1.
In 2013, Dr. Farid Fata, an oncologist in Michigan, was arrested for administering chemotherapy to hundreds of patients who did not need it. His crimes became one of the largest healthcare frauds in US history.
2.
The fact that the “breast ripper,” a medieval torture device with claw-like spikes, actually existed and was used exactly as the name implies. Apparently, it was used on women who were “accused of adultery, abortion, and other ‘crimes.'”
3.
Also, along those same lines, the existence of a middle age “punishment” device called a “Scold’s bridle” — which was basically an iron muzzle that went into your mouth, pressed down on your tongue, and was meant to be very painful and traumatizing. According to the British Library, the Scold’s bridle was “used to hurt and humiliate women whose speech or behavior was thought to be too offensive or unruly.”
4.
In August 2022, Celebrity Cruises stored a dead man’s body in the ship’s drinks cooler where it was apparently “left to rot for six days.” When the body was found, it was reportedly in “advanced stages of decomposition.”
5.
The reason that there are no skeletons at the wreck of the Titanic is basically because once the flesh of their bodies was eaten, the remaining bones dissolved.
6.
In 2021, a 6-year-old girl died on a drop ride at the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park in Colorado because ride operators didn’t properly check her seatbelt.
7.
In 2023, an 83-year-old woman in South Carolina died after falling 48 feet down a hidden well shaft that was beneath the floor of her daughter’s 100-year-old home.
8.
In 2012, Ilda Vitor Maciel, an 88-year-old woman in Brazil, died after accidentally being injected with soup. Allegedly, one of the nursing technicians injected the soup into her veins instead of her feeding tube.
9.
Meanwhile, in Medford, Oregon, as many as 10 people may have died in December 2023 because a nurse switched medication with tap water.
10.
The fact that oubliettes used to exist. An oubliette (from the French “oublier” meaning “to forget”) was a type of medieval dungeon that had a trap door at the top, just out of reach of the prisoner. The worst part was that the dungeon would be shaped like a really narrow passage so that the prisoner wouldn’t be able to sit or even get on their knees. So, yeah, they were basically forced to stand and starve to death.
11.
In 2010, officials in Tokyo went to congratulate the city’s “oldest living man,” Sogen Kato, on his 111th birthday. However, when they arrived, they discovered he’d actually been dead for 30 years. What they found was his “uncovered mummified skeletal remains” lying in bed.
12.
In 2022, a man, Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta, used a samurai sword to decapitate his ex-girlfriend, Karino Castro, out in public in the middle of a neighborhood street. According to reports, “horrified witnesses” said they watched Castro “run for her life,” as Landaeta chased her with the sword. Castro’s grandmother called the killing a “public execution,” while a family friend said that Castro’s daughters “saw everything.”
13.
In the 1950s, ’60s, and even as late as the early ’70s, kids would literally chase after trucks that sprayed DDT, a synthetic pesticide that was used in agriculture to kill mosquitoes. Apparently, kids did this because they liked to play in the thick fog it created. 🙃
14.
The existence of the female Adactylidium mite, a small arachnid, which is known for its highly unusual and, quite frankly, HORRIFYING life cycle that involves incest and matricide. (Read below for the exact details, if you dare!)
15.
In 2004, three transplant recipients shockingly died after receiving organs from a donor who had been unknowingly infected with rabies. According to the CDC, “This [had] never happened before.” After some laboratory tests, it was believed by experts that the donor had actually been infected by a bat.
16.
In 2008, a woman, Dianne Odell, who had spent nearly 60 years in an iron lung, died when a power outage shut off electricity in her home and stopped the pump drawing air into her lungs.
17.
In 2018, a surgeon in the United Kingdom literally branded his initials onto the transplanted livers of some of his patients…without their consent. He used an argon beam — which is used to stop bleeding during operations — and signed “SB.” The brandings were discovered after another surgeon saw the initials during a follow-up surgery on one of the patients.
18.
The existence of Cymothoa exigua, aka the “tongue-eating louse,” a parasitic isopod that severs the blood vessels in a fish’s tongue, causing the tongue to fall off. After detaching the tongue, the parasite then attaches itself to the remaining stub, basically serving as the fish’s new “tongue.”
