Delving into history is arguably the most interesting journey one can take. Learning about different cultures, events of the past, people that made a difference, and songs that ignited change—there is so much to unearth and familiarize yourself with.
But most people usually want to learn about something nice, something that inspires, moves them, or makes them smile, even though the dark side of history is equally—if not more—important. Today, it’s the latter that we’re focusing on. On the list below, you will find stories shared by members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community after one user asked them for horrifying facts and events that are not widely known, even though they arguably should be. Scroll down to find them but browse them at your own risk, as they shed light on some of the most gruesome parts of our history.
#1
The Suffragists Night of Terror November 15th 1917 where 33 women fighting for the right to vote were picked up from in front of the White House and put in prison. They suffered beatings, being forced to stand/hang all night with their hands tied above their heads, being thrown around and smashed into iron furniture, and humiliation at the hands of guards. One woman was knocked out after having her head bounced off an iron bench and her cellmate became so distraught (under the impression the unconscious woman was dead) that she suffered a heart attack. She was denied medical care until the next morning.
These women were picked up off the street and thrown in jails where they were abused with no access to council. All because they dared ask Woodrow Wilson to allow them to vote.
EDIT: My comment shouldn’t have more upvotes than the thread, be sure to upvote the OP! They’re the one who inspired this comment :).
Image source: Sheairah, Daniel Martinez
#2
Second Congo War in the early 2000s left 5.5 million people dead.
Deadliest war since World War 2. A poll showed 91% of Americans had never even heard of it.
Image source: willmaster123, L. Werchick / USAID
#3
That as bad as North American slavery was it was far worse for the slaves sold in South America. The average life expectancy was 6 months, 2 if you were working in a mine. About 35% (11 million) of all slaves were sent to Brazil, 5% (388,000) were sent to the US. Despite this the US had more slaves than Brazil at all times solely because the slaves in Brazil died so many quickly.
Image source: Tuescunnus, Tasha Jolley
#4
The US government were forcibly sterilizing Native American women up until the 1970s. Meaning, the US government was (arguably still are) actively committing genocidal acts against Native peoples well into the 20th century.
Image source: greyskysblueeyes, Boston Public Library
#5
King Leopold II of Belgium 1902–responsible for millions of deaths in the Belgian Congo, and had little black boys hands cut off for not producing enough rubber.
Image source: outrider567, wikipedia.org
#6
Rwandan genocide, it lasted 4 months. Four f*****g months and 1,000,000+ people died. Most died from being hacked to death by machetes.
Image source: Mumtaz3580, Chelms Varthoumlien
#7
Imperial Japan’s Unit 731
Not in any school text books but as unsettling as anything throughout history.
Image source: HighlanderShane, 松岡明芳
#8
A lot of people refer to the Jonestown incident as a mass s*****e when it was really a mass murder and people were forced to drink the cyanide flavor-aid by armed guards, and also the whole community was more horrific than most people know about and many were stuck in Jonestown against their will.
Image source: anon, wikipedia.org
#9
The Native American boarding school movement, popularized by the slogan “K**l the Indian, Save the Man”, meant that thousands of Native children were rounded up, taken to boarding schools, had their hair and clothes changed, and were forced to speak only in English. Many people don’t know that these kidnappings continued through the 1940s. My grandmother and her sisters were picked up on the school wagon in 1939 when they aeee playing outside, while their mom was gone. For weeks, she didn’t know what happened to them or where they had gone. They had been taken to a boarding school. When one of my grandmother’s sisters was caught speaking Cherokee at the boarding school, she was locked in the dark basement (where they stored a skeleton used for anatomy lessons) overnight. She’s still terrified of the dark almost 80 years later.
Image source: Raindrops1984, Caleb Woods
#10
Ash from the Dachau concentration camp “snowed” unto the people in Munich. This was during the summer, and no one batted an eye that there’s really no reason for ash to be snowing down on them.
They later tried to claim they had no idea about what was going on at Dachau. Yeah, you did.
Image source: llcucf80, Hans Ott
#11
As an Irishman, maybe it’s not totally unknown but I think the actual reality of what happened during the British occupation seems to be unknown to most people outside Ireland, even in Britain.
