It’s no secret to anyone who’s read my content on the internet: I’ve been obsessed with history lately. And recently, I was scrolling through the depths of the internet when I stumbled upon some dark historical facts that I seriously can’t shake. It’s been days, and I’m still thinking about them.
There’s something so shocking and fascinating about an eerie historical event that few people actually know about. So we’re gonna learn about some of those today! I’ll warn you: Some of these are really intense, so if you’re sensitive to stories about dark topics, I’d proceed with caution.
1.
The Dancing Plague of 1518 is one of history’s weirdest and scariest events. It happened in Strasbourg, now in France, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: hundreds of people began dancing and supposedly couldn’t stop. They were dancing consistently for days on end.
The odd plague eventually went away a couple months later, and people went back to their normal lives, but some people “died from their exertions.” No one knows why this happened, but theories range from stress-induced mass hysteria, to food poisoning from fungi found in bread.
2.
The summer of 1816 should’ve been just a normal summer, but umm…let’s just say my worst fear happened. For some parts of the United States, Canada, and Europe, that summer actually felt like a full-blown winter (snow, wind, cold temperatures, the whole shebang).
3.
A couple decades after Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the glow-in-the-dark radioactive element of radium in 1898, something absolutely catastrophic happened. People (wrongfully) thought radium was safe for humans to handle because it had worked in some cancer treatments, so female factory workers started putting it in everyday products like makeup and even toothpaste in the early 20th century.
The radium they were handling made their skin literally glow, and they were assured it wasn’t dangerous…but of course, it was. The workers slowly began developing terrible illnesses and later dying of radium poisoning — and they’re now called the “Radium Girls.”
4.
Before the atomic bomb was made, one of the largest explosions was a ship accident in Halifax, Canada in 1917. Two ships crashed into each other in the harbour, which wasn’t unheard of — but the problem was that one of the ships was full of explosives that were intended to be used for battle in World War I. So when the ships hit each other, it caused a literal tsunami.
The ship’s explosion and resulting tsunami killed 2,000 people and left 9,000 more with permanent injuries. Plus, part of the city of Halifax was totally “wiped out” as a result, leaving thousands more without shelter.
5.
If you’ve got a weak tummy, I’d skip this one…because “The Great Stink of 1858” is enough to give me nightmares. It happened in London, and was caused by intense heat along with all the sewage people poured into the River Thames.
And by the way, when I say the lake was full of sewage, that also includes household garbage, and even a few dead bodies. This led to virus outbreaks and death, along with horrendous living conditions for, well, everyone.
6.
Time for something a bit lighter. The Great Emu War of 1932 happened in Australia, and it was humbling, to say the least. It started when Australian soldiers were instructed to kill 20,000 emus — there were just too many of them, and they were killing crops. Seemed like a simple task, but the emus were just too strong and too numerous.
The soldiers only managed to kill less than a thousand in a couple months, and the emus were eventually declared the winners of the war. The species is now protected by the government! So there you go, happy endings!
7.
In the mid-19th century, around 81 American pioneers (including children) were on their way to California when a snowstorm began. The conditions left them completely stranded. At that point, around half of the survivors allegedly (and unwillingly) engaged in cannibalism, eating the bodies of the people who’d already died, just to stay alive once their food supply was empty.
The terrifying incident is now called the “Donner party,” named after one of the families on the trip. Only around half of the original group survived.
8.
Similarly, in 1820, a whaling ship was travelling across the Pacific Ocean when a whale punctured and sank the ship. The 20 survivors loaded into small boats to travel to the closest land — which was more than 1,300 miles away. Within a few months, 12 more people had died, and some were eaten by surviving passengers as a last resort.
But a few of the castaways had better stories: Five were rescued by ships along the way. The most interesting part of this story, though, is that it was part of the inspiration for the book Moby-Dick.
9.
Japanese military officer Hiroo Onoda was on a small island in the Philippines towards the end of World War II in 1944 when the US army attacked the area. Many soldiers escaped the attack by hiding in the jungle. But the unique part of Hiroo’s story is he stayed hidden for 30 years, and was declared dead in 1959.
Eventually, we learned he spent those years serving a “secret mission” there on the island, but at the time, nobody knew where he was. And for those 30 years, Hiroo thought the war was still going on. He came back home to Japan in 1974 to a “hero’s welcome,” and even published a bestselling book about his experience.
10.
In 1876 in Kentucky, the unthinkable happened: chunks of meat started falling from the sky, out of nowhere. Locals were all baffled, and couldn’t think of an explanation as to how it could’ve happened (which makes sense, yanno, because meat literally started RAINING from the sky).
The grossest part? Some people actually tasted the sky-meat. Finally, a scientist figured it out: The “meat shower” was actually just “vulture vomit,” birds spitting out their food up above.
11.
We’re all aware many people were hanged for committing crimes until about the mid-20th century (depending on where you live). These executions were pretty straightforward and didn’t typically have any major roadblocks. Well, in 1885, a man named John “Babbacombe” Lee was convicted of murdering a woman named Emma Anne Whitehead Keyse…but he actually survived his hanging.
Here’s what supposedly happened: The executioner tried to drop the trap door to complete the hanging, but it got stuck — not once, not twice, but THREE times. John was sentenced to a lifetime in prison after that, and now he’s known as “The Man They Couldn’t Hang.”
12.
You know when people talk about asteroids hitting the Earth and you convince yourself that it’d never really happen? Well, it actually did. In 1908, the Tunguska Asteroid hit Earth, falling right through the atmosphere (that’s where most asteroids break down…but this one stayed intact).
The asteroid “exploded in the skies all over Siberia,” and caused tons of damage including “forest fires, and trees blown over for miles,” according to NASA. Because so few people lived there, it didn’t make much news, but it sure was rare — and pretty freaky, if you ask me.
13.
The US’s first documented serial killer is called H.H. Holmes, and he was active in the late 19th century. He owned a lot in Chicago where he built his “Murder Castle,” which is exactly as horrifying as it sounds. The building was reportedly full of “booby traps,” including “soundproof rooms,” “secret passageways,” “trapdoors,” and allegedly a “crematorium.”
We’re not totally sure what was in there, or even how many victims he had, because the initial reports were supposedly exaggerated…but that just makes it scarier in my eyes. H.H. Holmes was eventually hanged, and the Murder Castle was burned, then later torn down.
14.
The Italian Hall Disaster of 1913 happened in Michigan on Christmas Eve. At the time, in a village called Calumet, copper miners were striking. The miners and their families were celebrating Christmas Eve together when someone allegedly yelled “Fire!” — and this led to a rush of people trying to exit the hall. That’s when tragedy struck.
The stampede of people led to 73 deaths from suffocation, with the majority of them being children. It’s still unclear how exactly it all went down, but the event is still memorialized every year in the town.
15.
In 1814, London experienced (dare I say, the world’s first and only) “beer tsunami,” which killed eight people. Yes, beer. So how did it happen? I’ll explain.
You could call it a freak accident: A tank at a brewery exploded, crashed through the building’s walls and into the streets. And it sure wasn’t small — we’re talking about 320,000 gallons of beer here, in a giant uncontrollable wave.
Now, what’s a dark historical fact that others probably wouldn’t know about? Tell me in this quick form, or in the comments below!
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