19.
In 2012, Mao Sugiyama, an artist who identifies as asexual, cooked and served up his own genitals — full penis, testes, and scrotum — to five diners for $250 a plate.
20.
The tragic story of 4-year-old Brandon Zucker, who was crushed underneath one of the vehicles in the Roger Rabbit Car Toon Spin ride at Disneyland in 2000. Brandon suffered “serious brain damage” and “never talked or walked again.” He died in January 2009.
21.
This shockingly lifelike mummy of a little 2-year-old girl in Palermo, Sicily, who some people say appears to “open and close” her eyes. The girl, Rosalia Lombardo, who died in 1920 of the 1918 Flu Pandemic, is amazingly mummified (thanks to embalming methods and chemicals). However, people often get creeped out because her eyes sometimes appear “open.” The truth, however, is that it’s just an optical illusion. According to the curator of the Capuchin Catacombs (where Rosalia is entombed), this illusion is caused by the light that filters in through the windows, which changes throughout the day.
22.
In 2014, a woman was critically injured, permanently disfigured, and nearly killed, after four teenagers threw a rock from an overpass onto Interstate 80 in Ohio. According to reports, the rock “smashed through the windshield and struck Sharon Budd, in the front passenger seat, in the face.” Budd’s injuries included a crushed skull, the loss of one of her eyes, and also having to undergo multiple brain surgeries.
23.
The story of Mary Toft, a woman in 18th-century England who scammed doctors and the public into believing that she had given birth to rabbits. She would accomplish this by literally putting small rabbits and/or their body parts up inside her vagina in secret and then “birth” them later.
24.
In 2011, a 15-year-old in Belleview, Florida, Seath Jackson, was lured to a home by his ex-girlfriend, Amber Wright, where a group of her friends (aged 15–20) brutally beat, shot, and killed the teen. They later burned his body in an attempt to “dispose of the evidence.”
25.
In June 2014, 243 refugees, including women and children, disappeared while on a boat heading from Libya to Italy — the case has since been referred to as the “Ghost Boat.”
26.
Images from the aftermath of the Apollo 1 tragedy that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. On Jan. 27, 1967, during a launch rehearsal test, a fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module, burning all three men alive.
27.
In 1961, a Soviet doctor, Leonid Rogozov, who was part of an Antarctic expedition, developed appendicitis and had to perform his own appendectomy without general anesthesia, i.e. he had to cut out his own appendix.
28.
The fact that this is what the inside of an Arctic lamprey’s mouth looks like:
29.
The story of Heather Mack, a convicted murderer from Chicago who, along with her boyfriend, brutally killed her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, in Bali, Indonesia in August 2014. The crime drew a lot of public attention because Mack and her boyfriend stuffed her mother’s body in a suitcase.
30.
In 2013, a man in Florida was swallowed alive in the middle of the night by a 17-foot-wide SINKHOLE that had formed under his bedroom. Yes, his BED. ROOM. He was asleep at the time, and his brother tried to save him, but he was too late by the time he’d rushed in to help.
31.
In the 1920s, Dr. Dicran Hadjy Kabakjian and his family refined radium in the basement of their house in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania to supply doctors and hospitals with radium-tipped needles for cancer treatment. The radiation eventually killed them all — either through cancer, or in Dicran’s case, emphysema that was likely caused by the fumes. Interestingly (and horrifyingly), when Dicran’s body was exhumed for study in 1965, his skeleton registered the highest levels of radiation ever recorded in the human body.
32.
In 2013, a 20-year-old amateur football referee in Brazil was decapitated after he stabbed a player to death for “refusing to leave the pitch.” The referee’s actions basically instigated the crowd, causing many of them to rush the field and then dismember the referee’s body in retaliation.
33.
In 2007, a 44-year-old French man was discovered to have been missing 90% of his brain. Speaking with CBC, Axel Cleeremans, a cognitive psychologist at the Université Libre in Brussels, explained, “He was living a normal life. He has a family. He works. His IQ was tested at the time of his complaint. This came out to be 84, which is slightly below the normal range. So, this person is not ‘bright’ — but perfectly, socially apt.”