It was 800 years. Most shockingly, the “Famine” is just sort of known as some sort of act of God that plagued the entire country. The reality of what happened, that the “famine” only applied to certain members of society and how/why it happened just all seem to be swept under the rug. Calling it a Famine is quite disingenuous.
To this day people still make jokes about Irish people and their love for potatoes. Eh… there’s a reason. There was nothing else “left” to us, and when that was gone, there was literally nothing else given to us(though, there was actually food to be had) It’s not that we loved them, it was basically, that’s all you have, eat it or die of starvation.
Image source: Davisland, Sardar Faizan
#12
The Stolen Generation.
In Australia from 1910 – 1970, Aboriginal and mixed race children were taken from their families and abducted off the street by police. They were then sent to schools and church missions to be converted to Christianity and trained for service in white society. Girls were trained as domestic servants and boys were trained to work on farms as labourers.
I almost don’t need to tell you about the physical and sexual abuse. The separation from their families. The suffering, the destruction of language and culture. Many never saw their parents or siblings again. When they were finally released from these schools, they were sent to work in white households that treated them like slaves. Physical and sexual abuse were again the order of the day. If the mixed race domestic servant produced a child by her white master? Well, that baby was taken away as well.
British colonialism at it’s finest. The Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd apologised for this and many other atrocities on the 13th of February 2008.
I was talking to my mother about it not long ago. She is in her 60’s and grew up poor in public housing. Her thoughts? “Well, I am sure they thought they were doing the right thing at the time.” …. hell no.
Image source: phantompath, Arwan Sutanto
#13
Christerdom crusades to scandinavia/northern europe. (cultural apocalypse)
Esentially at least in finland, almost all information from our older history and gods was destroyed.
we used to have a lot of gods, now theyre literally just in a book thats a collection of folk stories because crusaders literally k****d all who knew anything about old gods.
i think it was more like 20% of whole population k****d because they didnt convert.
Image source: Chikuaani, Thomas Bormans
#14
Engineers advised NASA to postpone the launch of the space shuttle challenger, due to concerns about the O-rings in the solid rocket boosters at low tempatures. They were over ruled, largely because the next launch window wasn’t on a school day, and having students watch the first teacher launch to space was big PR goal.
As everyone knows, that launch failed because an O-ring in one of the SRBs failed.
Image source: anon, Kennedy Space Center
#15
That thousands of British children were sent to Canada, Rhodesia, Australia and New Zealand as part of the Child Migrants Scheme. The Child Migrants Trust was set up in 1987 to help families reunite. https://www.childmigrantstrust.com
In the 1940s – 1970s, most of these children still had parents and had been placed in British orphanages due to the crippling poverty after WW2 or were removed from parents who were deemed unable to cope (single/unwed mothers being a favourite excuse for removal). The children who were sent to these countries were often lied to: “Your parents are dead” “Your parents don’t love you” “Your parents signed the release papers”… when actually, parents often didn’t know what happened to their children and release papers were forged.
Learning disabled, mentally ill, physically disabled and ethnic minority children were not included, as many places like Australia wanted ‘good white breeding stock’.
The abuse these children suffered when they arrived in these ‘promised lands’ was horrendous. The Catholic Church, Church of England, Barnardo’s, Fairbridge Society and many other children’s charities and Christian denominations were complicit in sending children abroad. The children were promised new lives and foster families. What they got was violence, abuse and years of hard labour at the hands of those supposedly meant to care for them.
Image source: Welshgirlie2, Zahra Amiri
#16
People outside of Canada know little to nothing of our residential school system. I’ve heard survivors’ stories and their treatment was horrifying.
The canadian government, the churches, and the RCMP (police) worked together to forcibly educate indigenous children. The RCMP would go to reserves and take kids away from their parents by force. Parents who resisted could be arrested or k****d by officers. The kids were then taken hours away to a school run by the church. By the time they got there, they would be beaten if they spoken their language or complained about the food/the conditions/their treatment, etc. Half of the day would be dedicated to scholarly education, the other half would be tedious chores (to help “westernize” the kids). The residential schools across the country went unchecked by the government. They helped fund them but really didn’t pay any mind to the reports of horrific treatment from the kids. Rapes, murders, and suicides were very frequent (to listen to survivor stories I suggest We Were Children). Kids would be locked in small dark rooms for weeks if they asked to go home or misbehaved. Others would be hunted and shot like deer if they ran away. Thousands of kids died while the government did nothing. Over 2 generations of indigenous people were forcible stripped of their culture, their language, ect.
