A while back, I read a few Reddit threads where people shared the most disturbing facts they knew — and heard about some more from the BuzzFeed Community. Here are 99 of them all together!
1. "Refrigerators are magnetic because kids used to die inside them. Before 1956, refrigerators could only be opened from the outside."
2. People who are slowly going blind might suffer from Charles Bonnet syndrome, where they hallucinate patterns or, in some cases, people. It can last for years, and there is no cure — nor is there a medication that specifically gets rid of the visions. The main treatment seems to be just...understanding that they aren't real and aren't the result of a mental health problem.
3. Studies suggest your brain doesn't necessarily stop its activity the moment you are clinically dead. You might literally hear yourself declared dead. Up to 30 minutes of brain activity was recorded in one patient.
4. In fact, it's been hypothesized that there may be a few seconds of awareness after someone is decapitated, as studied in rats.
5. There were even witnesses who said that Anne Boleyn tried to speak after she was beheaded.
6. The last execution by guillotine was in 1977.
7. Speaking of execution methods...one method the ancient Romans used involved beating people and then sewing them into a bag with a live dog, snake, monkey, and chicken and throwing them into the ocean.
8. The Romans were notorious for gruesome execution methods. Perhaps the worst (alleged) method was called scaphism, in which a person was force-fed, and covered in, milk and honey, put in a swamp, and slowly eaten alive by maggots and worms.
9. Also: "The Romans used to torture people by having goats lick their feet. Goats like salt, so they would soak their feet in salt water. Eventually the goat’s tongue was rough enough that the skin would wear away; then you’d have a wound with salt trickling in."
10. Another ancient Rome fact: "During the late Roman Republic, one of the richest men in Rome, Marcus Licinius Crassus, used to own a team of firefighters (there was no dedicated firefighter service at the time). If your building was burning, he would offer to buy the building. If you agreed, he put out the fire. If not, his team of firefighters just left and let the building burn."
11. We've only explored about 5% of the ocean.
12. "If you get bitten by a human, you absolutely have to go to the hospital right away because the amount of deadly bacteria in any given person's mouth could actually kill you if it enters your bloodstream."
13. You can substitute 65 grams of blood for an egg if you're baking something. The study that found this used pig's blood, but...it stands to reason any blood would work.
14. You probably know that a ton of people have died trying to climb Mount Everest, but what you don't likely know is that many of their bodies and belongings are used as trail markers.
One climber, David Sharp, actually began to freeze to death so close to where another frozen body "landmark" was that 40 people passed by him without helping him. By the time someone realized the body was actually the still-alive Sharp, it was too late.
15. Similarly, a 26-year-old man named John Edward Jones got stuck in Utah's Nutty Putty Cave in 2009. His body could not be removed, and he eventually died. his body is still there.
16. The sun will die in 5 billion years. And since it will get brighter with time, in about a billion years it'll be hot enough to vaporize the water on our planet and make it unhabitable.
17. Although, between climate change, biodiversity decline, and human overpopulation, people could kill the planet long before that!
18. And our universe could be wiped out at any time by a wandering black hole, nearby supernova, vacuum decay, or any number of other things in the galaxy.
19. The fungus Cordyceps can essentially mind-control small bugs like ants, beetles, butterflies, and wasps.
20. There are about 30 elevator- and escalator-caused deaths in the US yearly. Oh, and 17,000 injuries.
21. You may be traveling with more than just the living on your next cruise. Turns out, a good number of old people die on cruises — and accidents happen — meaning that all cruise ships have a morgue on board.
22. Guess what? They also have jails.
23. During the "Black Death," people sometimes reported hearing strange gurgling noises coming from inside their lesions.
24. And the bubonic plague, as the Black Death is also known, is still around.
25. Did you know that there's a pretty high likelihood that a brutal murderer gets away with their crime? That's right, folks — almost 40% of US murders go unsolved.
