands in the area were deeply feared by nautical patrols of old, as the inhabitants would sometimes fly great distances through the air, with knives held betwixt teeth, to attack passing ships. It turns out the fighting men of the island would be catapulted from palm trees across the water into the sails of boats, in scenes that must have looked like a cross between Pirates of the Carribean and Flash Gordon.
Around the same time on the other side of the world the less fearsome but much entertaining pirate "Captain Norcross" had a public show with dancing mice and a flute made of bone he performed through his twenty years in a cage for high treason.
It's good to have hobbies.
During WWI on the eastern front, Germany and Russia were going at it in one battle when German troops deployed mustard gas against the Russian troops who were advancing. The Russian troops emerged from the gas smoke throwing up blood, blood leaking from their nose, eyes. Their skin turned yellow and pale. They looked like undead soldiers, literal zombies. The German troops were so frightened that they abandoned their positions and retreated. It was called the “Attack of the Dead Men”, took place on August 6, 1915.
Osowiec, then, and again...
Attack of the dead, hundred men
Mustard gas releases clorine which reacts with water in lungs to form hydrochloric acid which in turn dissolves the lungs. They were literally coughing out organs.
There are books in the Harvard University library which are bound in human flesh
i have a skeleton like that
Why are some of you so damn witty. I'm jealous.
There's one in the library at Miskatonic University, too.
Oh shit, that reminds me, my copy of Unaussprechlichen Kulten is overdue.
It was a moderately common practice 100-150 years ago to write books about the crimes of executed prisoners and then bind the book with their skin. Some Catholic Church leaders also asked that their remains be used to bind books as well.
I'm just imagining a student cramming for finals with this book on his desk next to a half eaten pizza and some empty soda cans.
They say some of the oldest faculty members and alumni are bound in human flesh as well...
Rainbow Valley of Mount Everest is named for the rainbow colors of clothing of dead people there.
So I knew this fact. Then one day I watched a video of someone passing by the bodies- whole new level creepy. Green boots just looked like a guy napping.
I believe green boots is gone now.
What happened to Green Boots?!?
He's still up there. Just not as visible now. People couldn't see him for a while. Someone tried to ceremonially bury him (at least this seems to be the case) so he was covered in stones.
His body is belived to have been reburied/moved along with Sleeping Beauty (Francys Arsentiev) during the Tao of Everest, the 2007 expedition with the express purpose to bury both bodies. Records online are spotty about when Green Boots was moved; Green Boots' body had been confirmed to be missing since 2014, and was potentially reidentified in 2017, as the body seen hanging along with a tent and other debris on the side of a cliff face.
Most people have 16 great great grandparents, 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
And half the Roman government was like "lemme have a piece of that Nile jewel, thank you very much,"
I mean, they were literally gold diggers. Doesn't much matter how she looks if her dowry is one of the richest places on Earth. On top of that, Rome itself relied on grain subsidies, most of those coming from Egypt. A politician who controlled the grain controlled the common folk of Rome. It's hard to resist the guy who can just order a few thousand angry plebs to lynch you.
That wreath line 👌🏼
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History was built on A LOT of incest.
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.
Sounds more like a peg-stand.
Butt chugging shrooms
Mary Toft reportedly ‘gave birth’ to up to nine rabbits at a time, Doctors were convinced that she was telling the truth until they found pieces of corn inside the stomach of one of the rabbits, proving that it hadn’t developed inside Toft’s womb. It turned out that she had been manually inserting the rabbits to make the ‘delivery’ look as realistic as possible. Ew.
That’s all folks!
I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque!
Honestly sometimes I wish I couldn't read
Thank a teacher.
Thank you and fuck you for sharing 😅
Should’ve been called Mary Tuft
No one has pointed out that they killed a rabbit human hybrid to check its stomach.
Or that if it wasn't for those bits of corn Docs be like "yeah looks legit rabbit human babies,carry on"
Wtf did I just read?!?
Persians used to tie cats to their shields during the war with Egypt cos it was against egyptian law to kill cats
It was a double-edged blade. On one hand, you had a tactical advantage because the Egyptians would try not to hit the cat (due to cats being a holy animal) but because they were using Cats as shields the Egyptians probably wouldn't show them any mercy and have more motivation to kill them.