Image source: leashkid, Mikhail Nilov
#17
I was surprised to learn how many people didn’t know about the roundup of Japanese American citizens after Pearl Harbor. I learned about it in school and thought everyone else did too.
Image source: katiez624, wikipedia.org
#18
The Great Siege Of Malta:
“Mustafa had the bodies of the knights decapitated and their bodies floated across the bay on mock crucifixes. In response, de Valette beheaded all his Turkish prisoners, loaded their heads into his cannons and fired them into the Turkish camp.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Siege_of_Malta.
Image source: Fakezaga, Matteo Perez d’Aleccio
#19
Rosemary Kennedy’s failed lobotomy, which made her mental capacity diminish to that of a 2 year old, and left her without the ability to walk or speak coherently.
Image source: anon, mildredfierce1969
#20
Okay Im not sure how many people know this but the people I have told don’t know it.
Edison electrucuted an elephant named Topsy *(she was being sentenced to death for trampling some people to death)* but Edison electrucuted her to prove his form of electricity was safer than Tesla’s.
It is so f****d up that he electrucuted a poor animal to prove a point.
Image source: Oh_hi_doggi3, Hebert Kostan
#21
Most people don’t know that the Spanish Flu of 1918 infected around 1/3 of the entire population of the planet, with 20-50 million deaths. By comparison, the death toll for the First World War was ~18 million. I find the thought that something as random and uncontrollable as a virus mutation can cause a real Malthusian check on the global population absolutely terrifying.
Image source: ButtTickla69, wikipedia.org
#22
The Holodomor was an engineered famine in the Soviet Union. It took place from 1932 to 1933 and k****d 2.5 to 5 million people. To this day, many communists continue to deny that it occurred, deny that anyone could have foreseen that collectivization of agriculture could possibly result in a famine, or simply declare that the “kulaks deserved it”.
Image source: Owl02, Benjamin Wong
#23
Not near as obscure as what everyone else has said but I would argue the Halifax explosion. For how devastating it was it is never talked about (at least where I have lived). Largest man-made explosion before atomic weapons I believe.
Image source: Legalize-Wheelies, wikipedia.org
#24
The Aztecs performed acts of massive human sacrifice of slaves.
In one such event over 10,000 slaves had their hearts torn out while still alive. The blood permanently stained the pirámide.
By the time that the Spaniard Cortez arrived thousands of natives from conquered tribes joined him to be rid of the Aztec empire.
Over 90 percent of the army against the Aztecs was native tribesmen of former s***e nations of the Aztec Empire.
Image source: anon, Getty Images
#25
The Mountain Meadows M******e in Utah. Brigham Young authorized the murder of over 100 men, women, and children. Only 17 children survived, the oldest of which was 7.
Image source: zepherxion, Gibbs, Josiah F.
#26
Between 1959 to 1961, 15 million to 45 million people died in China from famine.
Image source: Ogbl, Olivie Strauss
#27
During Stalin’s forced industrialization of Russia, he would take all the farmers’ food/crops they grew leaving them to starve. This led to extensive cannibalism, including many recorded cases of parents eating their children.
Image source: R3ddittor, Jill Sauve
#28
Vikings would use pigments to make their teeth permanently one color by using a hammer and a sharp pick to make identations for the dye in the enamel. This could be how the Danish king Harald Bluetooth got his name.
Just imagine.. *shivers*.
Image source: Dizzymizzwheezy, loop23
#29
Quite a bit from Hawaiian history. I love learning about it, but thinking about enough people dying to turn a river red, it still terrifying.
Image source: mochikitsune, Magda Ehlers
#30
In 1916, a town in Tennessee hung a fully grown elephant for k*****g her trainer. They had to use a crane at a nearby railroad station.
Image source: tphelps33, Matt Bango
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