Delving into history is arguably the most interesting journey one can take. Learning about different cultures, events of the past, people that made a difference, and songs that ignited change—there is so much to unearth and familiarize yourself with.

But most people usually want to learn about something nice, something that inspires, moves them, or makes them smile, even though the dark side of history is equally—if not more—important. Today, it’s the latter that we’re focusing on. On the list below, you will find stories shared by members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community after one user asked them for horrifying facts and events that are not widely known, even though they arguably should be. Scroll down to find them but browse them at your own risk, as they shed light on some of the most gruesome parts of our history.

#1

Vikings would use pigments to make their teeth permanently one color by using a hammer and a sharp pick to make identations for the dye in the enamel. This could be how the Danish king Harald Bluetooth got his name.

Just imagine.. *shivers*.

Image credits: Dizzymizzwheezy

#2

Rosemary Kennedy’s failed lobotomy, which made her mental capacity diminish to that of a 2 year old, and left her without the ability to walk or speak coherently.

Image credits: anon

#3

That as bad as North American slavery was it was far worse for the slaves sold in South America. The average life expectancy was 6 months, 2 if you were working in a mine. About 35% (11 million) of all slaves were sent to Brazil, 5% (388,000) were sent to the US. Despite this the US had more slaves than Brazil at all times solely because the slaves in Brazil died so many quickly.

Image credits: Tuescunnus

#4

The lifeboats in Titanic were launched only half full in most cases.
At full capacity they could’ve saved roughly half the people on the ship, but due to incompetency on the officers’ parts, less the 750 people were actually saved.

Image credits: A_HECKIN_DOGGO

#5

The Suffragists Night of Terror November 15th 1917 where 33 women fighting for the right to vote were picked up from in front of the White House and put in prison. They suffered beatings, being forced to stand/hang all night with their hands tied above their heads, being thrown around and smashed into iron furniture, and humiliation at the hands of guards. One woman was knocked out after having her head bounced off an iron bench and her cellmate became so distraught (under the impression the unconscious woman was dead) that she suffered a heart attack. She was denied medical care until the next morning.

These women were picked up off the street and thrown in jails where they were abused with no access to council. All because they dared ask Woodrow Wilson to allow them to vote.

EDIT: My comment shouldn’t have more upvotes than the thread, be sure to upvote the OP! They’re the one who inspired this comment :).

Image credits: Sheairah

#6

The Franklin Expedition in 1845 to find the northern passage, which would be a faster route when traveling and freighting cargo across the northern hemisphere to Asia and China.

The ships got caught in the ice and therefore stuck there forever. The crew turned to cannibalism as a way to survive in the cold and stayed on the lower decks of the ships, where they’d eventually get very sick because of malnurishment.

One of the ships were named “Terror” ironically, there’s a book about it which of course puts in some supernatural elements to the story.

I however think the real story is creepy in its own right. Imagine being stuck in the ice, it’s cold as f**k everywhere, there’s no food left and the nights are very dark.

AMC is making it a series aswell, named after the ship; The Terror. It’s directed by Ridley Scott, so it’s bound to be unnerving.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/rnN7Aad3c7A.

Image credits: FreePhilly

#7

Rwandan genocide, it lasted 4 months. Four f*****g months and 1,000,000+ people died. Most died from being hacked to death by machetes.

Image credits: Mumtaz3580

#8

The Great Siege Of Malta:

“Mustafa had the bodies of the knights decapitated and their bodies floated across the bay on mock crucifixes. In response, de Valette beheaded all his Turkish prisoners, loaded their heads into his cannons and fired them into the Turkish camp.”

https://ift.tt/5KUT3cV.

Image credits: Fakezaga

#9

During Stalin’s forced industrialization of Russia, he would take all the farmers’ food/crops they grew leaving them to starve. This led to extensive cannibalism, including many recorded cases of parents eating their children.

Image credits: R3ddittor

#10

In 1916, a town in Tennessee hung a fully grown elephant for killing her trainer. They had to use a crane at a nearby railroad station.

Image credits: tphelps33

#11

That the United States has somehow lost 11 nuclear bombs and Russia has lost 40.

Or Project SUNSHINE where the US wanted to test radiation on the human body. This involved body snatching of small children from other countries without parents permission.