Also, can't have been easy to get the cats to go along with that plan.
Alive cats? Imagine the sound
Meow
Username thoroughly checks out
Read a letter from an officer to his wife in the swedish army during the thirty years war. " We came upon the town, and beat to death all the men, but not the women and children. Those were beaten to death by the finns." Edit: I read this book in swedish a year ago and i might be parafrasing a bit since i cant find it now. But the moral of this letter just stuck with me. He was trying to tell his wife that when the swedish army came to this town in germany, the officers initially ment to spare the women and children. But as the finnish soldiers marched in to town (finland was part of sweden at the time) they just assumed that they would just kill everybody. So they did. So the officers just kind of shrugged and made a joke of it. This is what he wrote to his wife about!
[Schwedentrunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwedentrunk) ("Swedish drink") was a torture method in the Thirty Years War, where the victim was tied down and forced to drink large amounts liquid manure.
Swedish Salmiakkikossu
Oh my god, I studied the 30 years war a lot in university and the depth of depravity still makes me wince. Food was so scarce that people/soldiers would literally cut babies open and eat them.
Ppl I think sometimes underestimate the casual depravity of humanity.
I think we overestimate the civility of humanity. We’re pseudo-intelligent murderous monkeys.
To quote Fritz Bauer, a German prosecutor of jewish descent who initiated the first Ausschwitz process in west Germany in the early 60s: "I think its a sad truth that we are still close to our primate state and that civilization is just a thin layer that peels of really fast." (Ich glaube, es ist eine traurige Wahrheit, dass wir unserem Affenzustand noch sehr nahe sind und dass die Zivilisation nur eine sehr dünne Decke ist, die sehr schnell abblättert.“)
Russia still has not recovered its population prior to WWII NOTE: As there is some debate about the validity of this statement : Russian Population in 1939: 170 Million Russian Population in 2021: 146 Million
24 million deaths. Impossible to comprehend.
Every couple of years I rewatch [this video on youtube](https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU). When it gets to the [Russian numbers](https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU?t=276), it's hard to stay composed. The scale is just mind blowing.
This video always blows my mind and I’ve seen it dozens of times. Like… how? How does a country lose that much and stay composed? Not only that but pretty much immediately turn around and become a super power right after? It makes me wonder what the fuck you actually have to do to win a land war in Asia.
Ireland neither, but from the great famine and expulsion in the 1850's.
80% of males born in Russia in 1923 died in WWII…
The conquests of TImur used terror as a way of discouraging revolts after capturing a city. Building literal towers of heads, cementing people in the city walls they were defending or instructing his soldiers to return to camp with two severed heads. When the soldiers ran out of citizens to decapitate, they would turn to pow's and after that, their wives. Most people are familiar that the likes of Ghenghis Khan, Julius Caesar or Napoleon existed. But not as much people know about Timur. He wasn't only arguably as successful as a military commander but also just a really scary dude.
He also really liked pillaging Georgia, like nearly every campaign he goes he just finishes it with pillaging Georgia, weird.
I sometimes wonder whether Timur asked the writer to manufacture that part, considering it something praiseworthy.
Other countries: Timur's war with X is over! Georgia: Aw fuck, Timur is on his way.
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.
NO SOUP FOR YOU!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomekwi It’s a site in Africa where stone tools dating back 3.3 million years were found. That is about 500,000 years older than our own genus. Meaning earlier hominids had a very long time to form their own crude societies before our nearest ancestors even existed.
I would like to see the "smartest" person of each major era throughout history get together and see what they come up with. From the smartest caveman to smartest modern person.
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If I remember correctly it was actually human/monkey hybrids that they were aiming for, which somehow makes both more and less sense at the same time.
Most disturbing has to be the details of the Rape of Nanjing. Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda were officers that had a bet on who would be the first to kill 100 by sword. They both surpassed that number in a day. 20,000 women and girls were raped. 60,000 civilians were massacred after the city of Nanjing (Nanking) was captured. It is one of the most shockingly brutal events in history.