34.
After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, 50 emergency workers volunteered to stay behind — exposing themselves to deadly levels of radiation — in order to prevent a full meltdown of the facility. Yahoo! News reported at the time, “The remaining workers inside the Daiichi plant are not going in blindly; they are experts in their field, and well versed in the health risks they’re facing.”
35.
The existence of the Mummies of Venzone, a collection of dozens of naturally mummified bodies — who became that way thanks to mold — that were found in Venzone, Italy in the 1600s and date back to as early as the 1300s.
36.
The story of David Charles Hahn, aka the “Radioactive Boy Scout,” who built a homemade radioactive neutron source in his Michigan home’s backyard when he was just a teenager.
37.
The death of Paulette Gebara Farah, a 4-year-old girl in Mexico who disappeared, but was later found dead under suspicious circumstances. Her body was discovered seemingly hidden in her own bed.
38.
This 1950s news clipping from the New York Daily Mirror that asked, “If a Woman Needs It, Should She Be Spanked?” And then had responses by three men ranging from “Why not?” to “Yes when they deserve it” and “You bet. It teaches them who’s boss.”
39.
The fact that António Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist who invented the lobotomy — which is now considered one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine — was actually awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for this HIGHLY invasive and life-altering procedure.
40.
In 2008, a priest in Brazil tied himself to 1,000 balloons in an attempt at “cluster ballooning” (a form of ballooning where people are literally harnessed to a cluster of helium-inflated rubber balloons). He ended up floating out over the ocean and disappeared from contact. Although the priest had been equipped with all kinds of gear like a radio and a GPS tracking device, he was lost for months, and his corpse was eventually found in the ocean.
41.
In 2018, construction workers in Valdosta, Georgia discovered HUNDREDS of human teeth BEHIND A WALL. The building, which was originally built in 1900, had been occupied by a dentist, although no one really knew why the teeth of all his patients had been stashed behind the wall.
42.
The fact that a medicine called “One Night Cough Syrup” was made in the 1800s and it contained wild ingredients like alcohol, cannabis, chloroform, and morphia, sulph (an old name for morphine).
43.
This shocking/wtfffffff video of what it looks like when an “angry” camel inflates its dulla — an organ in male camels’ throats that is “believed to be associated with the display of dominance among males and for attracting females.”
44.
The fiery and unimaginable death of Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who crashed down to earth while “crying in rage” in 1967. Komarov was the first human to die in a space flight after the parachute failed on his capsule, the Soyuz 1.
45.
In 2015, a CT scan revealed that a Buddhist monk had actually been mummified — more specifically, self-mummified — inside of a statue. This process of self-mummification involved the elaborate and difficult process of eating a special diet and drinking poisonous tea so that the body would become too toxic to be eaten by maggots. A private buyer had purchased the statue at a market and initially brought it to an expert for restoration when the surprising (and unsettling) discovery of the monk’s body inside was made.
46.
It was recently discovered that bottled water, the kind you literally just buy in stores, contains thousands of nanoplastics that are so small they can invade your body’s cells. In fact, these particles are so small they cannot be seen under a microscope.
47.
In 2022, a man in San Diego died after driving his car into a parked car and inadvertently impaling himself in the neck with a knife that he’d been handling at the time. It was reported that “authorities found an open knife in the Lexus and a large amount of blood. At the hospital, doctors also discovered a stab wound in his neck.”
48.
In 2016, a man was BOILED to death — his body actually dissolved — after he illegally jumped into a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. The man had been attempting to “hot pot” in the acidic pool. The entire incident was recorded by the man’s sister on her cellphone.
49.
In 2016, an 18-year-old, Tyler Turner, and the instructor he was jumping in tandem with died in a skydiving accident after their parachutes didn’t open.
50.
Finally, the story of Joe Mellen, a “psychedelic adventurer” from the UK who drilled a hole in his own skull in order to “stay high” in 1970.