25 Of The Most Terrifying Historical Facts That Aren’t Talked About A Lot

Popular history often shows mankind in quite a flattering light. Stories of discovering countries, vanquishing villainous hordes and victorious leaders winning wars resound throughout the history pages. But as the saying goes, history is written by the winners and often the other side of the story shows quite a different perspective.

#1 The Battle of Blair Mountain. Coal miners wanted to unionize and mine owners wanted more money. A million rounds of ammunition were fired and the National Guard had to intervene.

Image source: TacticalFluke, Kinograms

That’s a shamefully short summary of it, but it was literally a war for labor rights.

To quote Robert Evans on Behind the Bastards (Part 1 on YouTube [here](https://youtu.be/XWvVdjmBhHc?si=ekzrYcd3taBhmSg0)):

>We never talk about the time they got bombed and gassed and shot at by machine guns. We just leave that out of history books. The 8-hour work day was entirely gained by polite people with signs protesting. That’s how we have a weekend, not the men who charged machine gun nests and sniped at corporate guards.

>All these things we consider just a part of life like the fact that you’re supposed to get a weekend; all of these things were bought in blood by men who are willing to kill for these rights who are willing to die for these things. And we don’t talk about that even though it’s cool and interesting because it might give people ideas.

#2 Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, apparently lost her virginity on her mother’s grave.

Image source: Maleficent_Nobody_75, Brett Sayles

DudebroggieHouser:

Mary Shelly and Lord Byron put all modern goth couples to absolute shame.

#3 We would have more mummies nowadays if the Victorians didn’t eat them all.

Image source: Helpful_Finding78, Narciso Arellano

#4 Winston Churchill’s entire career outside of WW2 was basically monstrous. He had concentration camps in South Africa, was a eugenicist, and used ex-military police to crack down on the anti-colonial movement in Ireland.

Say what you want about the guy, he obviously has a major role in WW2, but he was basically just a coin flip away from being a British fascist.

Image source: GayStation64beta

#5 Charlie Chaplin impregnated a 15-year-old girl when he was 35. She (Lita Grey) was 8 when he met her.

Image source: Roronoa_Zaraki, P.D Jankens

#6 One of Columbus’ men, Bartolome De Las Casas, was so mortified by Columbus’ brutal atrocities against the native peoples, that he quit working for Columbus and became a Catholic priest. He described how the Spaniards under Columbus’ command cut off the legs of children who ran from them, to test the sharpness of their blades.

Image source: FuzzzyRam, wikipedia.org

According to De Las Casas, the men made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. He says that Columbus’ men poured people full of boiling soap. In a single day, De Las Casas was an eye witness as the Spanish soldiers dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 native people. “Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel,” De Las Casas wrote. “My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write.”

Source: “Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery.” by Eric Kasum, published October 11, 2010

It feels like a conspiracy theory, but I swear they teach us about Columbus when we are too young to be exposed to his atrocities (witnessed first hand, as well as documented in his own hand in his journals) so that he will be a “controversial figure” who “might have gotten a couple things wrong about what country he was in” rather than “a f*****g horrendous vile human being on par with the worst shitheads in history.”.

#7 The absolute atrocities that Japan committed during World War II not only the decimation of the Chinese people but also on their own turf. Examples being the horrific stuff done at Unit 731 s**t should give you nightmares.

Image source: HeadFit2660, wikipedia.org

#8 Victor Hugo was so popular with Parisian pr*stitutes that most brothels in Paris closed down for a day of mourning and many SWs stood outside to pay tribute.

Image source: mike28987, Étienne Carjat

#9 A couple of NASA interns several years ago stole a huge number of moonrocks brought back during the Apollo missions, spread them out on a motel bed and had s*x on them, just so they could say they’d had s*x on the Moon.

Image source: Melodic_692, SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS

#10 They didn’t start using anesthesia on babies until the late 1980s. It wasn’t until 1987 that the American Academy of Pediactrics declared it unethical to operate on infants without the use of anesthesia. Mother’s were doing everything to convince doctors that their babies could feel pain, but since the doctors said they would have no long-term memory at that point, then it wasn’t as important. That’s not very long ago!

Image source: Winter_Ad_7424, Anna Shvets

From wiki-, “In the late nineteenth, and first half of the twentieth century[citation needed], doctors were taught that babies did not experience pain and were treating their young patients accordingly. From needle sticks to tonsillectomies to heart operations were done with no anaesthesia or analgesia, other than muscle relaxation for the surgery.[citation needed] The belief was that in babies the expression of pain was reflexive and, owing to the immaturity of the infant brain, the pain could not really matter.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies.

#11 796 babies bodies found in a septic tank in Galway, Ireland. 796. Babies.

Image source: hackyslashy, Mike Bird

Orko90:
I think the pertinent info you’re missing is that the septic tank belonged to a “Home” for unmarried mothers that was owned and operated by the Bon Secours Sisters, an order of Catholic nuns.

#12 Gandhi was racist and kind of a p*do. While people say he “outgrew his racism” he unquestionably slept naked in the same bed as naked teenagers, one being his grandniece to “test himself” which even if all he did was sleep is still incredibly unsettling. I detest the British colonialism as much as the next guy but it seems Gandhi is only ever remembered for the good things he did and not the extremely morally questionable things.

Image source: wigglerworm

#13 Baby farmers.

Image source: Littleleicesterfoxy, Pixabay

In Victorian (and previously one assumes) unmarried mothers were of course looked down upon and if you were in service and knocked up by the son of the owner you were a bit f****d as no-one else would give a single mother a job. The solution? Baby Farmers!