Image credits: IWaterboardKids

#12

Christerdom crusades to scandinavia/northern europe. (cultural apocalypse)

Esentially at least in finland, almost all information from our older history and gods was destroyed.

we used to have a lot of gods, now theyre literally just in a book thats a collection of folk stories because crusaders literally killed all who knew anything about old gods.

i think it was more like 20% of whole population killed because they didnt convert.

Image credits: Chikuaani

#13

Second Congo War in the early 2000s left 5.5 million people dead.

Deadliest war since World War 2. A poll showed 91% of Americans had never even heard of it.

Image credits: willmaster123

#14

Engineers advised NASA to postpone the launch of the space shuttle challenger, due to concerns about the O-rings in the solid rocket boosters at low tempatures. They were over ruled, largely because the next launch window wasn’t on a school day, and having students watch the first teacher launch to space was big PR goal.

As everyone knows, that launch failed because an O-ring in one of the SRBs failed.

Image credits: anon

#15

The vast majority of France’s 80,000 inmates at the infamous Devil’s Island prison camps, never made it back to France–Many inmates, even after serving their sentence, were forced to stay in French Guyana to pay for their prison stay.

Image credits: outrider567

#16

Ash from the Dachau concentration camp “snowed” unto the people in Munich. This was during the summer, and no one batted an eye that there’s really no reason for ash to be snowing down on them.

They later tried to claim they had no idea about what was going on at Dachau. Yeah, you did.

Image credits: llcucf80

#17

That thousands of British children were sent to Canada, Rhodesia, Australia and New Zealand as part of the Child Migrants Scheme. The Child Migrants Trust was set up in 1987 to help families reunite. https://ift.tt/dMKYx6e

In the 1940s – 1970s, most of these children still had parents and had been placed in British orphanages due to the crippling poverty after WW2 or were removed from parents who were deemed unable to cope (single/unwed mothers being a favourite excuse for removal). The children who were sent to these countries were often lied to: “Your parents are dead” “Your parents don’t love you” “Your parents signed the release papers”… when actually, parents often didn’t know what happened to their children and release papers were forged.

Learning disabled, mentally ill, physically disabled and ethnic minority children were not included, as many places like Australia wanted ‘good white breeding stock’.

The abuse these children suffered when they arrived in these ‘promised lands’ was horrendous. The Catholic Church, Church of England, Barnardo’s, Fairbridge Society and many other children’s charities and Christian denominations were complicit in sending children abroad. The children were promised new lives and foster families. What they got was violence, abuse and years of hard labour at the hands of those supposedly meant to care for them.

Image credits: Welshgirlie2

#18

Great swathes of what the British Empire did are both horrific and virtually unknown outside of the countries we did them in.

Image credits: RedEyeView

#19

The US government were forcibly sterilizing Native American women up until the 1970s. Meaning, the US government was (arguably still are) actively committing genocidal acts against Native peoples well into the 20th century.

Image credits: greyskysblueeyes

#20

Not near as obscure as what everyone else has said but I would argue the Halifax explosion. For how devastating it was it is never talked about (at least where I have lived). Largest man-made explosion before atomic weapons I believe.

Image credits: Legalize-Wheelies

#21

Okay Im not sure how many people know this but the people I have told don’t know it.

Edison electrucuted an elephant named Topsy *(she was being sentenced to death for trampling some people to death)* but Edison electrucuted her to prove his form of electricity was safer than Tesla’s.

It is so f****d up that he electrucuted a poor animal to prove a point.

Image credits: Oh_hi_doggi3

#22

A lot of people refer to the Jonestown incident as a mass s*****e when it was really a mass murder and people were forced to drink the cyanide flavor-aid by armed guards, and also the whole community was more horrific than most people know about and many were stuck in Jonestown against their will.

Image credits: anon

#23

Between 1959 to 1961, 15 million to 45 million people died in China from famine.

Image credits: Ogbl

#24

The Stolen Generation.

In Australia from 1910 – 1970, Aboriginal and mixed race children were taken from their families and abducted off the street by police. They were then sent to schools and church missions to be converted to Christianity and trained for service in white society. Girls were trained as domestic servants and boys were trained to work on farms as labourers.

