Alex Buscemi
It’s been a year full of strange discoveries, and some of the darkest ones stick with us for better or worse.
From unsettling truths about human nature to bizarre facts about the natural world, these bits of knowledge walk the fine line between fascinating and disturbing.
Whether they make you think twice about the world we live in or just leave you with a mild existential crisis, there’s no denying they’re worth a share.
So, here’s a collection of the most unsettling facts people have stumbled across this year—ones that you probably didn’t ask to know, but now can’t stop thinking about.
Let’s dive into the shadows and see what people are talking about.
1.
“The Great Pox” — aka the 1495 syphilis epidemic that swept across Europe prior to the existence of antibiotics to treat it. Like today, the first stage of the sexually transmitted infection began with painless ulcers, typically on one’s genitals, that often went away on their own. The next phase manifested in the form of rashes, swollen lymph nodes, and — at its worst — pustules “which oozed a foul-smelling discharge.” Again, these would go away, fooling people into thinking they were cured. In the third and final phase, permanent and more intense symptoms arose. Though they were still alive, infected people’s skin and bones would literally start rotting and disintegrating on their faces. This often resulted in the collapse of their nasal cartilage, which made them appear as though they had no nose at all. Other symptoms included the formation of gummas — or “grotesque tumor-like growths” and severe damage to internal organs.
2.
In August of 1986, in Cameroon, West Africa, 1,700+ people were silently killed in the middle of the night by carbon dioxide. That night Lake Nyos, a volcanic crater lake, released nearly a quarter of a cubic mile of the gas, which traveled down the volcano at speeds of nearly 45 miles per hour, killing nearly everyone in Nyos and many in surrounding villages. Of nearly 850 people who survived and were hospitalized, the clinical findings were comparable to those of people who’d been exposed to an asphyxiant gas.
3.
Flight data during the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 revealed that it was likely some of the astronauts on board were still alive after the explosion. According to NASA, at least three of the emergency breathing packs were turned on following the Challenger’s explosion, leading them to believe that some of the crew remained conscious for at least 10 seconds following the disaster and were alive when it hit the water. They were believed to have been coherent enough to understand the severity of what was occurring. Reportedly, the final word they heard from the crew — which was uttered by the shuttle’s pilot, Michael J. Smith, 73 seconds after they took off — was a simple, “Uh oh.”
4.
A corpse can ‘give birth’ if a pregnant person dies. Certain results of decomposition, like bloating and gas, can force the fetus out of the womb, making it appear as though the deceased person has given birth. This rare phenomenon is known as Coffin Birth. There have been a few documented cases in history in which a smaller set of bones were found between the legs of a deceased mother who’d been buried.
5.
In 1992, Stella Liebeck — a 79-year-old McDonald’s customer — sued the fast food giant after suffering burns from their coffee. While many saw the case as a quick way to make a buck from a massive corporation, Stella was seriously injured. She was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car at the time of the incident and had ordered a hot coffee at a McDonald’s drive-thru. While parked, she put the cup between her legs and opened the lid, which spilled burning hot coffee all over her. Her sweatpants soaked up the hot liquid, keeping it in contact with her skin. She suffered third-degree burns on 6% of her body, “including her vagina, perineum, buttocks, thighs, and groin area.” She had to be hospitalized for eight days and required skin grafts. After reaching out to McDonald’s about the incident to cover her medical fees, they offered her a mere $800. After the trial, she was awarded $200K in compensatory damages and an additional $2.7 million for punitive damages.
6.
In January of 1919, The Great Molasses Flood took Boston’s North End by storm. While you might think the famously thick, slow-moving syrup surely couldn’t be all that deadly, the flood actually killed 21, injured 150, and caused massive damage. The 2.3 million gallons of molasses traveled at speeds up to 35 miles per hour. It “knocked an elevated train off of its tracks, crushed buildings, moved a firehouse and other buildings off their foundations, and suffocated both humans and animals.” The flood came after Purity Distilling’s 50-foot-tall tank of molasses split open, wreaking havoc on the crowded neighborhood in the middle of the day. According to structural engineers, the tank was poorly built, with walls that were too thin to support the weight of the product and made of unsuitable material that could — and did — easily crack with a sudden temperature change.