26. And the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the United States is murder — in fact, they're twice as likely to die from murder than from complications arising from their pregnancy.
27. "Approximately 2,100 children are reported missing every day in the US, or one every 40 seconds."
28. And while the chances of their survival and safe return home are very high, for children who are abducted and murdered, about 76% of them were dead within three hours, and 88.5% were dead within 24 hours. So basically...if a child has actually been abducted by someone with the intent of harming them, there is verrryyy little time to find them before it's too late.
29. A child under the age of 15 dies every five seconds around the world — mostly from preventable causes.
30. We lose 25,000 people a day to hunger, including 10,000 children.
In fact, people die of hunger not because there is not enough food in the world but because of the way food is distributed, meaning that not everyone gets enough. Even worse, 1.3 billion tons are wasted or lost every year.
31. Babies used to be operated on without anesthesia because doctors believed they couldn't feel pain. Like...up until the 1980s.
32. You've heard of zoos, right? Well, did you know that many countries — including the US — had human zoos?
These were basically small fake villages where Indigenous people from different places — often Africa — would live in an exaggerated version of the culture these (mostly white) countries thought they lived in. Many of them died in these villages.
Sometimes, people would be displayed in cages, often naked. One man, Ota Benga, was displayed with an orangutan in the Bronx Zoo in an exhibit that suggested African people had a closer evolutionary link to apes than white European people did.
33. And human zoos still do kind of exist. There was an episode of An Idiot Abroad where they visited a faux village of people with dwarfism who perform and interact with tourists.
There's been a bunch of controversy about whether or not the Kingdom of the Little People is, in fact, a human zoo — inhabitants are paid — but it certainly sounds similar to past "human zoos."
34. In the 16th and 17th centuries, many Europeans would consume "medicines" made from human corpses that were supposed to cure a number of maladies.
Some were from burial sites, stolen by gravediggers — other medicines were made from mummies stolen from Egypt. They'd crumble them and create tinctures as well as make powders out of skulls.
35. Ground mummies were also used in paint for a color that became known as "mummy brown."
36. Have you ever gotten the feeling you're about to die? Don't ignore it or brush it off so easily. A "sense of impending doom" is actually a symptom of a few different conditions and medical issues, including receiving the wrong type of blood during a transfusion.
37. You could have an unruptured brain aneurysm right now and not be aware of it, and it could rupture at any time.
38. It's rare, but cracking/popping your neck could cause you to have a stroke.
39. There's no effective treatment for rabies once the virus has taken hold. Rabies's mortality rate (99.9%) is higher than any other disease on Earth. You basically just have to wait out its symptoms until you die.
40. And one of the later symptoms is fear of water. Basically, you'll be super thirsty, but you'll spasm and be unable to ingest water.
41. This one may seem small, but it's pretty darn disturbing to me, as someone who loves oysters. Basically, if you've ever had a cloudy oyster, that means it was full of sperm.
43. Bestiality is actually legal in four states: Wyoming, Hawaii, New Mexico, and West Virginia.
44. Another comforting fact to share with the whole family: 56% of pilots have admitted to falling asleep in the cockpit.
45. Even worse, of those 56%, 29% woke up to find the other pilot asleep too. Fun!
46. There's an 80% chance your toothbrush has fecal matter on it — even if it's stored in a closed container. Even toothbrushes stored outside the bathroom may be contaminated with fecal matter.
47. In fact, fecal matter is on pretty much everything — especially the sponges you use to clean your dishes.
48. And just to keep this one going, there’s around one-tenth of a gram of poop in the average pair of underwear.
49. Most ground coffee likely contains cockroaches. In fact, FDA standards allow coffee beans to contain up to 10% "insect filth and insects."
50. You can live with only 25%–30% of your liver if you're otherwise healthy. So basically, someone could chop off the majority of your liver and send you home and you'd likely be fine.