I almost don’t need to tell you about the physical and sexual abuse. The separation from their families. The suffering, the destruction of language and culture. Many never saw their parents or siblings again. When they were finally released from these schools, they were sent to work in white households that treated them like slaves. Physical and sexual abuse were again the order of the day. If the mixed race domestic servant produced a child by her white master? Well, that baby was taken away as well.

British colonialism at it’s finest. The Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd apologised for this and many other atrocities on the 13th of February 2008.

I was talking to my mother about it not long ago. She is in her 60’s and grew up poor in public housing. Her thoughts? “Well, I am sure they thought they were doing the right thing at the time.” …. hell no.

Image credits: phantompath

#25

King Leopold II of Belgium 1902–responsible for millions of deaths in the Belgian Congo, and had little black boys hands cut off for not producing enough rubber.

Image credits: outrider567

#26

An attempt to spread a pseudo-Christian kingdom in China (Taiping rebellion) in the 19th century led to more deaths than WW1.

Image credits: anon

#27

The Native American boarding school movement, popularized by the slogan “K**l the Indian, Save the Man”, meant that thousands of Native children were rounded up, taken to boarding schools, had their hair and clothes changed, and were forced to speak only in English. Many people don’t know that these kidnappings continued through the 1940s. My grandmother and her sisters were picked up on the school wagon in 1939 when they aeee playing outside, while their mom was gone. For weeks, she didn’t know what happened to them or where they had gone. They had been taken to a boarding school. When one of my grandmother’s sisters was caught speaking Cherokee at the boarding school, she was locked in the dark basement (where they stored a skeleton used for anatomy lessons) overnight. She’s still terrified of the dark almost 80 years later.

Image credits: Raindrops1984

#28

Imperial Japan’s Unit 731

Not in any school text books but as unsettling as anything throughout history.

Image credits: HighlanderShane

#29

The Aztecs performed acts of massive human sacrifice of slaves.
In one such event over 10,000 slaves had their hearts torn out while still alive. The blood permanently stained the pirámide.
By the time that the Spaniard Cortez arrived thousands of natives from conquered tribes joined him to be rid of the Aztec empire.
Over 90 percent of the army against the Aztecs was native tribesmen of former slave nations of the Aztec Empire.

Image credits: anon

#30

People outside of Canada know little to nothing of our residential school system. I’ve heard survivors’ stories and their treatment was horrifying.

The canadian government, the churches, and the RCMP (police) worked together to forcibly educate indigenous children. The RCMP would go to reserves and take kids away from their parents by force. Parents who resisted could be arrested or killed by officers. The kids were then taken hours away to a school run by the church. By the time they got there, they would be beaten if they spoken their language or complained about the food/the conditions/their treatment, etc. Half of the day would be dedicated to scholarly education, the other half would be tedious chores (to help “westernize” the kids). The residential schools across the country went unchecked by the government. They helped fund them but really didn’t pay any mind to the reports of horrific treatment from the kids. Rapes, murders, and suicides were very frequent (to listen to survivor stories I suggest We Were Children). Kids would be locked in small dark rooms for weeks if they asked to go home or misbehaved. Others would be hunted and shot like deer if they ran away. Thousands of kids died while the government did nothing. Over 2 generations of indigenous people were forcible stripped of their culture, their language, ect.

Image credits: leashkid

#31

As an Irishman, maybe it’s not totally unknown but I think the actual reality of what happened during the British occupation seems to be unknown to most people outside Ireland, even in Britain.

It was 800 years. Most shockingly, the “Famine” is just sort of known as some sort of act of God that plagued the entire country. The reality of what happened, that the “famine” only applied to certain members of society and how/why it happened just all seem to be swept under the rug. Calling it a Famine is quite disingenuous.

To this day people still make jokes about Irish people and their love for potatoes. Eh… there’s a reason. There was nothing else “left” to us, and when that was gone, there was literally nothing else given to us(though, there was actually food to be had) It’s not that we loved them, it was basically, that’s all you have, eat it or die of starvation.

#32

The Holodomor was an engineered famine in the Soviet Union. It took place from 1932 to 1933 and killed 2.5 to 5 million people. To this day, many communists continue to deny that it occurred, deny that anyone could have foreseen that collectivization of agriculture could possibly result in a famine, or simply declare that the “kulaks deserved it”.

