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We humans are meaning-seeking creatures. The question 'why?' has pushed us to explore the mysteries of the universe as well as the depths of our existence. But in the process, we learned that not every revelation brings us peace of mind.
Reddit user Yoloextreme345 made a post on the platform, asking everyone on it, "What is a fact you know off the top of your head (preferably disturbing) that you probably shouldn't?" and people immediately started sharing things they would like to forget.
From ancient funeral practices to modern celebrity lives, here are some of the most popular answers.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
The more the ice caps melt, the higher the likelihood that some ancient bacteria is released and ravages our population.
RELATED:
#2
A Jewish doctor treated Hitler’s Mother(The only person Adolf ever truly loved) while she was dying of cancer.
He promised his eternal gratitude to the doctor and even after becoming a pathological anti-Semite and later the Fuhrer, he was true to his word and was adamant the doctor and his family be placed under protection from the purge.
While some may think this an act of genuine kindness, I just think about all the lives lost because Hitler never stopped to think that all Jews were capable of good and not just the one who happened to have been good to him because of immediate proximity..
#3
In ancient Egypt, the deceased bodies of beautiful and high ranking women were left to decay for several days before mummification to discuourage necrophilia by the embalmers.
#4
A woodpecker retracts its tongue and wraps it around its brain to prevent injury when drilling into trees in search of insects,
#5
Humans, being mostly Carbon, can be made into diamonds. I plan to go the cheaper route and have my ashes be rolled into a glass paperweight. Some day I might even end up on the shelf of a Goodwill for $2.99 Edit: 3000 points has unlocked another, also disturbing fact. Snow is so sound deadening, that your kid could be building a snowfort, have it collapse, and you wouldn't hear their cries for help. Even worse is when they're tunneling into one of those parking lot plow piles. They won't hear the plow coming.
#6
That reports of child abuse dropped precipitously during the COVID-19 pandemic not because less children were abused but because teachers were unable to see the typical evidence of abuse because most teaching was conducted online.
#7
Humans can live without their stomachs (and no you don’t necessarily need any ostomy bags either). Ask me how I know… Never mind, I’ll tell you. I don’t have one any longer (stomach cancer). Edit: Thank you kind strangers for the awards. ☺️ Never got one before and now I have two, scratch that FOUR Now Edit 2:Y’all!!!! You are so sweet and kind. Thank you everyone for the well wishes, kindness and questions. Please go get genetically tested for these things. So far 4 of the 6 members of my family don’t have stomachs anymore (all this year). Genetic testing can save your life! Edit 3: Fun fact: Us ones without stomachs call ourselves seahorses now because they don’t have stomachs either.
#8
I was told by a very senior police officer (a parent of a kid I taught) that it is estimated that 30% of all missing persons reported to police who are never located have been murdered and more often than not they have been murdered by the person reporting them missing in the first place. The police know this, but lack evidence to proceed with prosecutions.
#9
I remember hearing some dude (retired military) on a podcast talk about how fragile our electric grid really is, and if it ever went down some 60%-ish of the population would die in about 2-3 months because nobody knows how to gather food or water anymore.
#10
Big corporation always calculate wether its cheaper to pay a fine/settlement rather than obey the law.
#11
Elon Musk’s father is currently with and has a child with his step-daughter. He became her step-father when she was about 3
#12
I think I speak with every woman on here: blood stains are easier to get out of fabric than you think they are with very few cleaning materials, provided you get to them quickly enough.
#14
That when you have a headache because you're extremely hungover, it's because your dehydrated brain is shriveling and pulling on the membranes that connect it to your skull.
Once I found that out it's made all of my hangover headaches much worse just thinking about it.
#15
One of the most toxic chemicals on Earth is an organic mercury compound. The material safety sheet notes that it has a slightly sweet odor, but at a concentration where the smell is detectable, it is already lethal. That observation came from someone who would inevitably die from accidental exposure.
#16
"If you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you" doesnt mean the attorney is free
Edit: Holy s**t I didn't know this was going to catch so many eyes! For clarification this is in the US (suprise suprise) and this is on a state by state basis.
#17
Doctors removed the eyes of Jack The Rippers last known victim in order to check if they could extract an image of the killer.
#18
If you touch something you shouldn't, touch it again in the same place and the police can't get a fingerprint as one distorted the other. Edit: This is no longer true as technology has solved the "issue". So wear gloves or don't do naughty things without consent.
#19
If you skin a person alive and they somehow don't die of shock, they'll actually die due to hypothermia as without skin, they become unable to regulate their core body temperature.
#20
If you’re a cannibal, never eat the brains. Eating brains is how you catch a disease called Kuru. It is 100% lethal.
