In case you want to end the year falling down a deep and dark rabbit hole, here's a roundup of alllll the awful, unsettling, and nightmarish things I learned about in 2023:
Note: Some disturbing and graphic content ahead.
1. 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."
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. The female Adactylidium mite — a small arachnid — 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!)
6. 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.
7. Some years ago, 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 a poisonous tea so that the body would become too toxic to be eaten by maggots. The statue had been purchased by a private buyer at a market and initially brought to an expert for restoration when the surprising (and unsettling) discovery of the monk's body inside was made.
8. 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.
9. 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."
10. 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."
11. Ettore Majorana was an Italian theoretical physicist working in the early 1900s. He had worked with the likes of other famous physicists like Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr. However, Majorana disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1938.
12. 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."
13. 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.
14. This photo of the inside of an Arctic lamprey's mouth:
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. 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."
18. 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 due to the fact that Mack and her boyfriend stuffed her mother's body in a suitcase.
19. 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."
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. The existence of this fascinating (but horrifying-looking) creature called a Cosmoderus Femoralis, aka an armored fighter cricket, which is apparently quite rare.
25. 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."
26. 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.
27. This terrible story of a leaping sturgeon that jumped out of the water, hit, then killed a 5-year-old girl in Florida who had been out boating with her family.
28. 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).
29. 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."
30. The shocking fact that the author of Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown, died as a result of doing a high kick.
31. 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.
32. The awful death of Ilda Vitor Maciel, an 88-year-old woman in Brazil who died after accidentally being injected with soup. Allegedly, one of the nursing technicians injected the soup into her veins instead of her feeding tube.
33. The fact that A LOT of people actually go overboard on cruise ships (we're talking hundreds). And, even worse, in the past, less than a quarter of them were actually rescued.
34. The first firefighter killed after responding to the 9/11 attacks was a man named Daniel Suhr...he was hit by a falling body, someone who had jumped from one of the towers.
35. 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.
36. 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.
According to NPR, "When the capsule began its descent and the parachutes failed to open, the book describes how American intelligence 'picked up [Komarov's] cries of rage as he plunged to his death.' Some translators hear him say, 'Heat is rising in the capsule.' He also uses the word 'killed' — presumably to describe what the engineers had done to him.
Komarov was honored with a state funeral. Only a chipped heel bone survived the crash."