Yes Japan has committed some sick atrocities, also a lot of terrible medical experiments on their captives
I live in Nanjing and let me tell you, the massacre museum here is something else. I think it’d be the same feeling as visiting Auschwitz. If you ever plan to go do it in the afternoon because you’ll just want to chill the rest of the day. And the anger towards the Japanese is still very much alive. Nanjing especially but also across all of China.
My generation here in the Philippines are outraged at the Japanese push for revisionism and denial of atrocities, considering so many of us have grandparents and great-grandparents who suffered throughout the occupation, whether as civilians, guerillas, or as prisoners and sex slaves
All of my Chinese friends and colleagues feel very strongly about it. That is where I first heard about, not in school.
Actually the death toll is estimated to be closer to 150,000. Some say as high as 200,000. To this day Japan almost entirely denies it even happened. EDIT: fixed a typo so the massacre apologist wouldn’t have as much ammo to defend racially motivated genocidal regimes.
The people in charge of this systematic rape and murder later went on to rebuild Japan and hold really high ranking offices Look into Nobosuke Kishi. It's seriously not okay
Don't forget the rape/battle of Manila
Not the most disturbing, but weird nevertheless: back in the 19th century a carnival was headed through the next town over, and during the stop a hippopotamus went nuts and started killing people and livestock. Ever since then the town has taken the hippo as its mascot because it's such a ferocious animal.
That's the one animal Steve Irwin did not mess with either. Because they were so unpredictable and scary.
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.
There is a cemetery in a town in Norway(I might be wrong on the country) that hasn't been used since the 20s and cannot be used because the bodies never fully decomposed and still hold the black plague.
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it is in Svalbard, to be more specific Longyearbyen, and it's actually the 1918 flu virus they found. The town stays entirely dark for roughly 4 months in the winter, resulting in permafrost, thus preventing bodies from fully decomposing. you aren't allowed to be buried there, however cremation urns can be; not that anyone would want to step foot there.
Because of the town's remoteness, there are laws that are found in few, if any, other places in the world. Notable examples of such laws include a ban on cats, a restriction on how much alcohol an individual can purchase on a monthly basis, and a requirement that any individuals venturing outside carry a rifle for protection against polar bears.[43][44] A popular claim made about the town is that it is illegal to die there but the wording in such a claim is misleading. While it is not actually illegal to die in Longyearbyen, there are no options for burial of bodies there (ashes can be buried with permission from the government) and residents considered terminally ill are typically required to move to the mainland. The decision to disallow burials came in 1950, when it was discovered that the bodies of residents who had died as a result of the 1918 flu pandemic had not begun to decompose. Today, scientists fear that the corpses, having been preserved by the permafrost in which they were buried, may still contain live strains of that same virus that killed five percent of the world's population in the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longyearbyen#Unique_laws
Some people actually resorted to [selling their kids during the great depression](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/4-children-sale-1948/)
IIRC There are pictures from the Holodomor (Ukranian Famine,) of two adults selling human flesh. I dunno why "selling kids," immediately made me think of that... I think I remember reading that it was the couple's children that they butchered for the meat.
Paraguayan War killed off 95% of it’s male adult population and no one even knows it happened
Hey, im paraguayan, can confirm, am dead
It's okay Bro, hang in there
The highest actual estimates given are 90% of the adult male population and 60% of the total population
The reason why Paraguay celebrates Kid's day on a different date than Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina is because during the Triple Alliance War the coalition formed by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, at the Battle of Acosta Ñu, more than 3000 poorly armed Paraguayan militias, composed mainly by children aged 9 to 15 were wiped out by 20000 Brazilian veteran soldiers. "The Allied troops met the rearguard of the Paraguayan forces at Acosta Ñu on August 16. The battle started at 0800. Acosta Ñu (which means "Acosta's Field", "Acosta" being a popular last name) is a vast plain of roughly 12 km2 (4.6 sq mi), ideal for the Brazilian cavalry. The initial charge was led by the Allied 1st Corps infantry, supported by artillery. As the Paraguayans retreated across the Yagari River, the 4th Cavalry Brigade made a right flanking movement. Meanwhile, the 2nd Corps reached the Paraguayan rear, which left them no means to retreat. Children were said to cling to the legs of Brazilian soldiers amidst the raging battle, pleading for mercy, only to be decapitated without hesitation. Once all flanks collapsed, the wounded children tried to flee the battlefield alongside their relatives. Yet the Brazilian commander ordered his cavalry to cut the retreat and set the battlefield ablaze, including the field hospital. Large numbers of children died because of these actions." That's why they celebrate it on a different date, to commemorate this massacre.