51. Watch out for any tickle-like feelings around your butthole! It could be pinworms.
52. Watch out for tapeworms, too. They can live inside your body for 30 years, and many people don't have symptoms. They can grow to over 80 feet long.
53. Back in the 20th century, chemical conglomerate I.G. Farben manufactured the gas Zyklon-B, which was used in gas chambers in the Holocaust. Its factory workers included unpaid laborers from concentration camps. Part of that conglomerate? The company we know today as Bayer.
54. Bayer also briefly sold heroin as a medicine for colds, bronchitis, and pneumonia. It was marketed to children.
55. Speaking of the Holocaust and World War II...we often think of the atrocities committed by the German army, but they weren't the only ones. There are reports of the Japanese military tossing babies back and forth and catching them on their bayonets, and disemboweling women, among other horrible acts. Apparently, even the Nazis were shocked by the brutality of their crimes in Nanking.
56. A massive solar flare called the Carrington Event occurred in 1859. The sky lit up in different colors, and electrical and telegraph services were affected, and that was pretty much it. The world, however, is very different now from what it was in 1859.
If a similar flare happened today, a bunch of electric grids would fail. Things like GPS, ATMs, plane navigation, satellites, TVs, and radio signals would be affected — it would cost trillions to fix and could take years.
A "Carrington-class superstorm" actually did occur in 2012. It missed Earth by only nine days. Hey, remember how we all thought the world would end in 2012? Maybe we weren't that far off.
57. Speaking of world-changing events...cracks and fissures in the Thwaites eastern ice shelf in Antarctica suggest it could collapse in as soon as five years. The ensuing rise in sea level would be over 2 feet. That may not sound like much, but for context, around 250 million people live within 3 feet of high-tide lines. Thwaites's collapse would likely lead to other glaciers doing the same, further raising sea levels, putting coastal cities like Miami in danger of being swallowed.
58. There have been reports that Kim Jong Un and his supporters have "pleasure squads" of women, some as young as 13. It's also been reported that their schools recommend them for the "honor."
59. Remember Ducky in Land Before Time? The beloved dino was voiced by child actor Judith Eva Barsi, who also appeared on shows like Growing Pains and in movies like Jaws: The Revenge.
Well, she was murdered by her father at the age of 10. He also killed his wife (Judith's mother) and himself. Eerily, Judith had previously played a child murdered by her father in her first acting role, in the film Fatal Vision.
60. One of the worst things that can happen to you medically (though it's extremely rare) is locked-in syndrome. Basically, you are completely there mentally, but you can't move anything but your eyes. If it's not properly diagnosed, doctors (and your family) may think you're brain-dead.
61. There was an epidemic in the early 20th century called encephalitis lethargica (often referred to as "sleeping sickness") that's still a bit of a mystery. It's been estimated that the brain disease affected over a million people and killed about half of them, while causing many others to lose their motor skills and suffer from various psychological issues. The Robin Williams film Awakenings is actually based on this condition.
62. "There is no cure for tinnitus, and it's very easy to get. It is when a person hears constant noise 24/7 in their head and ears. Nothing, and I mean nothing, stops it."
63. Most pelvic exams done on young women are unnecessary. Many are performed on girls as young as 15, even though they're not being recommended.
64. If you're interested in online privacy, you'll find this one interesting: "Even if you don't have a Facebook account, Facebook has a 'shadow profile' on you that collects data from all over the internet (piecing together age, name, location, interests, and the like) to get to know who you are, so that if/when you create a new account, they already know everything about you."
65. There are a number of lost nuclear weapons in various seas around the world, some of which are too dangerous to attempt to recover. In fact, there have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents, and at least six of those weapons were never recovered.
66. In fact, the US once accidentally dropped nuclear weapons on North Carolina in 1961. They didn't detonate, but if they had, the blast would have been 260 times stronger than that of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima.
67. The US president at any given time has absolute authority to launch nuclear weapons.
The president doesn't personally carry out the order, but as long as it's verified as authentic, people basically have to follow through.