#21
•A dead body in the beginning stages of decomp smell like wet hay •if you die alone and become a “bloater” they pop you like a big zit before removal •the best way to remove frozen brain matter off the sidewalk is a flame thrower Confessions of an emergency cleanup specialist ♥️😏
#22
Dolphins throw around pufferfish like a volley ball just to play with them. They also get high off their toxins. Talk about a puff and pass.
#23
People dying often smell sweet. Not in a sugary way, but much more in flowery way. It's the decompositions of the body already starting. It can also smell vaguely like alcohol, especially their breath
#24
I once read that the average person walks past 36 murderers during their life.
Edit: the average American
#25
A perfectly healthy person can have a seizure at any point for no apparent reason. The human brain has neurons misfire all the time. 99.999% of the time you don't notice because there's no noticeable effect, but if the wrong couple neurons misfire at the same time it can induce a seizure. Source: happened to me
#27
A person split in half by the stomach doesn't die instantly. It has some lastly moments of suffering.
Source: a person was hit by a train and split in half in front of me. He took some time to die.
#28
That Robert Pickton, serial killer in British Columbia, used to dispose of bodies at a local fat rendering plant, meaning that many of the products made from that plant, think gummies or anything gelatin related, likely contained human remains.
#29
That in ancient egypt it was a regular occasion that all people watched the pharao masturbate in to the nile
#31
The US military conducted chemical weapons tests on 60,000 US service members during WWII. It was kept secret until the 1990’s and wasn’t widely known until NPR wrote an investigative story on it in 2015.
#32
The body fat of a drowned person turns into a soap-like substance if they stay under water with no air contact
#33
Orcas will slap baby seals 80+ ft into the air with their tails until the seal's skin comes off, and eventually dies. The orcas will then not even eat it after, meaning that they literally just do it for fun.
#34
I've learnt of some uncomfortable facts from some Aztec (Mexica) fammily which has been passed down from generation to generation, though I don't know how true this one is: During a ritual, Aztec kings used to bring some victims up the tall pyramid so they may be sacrificed to their gods. Typically, these victims were tossed along the side of the very jagged rocks and we're usually found dead at the bottom. The priests would gather the bodies and cut them up for distribution to the people according to importance, so the king got the best piece and his family and the other priests received some parts, etc. They inevitably ate these pieces as part of their ritual. Of course they didn't just munch on them, they prepared them like any other meat and usually ate them with soups. Fast forward to the time when the conquistadores came from Spain. These guys show up not long after some ritual took place, then the Aztecs welcomed them in and shared their food. You can figure out by now where this is going, these conquistadores ate the soup so they inquired about what it was made of and sure enough they found out. Although eating human meat was a big no no, the Spaniards actually enjoyed it. So when they inevitably conquered over the Aztecs, they ended up keeping the recipe of that soup. Instead of using human meat though, they used pork since they've said that it tastes similar. We still eat that today, it's called Pozole (Pozilli).
#35
Cows can create mummified foetuses inside of their uterus. If the foetus dies and is not retrieved, the body absorbs all the liquids and humidity from the foetus, and what is left is a tiny dried up hard solid mummy of a calf.
#36
19th century murderer William Palmer's last words to the hangman who would take his life were "Are you sure it's safe?"
Charles Dickens called him "the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey."
#38
The witch in Hansel and Gretel actually was cooking the two kids correctly, by using low heat cauldron over a long time with fatty meat, cuz she fattened them
#39
Using a dead animal to try and throw off body sniffing dogs is a myth spread around to try and get people to trip up. If there's disturbed ground and some random animal 3-4ft down you can bet your booty that entire areas getting turned over.
#41
During the Black Death, people would be so infected with the plague that the buboes (those lumps) that you could hear them gurgling with bacteria
#44
Having an erection for 4+ hours can cause gangrene of the d**k which is when tissue is dead or dying due to lack of blood flow or an infection cause by bacteria. This can lead to erectile dysfunction, cosmetic issues, permanent tissue damage, and in worst cases as I've mentioned earlier, gangrene. This situation is called priapism.
#45
Spotted hyena females have "Psuedopenises". Pretty much both sexes have penises, except the female penis replaces the vagina. This means the urethra must be penetrated by a male in order to mate. The pseudopenis also functions as a birth canal. Pretty painful birth if you ask me. In a study, Female Spotted Hyenas have been seen trying to peg Male Hyenas. Pretty amusing but also disturbing fact. Special thanks to my 8th grade biology teacher for this mental scar of information. Edit: Spotted Hyena females have the pseudopenises, not all Hyenas.
#46
When you cremate someone with a tumor a lot of times the tumor doesn’t burn… it just smolders and smells bad.
#47
If you need a human body to decompose faster, fill the a**s with yogurt. Don't ask how i know, please just google it instead.