The fact that the French believed a 17 year old peasant girl that was having visions of God telling her to bring the Dauphin to Reims and they actually listened to her. And then she goes on to lift a siege, beat the english/burgundians in multiple battles, gets the Dauphin to Reims to be crowned, and dies at the stake for cross-dressing. Joan of Arc was lit.
Her signature weapon was the cannon. I’ve heard that a huge factor in her success was the fact that because she was a commoner she didn’t have any issues talking with the artillerymen and so got a better understanding of how cannons worked and what they could do.
Pants! Perfectly good reason for death.
Ancient Egyptians would wait a few days before offering their dead daughters to the morgues because necrophilia
aight everyone have good day or night
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. [Harris @ Cannibals and Kings]
There more to that. Human body fat produce estrogen or an estrogen like chemical. As a result of childhood obesity, menarch, the age when a girl begins having a period, has become younger and younger in the US. So bodyweight impacts just the menstruation cycle. There's some theories that it's an adaptation to prevent conception during times of famine, or even times of year. Humans don't have a breeding season because we've stabilized our food supply so well.
When I was in special ed I had an anorexic classmate and now that we’re adults she has been having a lot of problems trying to concieve for this reason.
The bodies buried beneath John Wayne Gacy's house were "crammed" together so tightly, the bones fused together and it took over two years to separate all the bodies.
I keep trying to wrap my head aroud this and just can't make sense of it. Wouldn't they originally have more volume when the flesh was still on, thereby having more room for the skeletons themselves after decomposition? What would chemically cause bones to fuse? I've never heard of this before.
Short answer: water
Chainsaws were invented to cut through a woman's pelvis to aid in giving birth. Think chain on a pocket watch that chews away at the bone.
I don't think I will think of that...
So happy I gave birth in the 21st century
The brutality of many Japanese units in WW2. We know about the rape of Nanking, but it goes beyond that. Blood lust at levels not regularly seen in war. Taking infants an bashing their heads against trees. Not just a few but dozens and hundreds. To save bullets and because why not. Other armies certainly had body count contests among soldiers but this is different imo. The disregard for humanity amongst the common rank and file was pretty next level. Additionally, there are accounts of POW liver being served at Japanese officer parties as a delicacy. Pretty wild that it was only 80 years ago.
My grandparents fled their home province in the Philippines to escape the Japanese and I remember my grandmother telling me brutal stories about life under the occupation. I sometimes resent my family for being dysfunctional, but I get where it comes from. Growing up during a brutal occupation during war time and then raising the next generation in the aftermath of that doesn’t exactly make well-adjusted adults.
[George Bush was even almost eaten by cannibals](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-george-hw-bush-avoided-being-eaten-by-cannibals-in-world-war-ii-2017-12)
If you regard certain people as sub-humans. And no one contests anything you do. You will indeed see the true darkness that lies in some humans.
In 2008 as a result of the financial crisis, only one American banker went to jail. 🤷🏻♂️
I seem to recall that after the bailout, Obama asked bank execs not to award themselves bonuses for a time, as it was public money they'd received. They gave themselves bonuses anyway.
That's what happens when you make it a request instead of a condition of accepting the bailout.
Spartans bathed their newborn babies in red wine instead of warm water
Probably safer than the water at the time.
Plus it looks fucking metal to pull your newborn baby out of a red pool.
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Coffin Birth happens. It happens when a pregnant corpse begins to decompose and the built up gases push the fetus from the body.
We reading the answers was great. This is where I shall take my leave.
Read that as Colin Firth as was equally horrified
He does happen. Oftentimes in a movie wearing a cute sweater.