7.
On December 14, 1799, George Washington died…and was nearly (attempted to be) brought back to life. While he had succumbed to his throat ailment (there’s debate as to the specific illness) fairly quickly, he tried a variety of remedies, from gargling molasses, vinegar, and butter to having his throat “swabbed with a salve and a preparation of dried beetles.” Additionally, he requested his doctor to bleed him and lost 40% of his blood in the process. By the time his friend — surgeon William Thornton — arrived, Washington was dead and frozen due to the cold. Thornton proposed they thaw the former president in warm water, that he perform a tracheostomy, and that they inject Washington with lamb’s blood in an attempt to revive him. Ultimately, the procedure was not supported by those close to Washington.
8.
According to the BBC, the US military has lost — and never found — at least three nuclear bombs. There have been at least 32 known instances where the US accidentally lost, launched, set off, or had a nuclear weapon stolen. These are called “Broken Arrows.”
9.
The first suicide hotline was created after a man — 23-year-old deacon Chad Varah — conducted the funeral of a 13 or 14-year-old girl. She killed herself after she got her period for the first time and assumed it was an STD, since no one talked about periods at the time. While the actual hotline itself didn’t come into fruition until nearly two decades later, his “vision began” after that funeral in 1935.
10.
The low reflective bumper on the rear of an 18-wheeler trailer is called a Mansfield Bar. It’s named after actor Jayne Mansfield, who died after her driver ran into the back of a trailer at 2 a.m. in 1967. Jayne, her lawyer, and her children, including 3-year-old Mariska Hargitay, were in the vehicle. The car slid under the trailer and none of the adults survived the crash.
11.
Prions, aka a misfolded protein in the brain that causes other proteins to misfold. This literally causes “sponge brain” or small holes in the brain. Prion diseases are always fatal, and there is no known cure or treatment to slow the progression. They can be contagious or genetic. The contagious form cannot be killed by extreme heat, meaning when people with prion disease have to have surgery, those instruments used during the procedure are unable to be sterilized. The most prevalent contagious form of prion disease is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, aka Mad Cow Disease. Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is another common form of prion disease, which affects mostly deer. Prion disease can also be “sporadic,” meaning that the cause is not genetic or contagious but ultimately unknown. The most common form of prion disease, CJD, is mostly sporadic and affects an elderly population. Prion disease can lie dormant in the body for years. But once it is “activated,” the average prognosis is about one year.
12.
Chainsaws were originally a medical tool used during childbirth. Scottish doctors John Aitken and James Jeffray invented an early, hand-powered version of what we now know as the chainsaw towards the end of the 18th century. Originally it was used in childbirth for “symphysiotomy” — aka, a now-outdated medical procedure done during labor where the joint that holds the mother’s pelvis together is cut to make the birth canal wider.
13.
On March 18, 1937, tragedy struck a school in New London, TX, just fifteen minutes before classes were to end for the day. A massive explosion killed nearly 300, including students from fifth through eleventh grade. It was so big that it was felt by residents up to 40 miles away and reportedly shot a two-ton slab of concrete 200 feet away from the school. The explosion was caused by a cost-saving measure the school had taken earlier in the year in an effort to save $300 a month on gas. Plumbers had tapped a “residue gas line”; however, there was a faulty connection, and gas had been pooling under the school. On the day of the explosion, some students reported watery eyes and feeling lightheaded, but odors hadn’t yet been added to natural gas in the 1930s, so it went undetected. That very year, gas odorization was mandated in the state of Texas.
14.
It is physically possible to be so constipated that your stool backs all the way up your digestive tract and you vomit feces. This is a bowel obstruction. According to Medical News Today, to treat this, doctors would suck out the contents of the patient’s stomach via a tube through their nose in order to decompress the stomach.