#33

Bengal Famine of 1943. Estimated 2.1 million people starved to death, and people resorting to cannibalism and eating grass.

Due to the poor harvest turn-out, paired with the invasion of Burma by Japanese (used to be a good buffer zone for the Brits), and the unsteady political environment on a global scale, the province that provided and produced majority of India’s rice was devastated.

Now, being under the East India Company (aka the British rule), Churchill had the responsibility to amend the situation. However, he did not send any aid nor medical supplies to the area, but more so withheld such aid altogether.

He had remarked:
“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”

Being of Bengali origin, the famine has not personally affected my life, but it did shock me when I first discovered about it. My father never saw his grandparents nor aunts or uncles, they all died in the famine, so I guess you can still see the repercussions till to this day.

I remember when I used to take history classes in school, that people would praise the living s**t out of Churchill. Now studying in UK, people get really grumpy when I point out that Churchill was a total a*****e, and they try to pick fights with me. It should be also mentioned then that Gandhi was N**i sympathiser and hated Jews. In general, we all tend to look at these political figures as somehow having a high moral compass, and deserving worship. They are only idolised so, because history is biased and written from the winner’s perspective.

(I am not a historian by profession, but I tried. For more info, please just search Bengal famine for more.).

#34

The Battle of Ramree Island during WWII of course.
A battle off the coast of Burma in the swamp like mangroves.
Japanese soldiers were traveling in waist deep water navigating through the mangroves while at night. There are reports of British soldiers hearing the soldiers being picked off and ripped apart by the abundant fresh water crocodiles during the night as the Japanese unknowingly all walked to their deaths. It is one of the highest rates of crocodile related fatalities in history.

I can’t imagine just being on a ship at night and just listening to people screaming as they’re being ripped apart by a living dinosaur.
There is a reason these creatures have been around for hundreds and millions of years as they are the perfect hunters, and live in areas where all life must eventually return. The water.

#35

The Harrying of the North by William the Conqueror in England. The North rebelled, so he enacted a Scorched earth policy. His army burnt everything they came across. It was so bad even chroniclers at the time thought it was bad. 60% of the land was destroyed, and everywhere in the north was affected. They wiped out villages, killing an estimated 150,000 people. This is in early mediaeval England, where most of the population was rural. 85% of Oxen were killed, and only 25% of the population remained to plough the fields.

People assume England has only ever had one civil war (Named the English civil war) but this isn’t true whatsoever. England has had atleast three, and that’s ignoring the fact that it wasn’t uncommon for Lords to fight among themselves.

#36

The Bath School disaster in Michigan. In 1927, man by the name of Andrew Kehoe lost a seat for a treasury position. In retaliation, he blew up a school and killed quite a few children and some staff. He was an electrical engineer, and suffered a head trauma that may have caused his insanity. https://ift.tt/qtg4XNi.

#37

The Guillotine was actually a merciful invention to spare the prisoner the pain and horror of beheading by axe. It often took several strokes of the axe to separate the head from the body. Mary, Queen of Scots, had a grisly death by the axe. The Wikipedia article paraphrases it like this:

>The first blow missed her neck and struck the back of her head. The

>second blow severed the neck, except for a small bit of sinew, which

>the executioner cut through using the axe.

#38

Quite a bit from Hawaiian history. I love learning about it, but thinking about enough people dying to turn a river red, it still terrifying.

#39

Most people don’t know that the Spanish Flu of 1918 infected around 1/3 of the entire population of the planet, with 20-50 million deaths. By comparison, the death toll for the First World War was ~18 million. I find the thought that something as random and uncontrollable as a virus mutation can cause a real Malthusian check on the global population absolutely terrifying.

#40

I’ve posted this before but it is still just amazing

Francisco Nguema inviting political opponents to a large stadium either on christmas or christmas eve, then played “those were the days” over a PA and people dressed as santa shot the spectators in the crowd with machine guns.

#41

Well, I’m hoping that most of you here are aware of this, but I have been surprisingly shocked at how few people around me seem to have known this. But the influenza pandemic of 1918 that killed more people than world war one was absolutely terrifying. Children used to sing
“I knew a little bird, her name was Enza, I opened up the window, and in flew Enza.”