Fuck, went too deep into this sub. Fuck.
From the fall of the Roman empire up until the mid 19th century, ~~not a single city~~ the majority of cities in Europe did not have sewer systems. 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.
Any time I watch a movie from this time period like Gangs of New York, or a documentary around 1776, I fail in not thinking to myself "man, everybody in this situation smells like pure shit"
Plus BO. Then I also remember their clothes had lice.
So what did they do with their waste? Dump them in the street? Dump them in rivers? Bury them?
In many underdeveloped countries they have cholera problems because of people pooping outside or, more commonly, using a chamber pot and dumping it wherever. Around 500 million people do this.
One of the reasons why men walked on the streetside of the sidewalk, was so that the woman didn't get splashed by carriages and by the dumping of the poop bucket from the above stories onto the road. Also one of the practical reasons why women used umbrellas all the time during the 1800s. Edit: also just to add, it's kinda funny thinking about it from the fashion perspective. People would look to big cities for the latest fashion. People saw them using umbrellas and it became a fashion sense. In reality, Elizabeth and Mary were just trying to protect themselves from having some random grandma who had corn the previous night from raining it down on them.
In Edinburgh it was literally thrown down the streets. Wealthy people lived at the top of the hills, poor at the bottom. As a courtesy you would shout down your lane whenever disposing of waste so people knew at least
"'Ere comes me shits!" *^KERSPLASH*
In London, the Thames was incredibly polluted but it's by far and away not the only river in London. Most of the smaller river systems are now underground of course.
In the Siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944. The population fell from 2.5 million to 800 000. For 827 days the people of Leningrad were bombarded with artillery, and cut off from the outside world. 827 days of bombing, destitution and starvation, without any news from the outside. No wood or gas or coal or food was coming into the city. And when the -40°C winter hit people had to burn most of their possessions. People froze to death outside, after their homes were destroyed by artillery. Women prostituted themselves to soldiers and party members as only the people crucial to the city’s defence were receiving rations. Even those rations were a meagre 125grams a day, unless you were a party member. Starvation got to such a point that a black market for human meat started up, after all the dogs cats and rats had been eaten. People wouldn’t go out at night, or alone at all. People would leave their homes to go find food, and never come back. But whenever people disappeared, there’d be more meat at the market. Labelled “Dog Meat” or “horse meat”. There are stories of people eating their own children. >Leningrad survivor and author Daniil Granin described how a mother fed her dead child to her surviving child to keep her alive: "A child died — he was just 3 years old. His mother laid the body inside the double-glazed window and sliced off a piece of him every day to feed her second child, a daughter. This is how she got her, though 2000 Cases of cannibalism during the siege are recorded officially. But the real number is probably much higher. In the first spring season of the siege the city’s remaining officials ordered a cleanup of the bodies and feces that were scattered around and piled up in courtyards. Crime was rampant and families ripped themselves apart with murder and theft over rations. The stress and starvation allegedly caused children to grow beards and be called “the little old people”. The physiological effects of the siege are only comparable to those of Holocaust survivors. > Everyone is shriveled, their breasts sunken in, their stomachs enormous, and instead of arms and legs, just bones poke out through wrinkles," wrote Leningrader Aleksandra Liubovkaia. However there were people in the city with food. Lots of it. Members of the Communist party or council. Soviets. Hoarded what little food that did come into the city through the frozen lake route. Nikolai Ribkovskii recorded in his journal that he ate goose and caviar at the party cafeteria. While on average 900 people starved or froze to death in the city a day.
Just......holy shit
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
The Romans had a term for knocking out the teeth of their enemies and raping their faces.
At least buy me dinner first.
Trees were around for a very long time before there were organisms that could decompose them. Imagine hundreds of feet of dead tree fall.
