30 Super Weird And Disturbing History Facts We Bet You Didn't Know
History was always the most boring subject ever taught in school, simply because teachers and schools didn't want us uncovering the dark secrets behind famous people and places.
If history lessons, back in school, told you exactly what you're about to learn today, your perspective would be so much weirder. There are so many things you don't know that historians tried too hard to cover!
Now, my friends, the wait is over, for what you're about to learn will make you choke on your spit. For starters, did you know that when Cleopatra was 18, she married her 10-year-old brother to become the co-ruler of Egypt?
We didn't learn this in school, and for good reason. But keeping that aside, history lessons are extremely important as they help us understand how far we've come and how much we've accomplished.
History can also help us predict the future, too. Granted, back in school we didn't need to know that Cleopatra married her brother or that she only has one pair of great grandparents, but no one's stopping us now to discover more about how people lived back in the days or how things function today.
Redditor Doyouareisstupid asked the world what weird or disturbing piece of history they knew, and over 6,000 people commented! Here are 30 super weird and disturbing history facts we bet you didn't know.
1. Cleopatra's family.
Most people have 16 great great parents, Cleopatra had 2. She's lucky to have developed working lungs, let alone be competent enough to accomplish anything.
That was a family tree was a wreath
VeseliM
2. Homeless.
40% of all homeless people in America still goes to work every day
Flutfar
3. Slavery
That literally ever race of people that have ever existed on this planet have been slaves to another at some point in history and most of them have overlapping time frames with other races.
And this is never talked about.
KnightofDis
4. Australia vs. Emu
Australia went to war with Emus. The Emus won.
LuinAelin
5. Hitler and Lobsters
Adolph Hitler was an animal rights advocate who banned the live boiling of lobsters.
TommyHawking
6. Long sausages with teeth.
Sharks have been around longer than trees.
truthsayer2021
7. Books in human skin.
There are books in the Harvard University library which are bound in human flesh
Flaky_Sandwich9353
8. US Government secrets.
The US Government has a literal gigantic dossier of classified operations hidden from the public, no brainer. What's shocking are things they've actually declassified.
Among these documents is the detailing of one of the largest human experiments in history, when the US dropped a bacteria-infused fog on the city of San Francisco to test how well "germ-based" biological warfare could prove by masking it with natural fog, which occurred back in the 1950s.
It was widely successful. A specific case is that of Edward Nevin, who passed away from Serratia marcescens, a bacteria that makes bread turn red. It had spread to his heart from a UTI and he passed away
In 1977, the government released a thoroughly detailed report at the testament of Nevin's grandson.
Nevin's grandson tried to sue the government for wrongful death, but the court held that the government was immune to a lawsuit for negligence and that they were justified in conducting tests without subjects' knowledge.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Army stated that infections must have occurred inside the hospital and the US Attorney argued that they had to conduct tests in a populated area to see how a biological agent would affect that area.
Imagine what they're hiding.
Shirozaru
9. Controling women's womb.
Some ancient cultures knew that they could control population growth by denying fertile females both fats and carbohydrates.
This process guaranteed that embryos would not mature in the womb due to the lack of food energy derived from carrying mothers.
The embryos would self-abort. A certain ratio of body fat is required for successful pregnancies.
NagromTrebloc
10. Slavery.
There are more people in slavery today than at any other time in history.
aljoharaalfayez
11. Nuclear deals.
That we've been on the brink of a global nuclear exchange several times.
And that in one case (Cuban blockade), it was only because a single man (Vasily Arkhipov), disagreed with standing orders, that a nuclear exchange was likely averted.
Madjack66,
12. Forced vampirism.
Due to Fresh drinking water being so scarce on the Galápagos Islands, some bird species, such as the Galapagos Hawk, have adapted by drinking the blood of other animals.
Johndoe448
13. Cleopatra and the moon landing
Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landing than to the building of the pyramids.
Dragonwithamonocle
14. Sewage drinking water.
From the fall of the Roman empire up until the mid 19th century, not a single city in Europe had a sewer system to dispose of human feces.
City planners didn't build sewers until it was proven in 1855 that the cause for all the cholera epidemics was drinking water contaminated by human feces.
PhilippTheSmartass
15. Mayans and enemas.
The Mayans partied hard. They would take alcohol and hallucinogenic enemas.
In Social Studies they had us watch a special on them and I vividly remember an artists rendering of a Mayan doing a handstand while getting an enema.
The original keg-stand.
Riff_Moranis
16. Russia's population crisis.
Russia still has not recovered its population prior to WWII
YNot1989
17. Newborns and pain.
Up until the early 1980s doctors did not think newborn babies could feel pain. They didn't use anesthetic only used muscle relaxers on newborns.
mukelynnvinton
18. Rainbow valley.
Rainbow Valley of Mount Everest is named for the rainbow colors of clothing of passed away people there
Ryukotaicho
19. Spartan babies and wine.
Spartans bathed their newborn babies in red wine instead of warm water
FireyorLeafy
20. Forcing cancer.
The United States injected unknowing Puerto Rican’s with cancer cells to see how the illness worked
captnslog97
In the Tuskegee Study, the U.S. government injected African Americans with syphilis so that they could find how it spreads and works its way through the body. And they just left them infected rather than giving them penicillin afterwards.
Mary Rose Kent
21. Dutch prime minister's menu.
The Dutch once ate their Prime Minister.
ioconnor94
22. Dinosaurs? Never heard of them.
The founding fathers of the USA didn't know dinosaurs existed.
yuwannano
23. Human cells.
The ability to tell time (circadian rythm) is an evolutionary reaponse.
Cells that learned to replicate at night and rest during the day ultimately survived.
I'm bastardizing it but I find that amazing.
ok-MTLmunchies
24. Our impact on the world.
If you lined up this history of earth on a 12 hour clock, modern humans making an impact on the planet would be about 1/10 of a second ago.
Doc580
25. Adolf Hitler would've drowned.
Adolf Hitler was saved from drowning at age nine in a fountain by a priest
DrySky8514
26. A hot bowl of soup.
Not so much disturbing as it is funny (at least to me).
The Kettle War. Long story short, Spain (The Holy Roman Empire) and the Netherlands (The Seven Republics of the Netherlands) were beefing.
One boat from Spain engaged in a fight with a Dutch naval ship. One shot was fired.
The only victim of that cannonball was a pot of soup that was cooking. The Spanish ship then surrendered.
ImANuckleChut
27. Ireland and potatoes.
Ireland exported potato’s during the great potato famine.
CategoryTurbulent114
28. Children from Woolpit.
That in UK, some time in the 12th century, two children of unusual GREEN skin colour appeared in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England.
The girl later communicated she and her brother had come from Saint Martin's Land, a subterranean world inhabited by green people. This actually happened!
Mulks23
29. Baltic States
The baltic states conquest was buried in history (not many people know it) because ww2 and the holocaust happened at about the same time.
TayoDaAsian
30. Lenin in Germany
The Germans smuggling Lenin into Tsarist Russia, to bring it down.
willubemyfriendo
This is too much info for my brain, and I guess there's a good reason we weren't told all this back in school. I was shocked to learn that Adolf Hitler was an animal activist and that Mayans loved to party!
It's crazy how little we know about the world we live in, but we'll get there eventually.
Which facts shocked you more? Let us know in the comments!