The flu started in Kansas when some military soldiers were burning pig manure in a field. The flu then spread and killed 50 to 100 million people worldwide. More Americans were killed from this virus than Americans were killed in every single war in the 1900s combined.

It all happened in a 5 month window.

#42

Surprised I haven’t seen these two yet but:

*China’s “Great Leap Forward” in which millions were forcibly put into communal housing units in an effort to collectivize and industrialize China. At the same time, Mao convinced everyone to make s****y-a*s backyard furnaces to melt metal and turn it into some magic metal or some s**t. Newflash: It didnt work. Everyone just melted their tools, wasted the metal, and now you’ve got a s**t-ton of food sitting in fields not being harvested.

Ensue mass famine and disease from rotting food. Whole buildings full of harvested food would sit there while people starved outside. Millions of people died. But don’t worry, that’s not REAL communism.

*China’s “Cultural Revolution” where they mass-slaughterd wrong-thinkers who criticized communism or Mao, or who thought capitalism was pretty good. Also they tore down like all of their traditional chinese buildings and cultural items, so now most of it is rebuilt fakes. Millions died. But still not real communism^TM

BONUS: Chinese Hundred Flowers Campaign where China encouraged intellectuals to express opinions on how the commies were running the country, only to then mass-slaughter those same people immediately after they spoke up.

Good thing it wasn’t Real Communism^TM.

#43

In 1964, a crazed German used a flamethrower on kids in a school.

#44

As well as ingrained slavery, many of the city states in Ancient Greece had institutionalised pederasty. Neither of these things were as prevalent in Persian culture.

Also, after democracy developed in Athens, it transitioned from an isolated city state to an expansionist empire that demanded protection tribute from puppet cities and islands.

#45

The Mountain Meadows M******e in Utah. Brigham Young authorized the murder of over 100 men, women, and children. Only 17 children survived, the oldest of which was 7.

#46

Most people have never heard of Sandakan, or the Sandakan-Ranau forced marches.

As tl;dr as I can: After the fall of Singapore, the Japanese split the prisoners between Changi (which every Aussie seems to know of) and Sandakan in Borneo. The camp at Sandakan had the highest death rate of all the POW camps in WW2 at 99.6%. Some 2,400 Australian and British soldiers were held there. 6 survived.

If you want the full story, Paul Ham wrote a book on it which was highly controversial. It was hard to read because of the horrific details, but worth it.

#47

During the troubles in Northern Ireland a pro british terrorist group had planned to shoot up catholic primary school. They called it off at the last minute due to fearing what the IRA would do in retaliation. The group also has their suspicions that the man who had thought of the idea of attacking the school was a double agent working for the British intelligence.

#48

There was a fire tornado 300 feet tall that incinerated around 40,000 people in approx. 15 minutes in Japan shortly following the 1923 great Kanto earthquake.

#49

I was surprised to learn how many people didn’t know about the roundup of Japanese American citizens after Pearl Harbor. I learned about it in school and thought everyone else did too.

#50

Internment camps for Japanese (or other Asian descent) families in the U.S. during WWII. Tends to get glossed over in history classes in schools pretty frequently. Most of why I even remember anything about the subject is that my 3rd grade teacher was a survivor of the camps when she was a little girl.

#51

The US government has performed multiple secret experiments on the public without the public’s knowledge or consent.

#52

Not as huge in scale as some of the answers, but the *Dona Paz* disaster. More than twice as many people were killed in this tragedy than on the *Titanic*, but people are much more likely to know the story of the *Titanic* than the *Dona Paz*.

The MV *Dona Paz* was an interisland ferry in the Philippines. A few days before Christmas 1987, it was hit by an oil tanker, which exploded on impact, causing a fire that consumed the *Dona Paz*. To make matters worse, the crew had been allowing passengers to buy tickets off the books, pushing the ship to over 200% capacity, the crew either didn’t have safety training or failed to follow through, and no one sent out a distress signal. Only 26 people survived, two from the tanker and 24 from the ferry, all of whom were seriously injured by the time they were rescued 16 hours later. And compounding the tragedy even further, the shipping company refused to recognize the presence of the “unofficial” passengers; it took 30 years for those victims’ families to receive anything for their losses.

from Bored Panda https://ift.tt/mhzRuWr
via IFTTT source site : boredpanda