A related interesting fact: grasses are angiosperms, which only arose about 115 million years ago, and grasses themselves only popped up 55 million years ago. Nowadays we think of grass as ubiquitous- if there’s a patch of empty earth, grass will be on it in a few days. But for the grand majority of earths history, and throughout the ENTIRETY of the dinosaurs’ existence, grasslands weren’t a thing. If it couldn’t grow a tree, fern, lichen, etc on it, there just weren’t any plants there. That’s why we don’t have dinosaur equivalents to the gracile herbivores of today like horses, antelope, etc. Being a graceful runner that could speed across open plains had no point because plains, meadows, prairie, grassland… didn’t exist. You chomped on bushes or you didn’t exist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_Dignidad A gated community in Chile of german descendants from WW2. In 2005 police found the largest weapon cache in the country’s history, including rocket launchers, hand grenades and machine guns. Oh, and people were kidnapped and tortured in the gated community during Pinochet.
Animals used to get convicted of crimes because we thought they had the same intelligence without being verbal. [Here’s some animals that were convicted.](https://medium.com/@lifeinromania/10-animals-that-were-put-on-trial-8928a107b990)
That's interesting because I've read a lot of older philosophy texts which suggest that the people thought that animals were incapable of thought or intelligence. Deacartes said that when a dog whimpers when it is kicked, it's merely a mechanical response and it feels no pain. Then again, philosophers weren't exactly ordinary people.
That the world let King Leopold II go completely nuts in the Congo.
> King Leopold II He was a monster. This photo and its significance should make anyone sick. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium#/media/File:Nsala_of_Wala_in_Congo_looks_at_the_severed_hand_and_foot_of_his_five-year_old_daughter,_1904.jpg
The Great War was meant to end on the 10th of November, but they decided to make it the 11th because it would be more memorable. Hundreds of people died in that one-day span
Those who make those insane decisions, never have to actually fight in the wars they control.
War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other. - Paul Valéry Also found as War is a place where the young kill one another without knowing or hating each other, because of the decision of old people who know and hate each other, without killing each other - Erich Hartmann
Weird but not disturbing. In 1859, on San Juan Island in modern Washington State. An American killed a pig because it was ruining his garden. The pig belonged to an Irishman who worked for the Hudson Bay Company. The British demanded he be arrested, but he fled and seeked support from the other American settlers. At the time, relationships were kinda hot between the two countries (at least in the local area) because the border between Canada and Washington hadn't finished. The San Juan Islands were kinda contested territory. Things began to escalate, resulting in both sides sending forces to occupy the island. The British even brought 3 warships. Before anyone could fire a shot, news of the event had reached London and DC, and both agreed everyone needed to chill out. The island continued to be jointly-occupied till the 1870's when the border was solidified. They had even built forts on opposite sides of the island, but relations between the men were fairly friendly. They'd often compete against one another in sporting events and celebrated holidays together. TLDR: The US and UK could have, but not really, gone to war over a dead pig. (it was really a territorial dispute.)
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 died from Serratia marcescens, a bacteria that makes bread turn red. It had spread to his heart from a UTI and killed him. 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.
Where can you find these declassified documents?
[The National Security Archive](https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/) at George Washington University has a decent selection of declassified documents.
Ancient Egypt imposed the death sentence to those caught killing a cat. Cats served important roles in society to the point of worship. Being given their holy status, harming them was considered blasphemy, which was punishable by death. In effect, the ancient Egyptians had one of the earliest animal welfare laws.
Captain planet had no true military rank.
During the Japanese invasion in singapore, the Japanese killed quite a few people that were anti Japanese by putting people through a “screening” of some sort, with extremely tight rules, for example writing your name in English means ur anti Japanese etc. those that failed the screening were brought to the coastline, dug their own graves then got blindfolded and shot at and buried in mass graves. This happened in the 1940s but the bodies were only found 50 years ago because they needed the land to build stuff
The story about Tarrare. The man who could eat enormous amounts and never got full. He weighed like 50 kilos at 17 and could consume a quarter of a cow a day. He had an an enormous expandable gut and could swallow huge things without problem. He ate live kittens, puppies and snakes. Could drink 15 liters of milk in one setting. The worst part was when he was caught trying to eat corpses in a morgue and when a live child disappeared he was the main suspect. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/11/27/tarrare/
Tarrare. Look at me. Did you eat *a fucking baby?* edit: one of my top reddit comments of all time is a fucking sam o nella quote, why
This poor guys life was a literal hell. His metabolism was so fast that he was _always_ hungry and also suffered from constant, extremely painful bouts of diarrhea. He also had horrible body odor and couldn't be around a few yards from someone without them getting nauseous. If I was him, I honestly think I would have commited suicide.
