24 Terrifying Facts That Help Put History into Perspective
The past is full of scary incidents that happened once upon a time. Here's a list of 25 facts that'll certainly send chills down your spine.
Published 2 years ago in Funny
1
“22 Australian nurses where captured on Bangka Island by the Japanese, they where all raped, tortured, and then marched out into the sea and gunned down. Except for one who was allowed to survive. She was later gagged from saying anything and was disbarred from speaking at the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal after world war 2 ended, because the Australian government didn't want to look bad.” - WanderingMinotaur
3
“Not so much history, but rather prehistory, but nonetheless. One time the human race nearly went extinct about 70,000 years ago when the Toba Supervolcano blew up. The ash and soot that was released into the atmosphere blocked out a lot of light, killing plants, which lead to mass animal deaths, and left us with barely anything to eat. The temperature would have also dropped significantly, resulting in an ice age starting. The end result was a cold world devoid of much life, with choking ash, soot and smoke in the air for years. Its estimated that as few as 10,000 humans survived globally, with perhaps only a few hundred of those capable of breeding. It was basically like surviving a nuclear war and then trying to keep in viable population in the after math... except all you have is stone age technology, no modern clothes, no modern creature comforts, no food to loot for, no medical supplies anywhere. Just you and whatever you can find in the wild.” - Youpunyhumans
4
“The Children's Crusade around 1200 started in France and Germany. They were convinced that God would allow them to take Jerusalem and convert the Muslims to Christianity. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30000 set out for the Mediterranean Sea, which they believed God would part for them and allow them to walk to Jerusalem.
Well, it was apparently a pretty nasty winter, and a good number succumbed to the elements. Then when they finally arrived, the sea did not part. But, not to be deterred, they began asking various ships captains for a ride. A few ships agreed, and were loaded down with children. One ship sank and all drowned, and the rest were sold into slavery by the captains.” - pacodefan7
“8% of all Asian men have a particular Y chromosome haplogroup. This equates to 0.5% of the worlds population. It is a very specific male to male chromosome. And occurs everywhere that Gengis Kahn and his descendants conquered. This means that 8% of Asian men can trace their lineage directly back (father to son) to Gengis Kahn. There was a lot of rape.” - newsfromplanetmike
8
‘In 1945 the USS Indianapolis sank between Guam and the Philippines due to a Japanese submarine. Out of nearly 1200 crew members, only 316 survived. The worst part? Only 300 went down with the ship in the initial event. The other 900 crew members were trapped in the open ocean for four days before they were spotted and rescued.
That means that around 600 men died due to exposure, dehydration, salt water poisoning and shark attacks by oceanic white tip sharks. We tend to believe that great white sharks, bull sharks, and tiger sharks are responsible for the majority of shark attacks on humans, but oceanic white tip sharks have likely killed far more humans due to ships/planes sinking and the deaths not being recorded as shark attacks.
They are known to commonly follow ships and can form big groups when finding food, and are pretty aggressive, but most of their victims are unrecorded in shark bite records since these attacks don't happen close to the shore.” - JulesLovesYou199310
“During WW2, the Nazis head doctor in Auschwiz did so many inhumane experiments he was named the ‘Angel of Death.’ In his office, he had a wall of eyeballs from everybody he killed in those experiments. The CRAZIEST thing, he was able to escape and ended up living in Brazil, where he died from drowning at a resort.” - Welp_shit02
11
“During the Polish Operation of the Great Purge, the Soviet NKVD shot 111,091 Poles between August of 1937 and November of 1938. That’s 7,406 Poles every month for 15 months. 246 Poles being shot in the back of the head every single day or 10 Poles being murdered by the Soviets every hour. The vast majority of these Poles were of course, completely innocent of the imaginary crimes the Soviets accused them of.” - PhillipLlerenas
13
“In 1859 the largest known coronal mass ejection from the sun hit earth. If it hit us today, the nations affected would be without power for 6-18 months, most major technologies and infrastructure would be badly degraded, the cost would be upwards of $2trillion and there is every chance of those affected moving toward a social collapse.” - rohankent
15
“Dutch Whalers and the like would raid Australian Aboriginal villages and kidnap the women, the would take them off shore and rape them in their rowboat, when the aboriginal men would try and swim out to rescue them they would wait until they reached the boats and hack off their hands with machetes. They would then kill and dump the women and sail away.” - WanderingMinotaur
17
“The radium girls were the women who worked in clock and aviation dial factories, painting the dials with radioactive paint that they applied by licking the brushes to point them. The long term effects of radium ingestion were known by the inventor of the paint, who was also the owner of the largest factory. He eventually died from his own creations in the same horrific ways as the women. Their struggle for justice directly lead to the creation of OSHA.” - Langstarr
19
“Near Mt St Helens, in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and before the volcano erupted in 1980, there were areas where you were not allowed off the footpaths. This was because Douglas Firs, which can reach 200ft, were buried in ash in prior eruptions, then rotted away. So you could step on a relatively thin layer of old ash, break through, and fall any number of feet into what amounted to a crevasse or a well.” - quikdogs
22
“When the Khmer Rouge was mass killing its citizens bullets were expensive, so when they were slaughtering babies they would grab them by the ankles and bash their heads open on a particular tree. That tree is still there by the way. It's just sitting there with a little sign on it that says 'baby killing tree'. So many people were killed in the fields that when you look down there you see these little white flecks everywhere in the soil, and at some point you realize they're bone.” - Matt01123
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