15.
There is a condition called Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva in which damaged tissue is replaced by bone. People with this condition are slowly consumed by their own skeleton and have to choose which position they want to spend the rest of their life in after a certain point.
16.
The gritty details of Travis the Chimp mauling Charla Nash in 2009. Travis — who’d been raised by Sandra Herold in a particularly human-like life — had been described as “agitated” on the day of the incident. Charla — Sandra’s friend who had often looked after Travis when she was away — had arrived at Sandra’s home to help for the day. Whether Charla offered to come or Sandra asked her to is debated by the two. Regardless, Charla drove over and exited the car holding an Elmo doll. Almost immediately, Travis began assaulting her. The violent attack went on despite Sandy coming after him with a snow shovel and, later, a knife. He even stopped to look her in the eyes. After police arrived at the scene, Charla was found mostly naked, “covered in nearly half [her] blood supply,” and with pieces of her scalp and fingers strewn about the yard. Per New York Mag, “Travis had bitten or torn away her eyelids, nose, jaw, lips, and most of her scalp. He’d broken nearly all the bones of her facial structure. He’d fully removed one of her hands and virtually all of the other. He’d rendered her blind.” She was in critical condition, but alive, and underwent over a year of intervention. After a chase with the local police department, Travis was shot and, ultimately, died.
17.
Like its sister ship, the Titanic, the Britannic met its demise at sea. In 1916, the hospital ship reportedly hit a German mine, causing an explosion. Despite the flooding of six of its compartments, it remained afloat, so the captain ordered the ship to go at full speed to land. This only made it sink faster, so he ordered it to slow back down. Unfortunately, before it did, two lifeboats full of passengers fled the ship without getting permission first. Thinking they were escaping to safety, they were sucked into the ship’s propellers.
18.
More than half of the 81 people that made up the Donner party were children, six of which were infants. Overall, about half of those who survived being stranded ultimately succumbed to cannibalism. In most instances, they consumed the flesh of the members of their party who died naturally, though prior to that, they considered the men of the party dueling or drawing straws to determine who would be sacrificed for food. On one occasion, though, they killed two Native American men who’d joined them prior to being stranded. The two men had refused to eat human flesh and had attempted to flee, fearing they’d be future targets. They were correct. Other members of the party “slaughtered their pack animals, cooked their dogs, gnawed on leftover bones and even boiled the animal hide roofs of their cabins into a foul paste.” They were also reported to have eaten boiled pieces of leather and tree bark.
19.
The leading cause of death for pregnant women in America is murder. According to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, women in America who are or recently have been pregnant have a higher likelihood of being killed than dying of obstetric causes like hypertensive disorders, hemorrhages, or sepsis. Many of such cases are a result of violence from the pregnant person’s partner, and “68% of pregnancy-related homicides involved firearms.” The risk is highest for Black women.
20.
Contrary to what was portrayed in Netflix’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story series, what was actually found in Dahmer’s Milwaukee apartment was much more sinister. According to police findings, there were “seven skulls, two human hearts, an entire torso, a bag of human organs, two skeletons, a pair of severed hands, two severed and preserved male genitalia, a mummified scalp and a 57-gallon drum that included three dismembered torsos.” The Oxford Apartments that Dahmer resided in were torn down in 1992, and it remains an empty, grassy lot despite efforts to repurpose it into a children’s play area.
21.
For hundreds of years, people dumped human, industrial, and animal waste into London’s River Thames. By 1858, it caused such a horrendous odor to plague the city that it became dubbed “The Great Stink.” The river’s longtime pollution caused many Londoners to become violently — and sometimes deathly — ill with cholera, typhoid, and dysentery, as water wells lay near leaking cesspools and even water pumped from outside the city was still at risk of sewer contamination. In several cholera epidemics between 1831 and 1854, roughly 30,000 Londoners died. In 1855, Royal Institution scientist Michael Faraday claimed the river’s water was “an opaque pale brown fluid” and that near its bridges, people could see dense clouds of fecal matter at the surface. Ultimately, the “Great Stink” and its horrific consequences were the catalyst for London’s sewage system, which was completed in 1870.