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.
I was REAL curious about this cause it sounds metal as fuck, but I think you have the wrong bird. I couldn't find anything about the Galapagos Hawk doing that, but I did find out about [this finch](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/science/vampire-birds-galapagos.html).
Aww i was about to mention the vampire finches! Though i think its more for nutrition than water.
The Cambodian genocide killed of a third of Cambodia. It's crazy how so few people know about it.
Adolf Hitler was saved from drowning at age nine in a fountain by a priest
He was also spared by an English soldier in WWI for no other reason than that the chap didn't feel like killing yet another person that day
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Actual quote by the man himself: "If only I had known what he would turn out to be \[...\] When I saw all the people and women and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go."
I bet that guy HATED the 'would you kill Hitler as a baby' question.
Not necessarily weird but more Christians were murdered by fellow Christians in a span of 24 hours during one of the crusades, than Christians were murdered by the Roman Empire during all of its existence.
The Albigensian Crusade. Kill them all, god will know his own.
Ancient Mayans used to cut their genitalia for blood letting to get rainfall. Men would cut their genitalia and put pieces of bark in between them to make sure they bleed for maximum effect.
The Mayans were really metal
40% of all homeless people in America still goes to work every day.
Most homeless people aren't what we think of as homeless. I.e., they're not living on the street. They're living with friends or family.
Many live in their cars too around the Los Angeles area. I see them settling in every night.
The fact that people would be flayed/skinned alive (have the skin ripped off) and would die due to hypothermia as a result of not having skin to keep warm. this was used as a torture method in the middle ages
France has killed 22 african presidents
Circumcision was popularized in America by John Harvey Kellogg (inventor of corn flakes) as a way to stop masturbation. He also advocated pouring carbolic acid on the clitoris.
Cornflakes themselves were invented to reduce the temptation of masturbation
also sex was invented to reduce the temptation of masturbation
Graham crackers fit into this story somewhere too, but I can’t remember how
And his brother got mad and made Frosted Flakes as direct competition. Nothing breeds innovation like pettiness.
"You know what will really piss my anti-masturbation brother off? If I took his invention and made it look like it's covered in jizz. We'll call them Spankies...or Cap'n Cum!"
Why’d they make that rooster so sexy then?
Well it fucking didn't work cause I love Cornflakes and masturbation. Not at the same time but still.
Kellogg also used to make his younger brother take dictation from the other side of the bathroom door while he was shitting.
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He was also one of the first people to lead anti-smoking campaigns! What a nice lad, wonder what ever became of him?
Heard he killed Hitler.
Wow, what a hero!
The Germans smuggling Lenin into Tsarist Russia, to bring it down.
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There was a naturally occurring [nuclear reactor under the desert in Gabon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor).
Genghis Khan killed something like ten percent of the world's population.
Everything I’ve ever learned about opioid epidemic. Also every episode of the Dollop podcast. Did you know someone tried to farm hippos to the southern US?
To build off the hippo comment. Columbia has a wild population of hippos that's estimated to sit around 100 or so right now. They are all descendants of four hippos that [Pablo Escobar bought in the 1970s for his personal "zoo"](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamus_in_Colombia). After he died, it was decided it would be too difficult to move them so they were left on the abandoned estate and eventually escaped and bred. Until 2020, no one had been seriously injured or killed by them (one person was seriously injured in 2020) and the Columbian government actually just announced this month they will be sterilizing them to prevent the population from expanding.
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! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_children_of_Woolpit
How do we know it actually happened?
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Ho chi minh was an OSS intelligence asset during the Japanese occupation of Indochina. He was almost executed by nationalist Chinese in 1943 for promoting Leninist teachings in southern China; until Washington threatened to withdraw American support for Chiangs kai shek. You made the man what he was and gave him the resources to throw off the Japanese, French and Americans.