Baby farmers were basically an industry to “adopt” (for a fee of course) these babies. Of course, some of these farmers realised that it was somewhat noisy and expensive looking after a whole bunch of babies and so they used a tonic called Godfrey’s Cordial. Said tonic contained opium which knocked out the babies and they were fed it by a few unscrupulous baby farmers until they starved to death. They then disposed of baby, advertised again and the cycle begins again.

For a particularly notorious example look up Amelia Dyer or John and Sarah Makin.

#14 King Ferdinand I, or Ferrante, of Naples kept a so called black museum of the mummified remains of his personal and political enemies. He had them dressed and arranged in various scenes and would often show off the museum to potential rivals/enemies he hadn’t yet killed off. So yeah, pretty messed up.

Image source: tlind1990, Sarah

#15 The inventor of the polygraph also created Wonder Woman, who was based on his wife and the college student the two of them had a polyamorous relationship with.

Image source: Gemnist, Agence de presse Meurisse

#16 When then President of Indonesia Soekarno visited the Soviet Union the KGB thought that it would be a good idea to send a honey trap. They hired two escorts to “entertain” him and recorded the acts using a spy camera. then blackmailed President Soekarno laughed at the agents and asked them to send him the tapes so that he can watch it back home.

Image source: ilhamalfatihah16, wikipedia.org

#17 The reason informed consent is legally required in study participation, The Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

Image source: TrashAvalon, National Archives Atlanta, GA (U.S. government)

In 1932 a group of 600 impoverished Black men were part of an experiment to observe untreated syphilis. 399 of these men had syphilis while the rest were used as a control group, all participating with the promise of free medical care. The men who had syphilis were never told they had it. Instead they were gaslit and offered placebos to treat “bad blood” while the researchers told local Black doctors to deny them treatment.

It was supposed to last 6 months.
It lasted 40 years, and even though penicillin was used as an effective treatment 15 years after the start of the study, it was never offered to them.

During WWII 256 infected men were drafted and diagnosed by the military, unfit to serve without treatment. The researchers got them excluded from the draft to continue the experiment unbothered.

It only stopped after news of the study was leaked to the press in 1972. 128 of the men had died directly or indirectly from a completely treatable disease they were never told they had, and 59 relatives of the men contracted or were born with syphilis as a result.

#18 In 1944, 9 American airmen were shot down over the Japanese island Chichijima in the Bonin Islands. 8 were captured by Japanese troops, and were then beaten, tortured, and executed by beheading. Their remains were cannibalized by Japanese officers. The ritual cannibalism included eating the livers of freshly killed prisoners, and eating living prisoners over several days, amputating limbs to keep the meat fresh.

Image source: Underwater_Karma, wikipedia.org

This case was investigated in 1947 in a war crimes trial, and of the 30 Japanese soldiers prosecuted, four officers were found guilty and hanged. All enlisted men were released within eight years.

Vice Admiral Mori Kunizo, commander of the Chichi-Jima air base believed hat consumption of human liver had medical benefits. He was initially sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the incident, but was sentenced to death and hanged after a separate trial for other war crimes.

The 9th airman who successfully evaded capture was eventually rescued. 45 years later he was elected President of the United States.

#19 My all time favorite – it seems there was some super important Chinese empress who made emissaries and foreign dignataries go down on her at least partly as a sign of dominance.

Image source: drevilseviltwin, wikipedia.org

#20 In ancient Greece, athletes used to compete in the Olympics completely naked. Imagine training your whole life, only to have your legacy reduced to ‘the guy who dropped the javelin… and everything else…

m50d:

Pole vaulting incidents like this year’s would’ve been more common.

Image source: Plus-Complaint1024

#21 The Radium Girls from the United States. Just read a book on them and it was horrific! The radium poisoning made their jaw bones fall out with their teeth. Not to mention all the sarcomas and the one girl who hemmoraghed and bled out because the poison ate through her jugular. They were told the Radium was safe despite there being known health risks as early as 1901. There were still radium factories being operated as of 1978.

Image source: polkadotprincess2317, wikipedia.org

#22 The Romans f****d a natural birth control into extinction. I forget the details, but essentially there was an herb on some me Greek island that acted as a natural birth control. The Romans proceeded to f**k so often that said plant no longer exists.

Image source: geofflechef, rockerBOO

JohnCavil01:

Silphium – while its effectiveness and even use as a contraceptive is debated it’s possibly been rediscovered and may in fact just had its name/identity drift overtime and has been hiding in plain sight.

#23 The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin was founded in 1919 and was the first of it’s kind to research trans, gay and intersex individuals. It housed an enormous collection of notes and books on sexual research and was one of the first targets of the nazi bookburnings. Everyone’s seen the pictures but very few people know what was actually burned.

Image source: CalligrapherFree6244

#24 In Ancient Pompeii, the way they would direct you towards the nearest brothel was with a d**k engraved into the pavement and walls pointing the way towards it.

The engravings survived the volcanic eruption, so if you go to Pompeii today you will find the paths literally paved with d***s.

danylp:

When I was there we stopped by a group led by a guide lady at the exact moment she showed them the carvings and asked them what they thought it was. Everyone said some mild things like “leaf”, “boat” etc. and I was like “That definitely looks like a penis!” and the lady turned to me: “Yes, exactly, thank you!”. It was fun.

Image source: killingjoke96

#25 Shakespeare was not some high-brow fancy cultural icon. He was the trash Hollywood movies of his time. People would go to the theatres to get p**s drunk, yell at actors and solicit women who were advertising themselves in the standing sections.

Image source: samg461a, wikipedia.or

Also, the content of his plays (and poems but that’s not my focal point here) were not rated E for everyone lol I actually can’t believe some of the plays that are taught in school. Sure, it’s easy to miss all the sex and penis jokes if you’re just reading it but a good actor will find them and play them out.