68. Ever wondered what happens when someone dies on an airplane?
Well, it turns out that they're usually kept in their seat or moved to the back row if there's room.
69. Fifty percent of unhoused people in the US were in the foster care system at one point.
70. And 25% of foster kids experience homelessness within two to four years of turning 18.
71. You can get a prion disease (a rare, fatal brain disease) at any time from eating infected meat (among other things). It's always fatal.
72. One type is called fatal insomnia, where basically, you can't sleep, your coordination and mental functions become more and more impaired, and then you die.
73. In case you need yet another thing to be scared of, there have been multiple alleged cases of spontaneous human combustion throughout history, and they can't all be disproved.
74. Bayer, the drug company, created a blood-clotting medicine for people with hemophilia in the 1980s. It used donated plasma before there was a test for HIV. Thousands of hemophiliacs got HIV; Bayer and similar companies had to pay out $600 million to settle lawsuits.
Even worse? Bayer created a new version that was heat treated to kill HIV, which it sold to the US and Europe, but kept selling the old meds to Latin America and Asia.
75. You probably think of the chainsaw as a tool for cutting wood — or, like me, you think of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
But it was actually invented to help with childbirth. When babies would get stuck coming out, doctors would have to remove some pelvic bone and cartilage to free space, and the medical chainsaw that was invented aided with this.
76. Speaking of birth, there was a 1965 invention that was meant to use centrifugal force — aka spinning someone around — to aid a woman in giving birth.
77. Maybe more weird than disturbing, but true: One in 200 men on Earth are related to infamous conqueror Genghis Khan.
78. If you have a dog, you probably find it pretty cute when they're playing with their squeaky toy. You might, then, be horrified to know that dogs are into squeaky toys because they emit sounds that are similar to those of small prey.
And they shake the toy back and forth because that's how wild dogs and wolves would kill their prey.
79. Your pets will eat you if you die in your home and aren't found for days.
80. And...there have even been cases where they started to eat someone who'd fallen unconscious.
81. Fun animal fact for ya: Male dolphins will "forcibly copulate" with female dolphins and will sometimes kill their children to coerce them into intercourse.
82. And adult otters sometimes rape and kill other otters as well as baby seals. They also engage in necrophilia, and some male otters hold mama otters' children hostage.
83. When a new lion takes over a pride, he kills all the cubs. They're not his, and he doesn't want to bother raising kids without his genes. Also, nursing female lions won't be into reproducing, and the male lions don't like that.
84. Some finches on the Galápagos Islands have adapted to survive on the blood of other birds. These "vampire finches" will feast on blood when other food is hard to find, and will drink from chicks as well.
85. And some turkeys have been found to eat each other alive.
86. Along with pigs.
87. "Moray eels have a second set of jaws and teeth inside their throat. They latch on to prey with their primary jaws, and then the second set can move forward and either latch on and pull the prey down their throat, or eat away at larger prey without having to let go."
88. Another small but creepy fact: King cobras can growl.
89. Also, the venom of some snakes can make your blood clot so quickly that it basically turns to jelly.
91. Starfish often digest food outside of their bodies. Basically, they extend their stomach out and secrete enzymes that digest and liquefy the prey, and then absorb it into their body.
92. Oh, and..."60% of all wildlife has vanished since 1970, and it's still going down."
93. A fun movie fact: The scream of the demon in The Exorcist was created using recorded sounds of pigs crying as they were about to be slaughtered.
94. Another fact about The Exorcist: An X-ray technician in one scene would go on to become a convicted murderer.
95. You can never truly see your face. You only see reflections or photographs. You'll literally never know exactly what you look like.
96. We don't experience time in a linear fashion, but instead in relation to how much life we've lived. That's why the years feel shorter as we get older. In fact, half of your "perceived life" is over by age 7.
97. "A toddler's adult teeth are right below their eyes."