22.
For many, the first sign of cardiovascular disease is sudden death. Sudden Cardiac Death, as the name implies, is a medical emergency that comes with little to no warning and can kill within minutes to an hour. The condition, which is a result of “defective electrical activity of the heart,” kills about 300,000 people annually.
23.
Pinky toes can auto-amputate. It, of course, needs the right conditions to do so. For instance, if a diabetic patient has a well-demarcated, dry gangrene toe, the pinky toe can remove itself non-surgically. Once it starts, you can’t stop it.
24.
The aftermath of the American Civil War was more gruesome than most realize. Infection and blood loss made battle wounds all the more deadly, which not only resulted in many dead bodies, but also contributed to the piles of amputated limbs. According to one Confederate soldier, “There were piles of legs, feet, hands and arms, all thrown together, and at a distance, resembled piles of corn at a corn-shucking. Many of the feet still retained a boot or shoe.” It’s estimated that roughly 620,000 died on both sides during the war. Further, many battles took place in warm areas during the summer months, leading to extreme heat and the rapid decomposition of flesh, bugs, and animals consuming the remains. Cleaning up took years.
25.
The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in and around New Orleans in 2005 was even more devastating than commonly believed. Approximately 1,170 people died in Louisiana, with 47% of the deaths being a result of acute or chronic disease and 33% being a result of drowning. 80% of New Orleans and the parishes surrounding it were flooded by 20 feet of water. First-hand accounts recall the overwhelming stench of dead bodies and how, even months later, bodies were still floating up on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.
26.
King Leopold II’s treatment of the people of the Congo (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo) during the late 1800s was so cruel that other European colonial powers — despite their own violence towards Africans simultaneously — condemned it, and the Belgian parliament had to step in to take it from his control. Packaged as a “humanitarian and philanthropic mission,” Leopold II’s reign was brutal. If villages failed to produce an adequate yield of rubber, ivory, or minerals for trade, it was not uncommon for a member of the village — often a young child — to have their hands or feet chopped off. His administrators were also known to have “child colonies” made up of kidnapped orphans who were expected to work and train as soldiers. It’s believed that over half of them died in the “colonies.” Further, Leopold II had a “human zoo” at his palace in Tervuren, with over 260 Congolese people in it. His actions were not condemned until 1908.
27.
Judith Barsi, the girl who played Ducky in The Land Before Time, was shot in the head by her own father after years of abuse at his hands. Her and her mother were killed in July of 1988, and The Land Before Time was released posthumously in November 1988. All of the work leading up to it and the voice acting was done during the height of the abuse and build-up of the murders. Looking at the whole timeline makes a not-so-fun fact an even more terrible not-so-fun fact.
28.
When bed bugs have sex, the male stabs his barbed penis directly through the female, into her organs. This kind of intercourse is called “traumatic insemination,” as the male and female bed bugs have “conflicting goals” when it comes to reproduction.
29.
Female hyenas give birth through a pseudopenis. The female spotted hyena’s pseudopenis, which is nearly indistinguishable from that of a male, is where the female hyenas urinate, have sex, and give birth from. Childbirth often causes severe tearing, and there’s an especially high female mortality rate during childbirth, particularly for mothers giving birth for the first time.
30.
There is a whale nicknamed ’52 Blue’ who is the only whale who sings at a frequency of 52 hertz, meaning it can’t communicate with other whales. It is considered the loneliest whale on the planet. Scientists believe 52 could be a hybrid of two different whale species and may sing at this unique frequency due to a malformation. However, sensors off the coast of California have picked up similar calls, suggesting 52 Blue may not be as lonely as once thought, or that there may be others like it.
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