#48
Had a school presentation of this, cause it fascinates me while simultaneously horrifies me. The movie The Rock got me interested in finding out how much of it was true. The VX-nerve agent kills in a brutally painful way. When you tell a muscle to contract, you send out a chemical (ACh) in said muscle causing it to contract. When you no longer want to tense it, you send out a new chemical (AChE) neutralising the first chemical. The VX-nerve agent prevents this new substance (AChE) from being used to neutralise the first substance (ACh). In the movie they mention you get spasms strong enough to break your own back, which I don't know if it's true or not, but you will begin involuntarily tense every single muscle in your body (including the diaphragm muscle) with so much force it can tear it's own muscle attachment until you eventually die because you can't exhale. If you spray mere millilitres of this substance on a door handle, the next person to grab the door handle will die. It was used to assassinate Kim Jong Un's brother Kim Jong Nam, by spraying him in the face with this substance in a regular water spray container. I believe the ones who did this also died from the very minuscule amounts that landed on them as well.
#49
WD-40 rapidly destroys cocaine rendering it chemically unrecognizable. If you ever need to transport cocaine bring a bucket of wd-40 in case you get pulled over
#51
Rainwater sometimes leaks into graves (especially in Ireland) where most of the decedents were Catholic, and thus as per tradition embalmed before burial. The groundwater fills the graves and coffins so much that the remains disintegrate and leak embalming fluid which contains many carcinogens into the groundwater. Local residents actually end up drinking bits of dead people through the tap water consumed. Fun fact👍🏻
#52
A male bees penis explodes audibly after sex. Not sure where I heard it but it's been over a decade and I haven't forgotten yet. Edit: of course my most upvoted comment is about an exploding bee penis. Someone else replied with an actual explanation but for anyone else who sees this, here you go. "The drone endophallus is designed to disperse a large quantity of seminal fluid and spermatozoa with great speed and force. The endophallus is held internally in the drone. During mating, the organ is everted (turned inside out), into the queen. The eversion of the endophallus is achieved by contracting abdominal muscles, which increases hemolymph pressure, effectively "inflating" the endophallus. Cornua claspers at the base of the endophallus help to grip the queen. Mating between a single drone and the queen lasts less than 5 seconds, and it is often completed within 1–2 seconds. Mating occurs mid-flight, and 10–40 m above ground. Since the queen mates with 5–19 drones, and drones die after mating, each drone must make the most of his single shot. The drone makes first contact from above the queen, his thorax above her abdomen, straddling her. He then grasps her with all six legs, and everts the endophallus into her opened sting chamber. If the queen’s sting chamber is not fully opened, mating is unsuccessful, so some males that mount the queen do not transfer semen. Once the endophallus has been everted, the drone is paralyzed, flipping backwards as he ejaculates. The process of ejaculation is explosive—semen is blasted through the queen’s sting chamber and into the oviduct. The process is sometimes audible to the human ear, akin to a "popping" sound. The ejaculation is so powerful that it ruptures the endophallus, disconnecting the drone from the queen. The bulb of the endophallus is broken off inside of the queen during mating—so drones mate only once, and die shortly after. The leftover endophallus remaining in the queen’s vagina is referred to as the “mating sign”. The plug will not prevent the next drone from mating with the same queen, but may prevent semen from flowing out of the vagina." source: wiki which sources a Harvard study about bees.
#53
Seal fingers. Primarily if bitten by a Seal, but can also be contracted by exposure to seal bones or untreated seal pelts. It can cause cellulitis, joint inflammation, and swelling of the **bone marrow**. Fun fact, we still don't know why the f**k this happens, though since it can be treated with antibiotics, it's prob a bacteria of some kind.
#54
Daddy long legs (or harvestmen) are not true spiders. They are in the arachnid family, but are more closely related to scorpions. Also they only have two eyes and are harmless not because they can’t break skin- but because they don’t have fangs or venom at all!
#55
Up until the 1990’s it was believed that babies under one year old did not feel pain. Procedures were performed on them without anesthesia.
#57
There are little microscopic insect thingies that live in the follicle of each one of your eyelashes.
#58
If you are decapitated there is a chance that you will stay conscious long enough to witness your own headless body dying.
#59
That there is something called the suicide tree in Australia. One brush up against it causes extreme pain. The stinging is often periodically felt for 2-3 years. It has been known to drive people mad. Even a horse jumped off a cliff I think. https://www.treehugger.com/gympie-gympie-plant-sting-can-madden-kill-4858680
#60
Well, it's not something I shouldn't know, but it's disturbing I guess Did you know that the little girl who voiced Ducky in The Land Before Time was killed by her own father Edit: :)
#62
In order to conserve water, a camel's urine comes out as a thick syrup.
Edit: Wow, I am surprised that a fact about camel p**s would blow up like this. Thanks for the updates and awards!
#63
Not necessarily a fact, but oftentimes, patients in hospice/close to death will start to give off a very putrid/pungent smell within 24-36 hours of death. That smell? Rotting organs.
#65
In the 1700’s (maybe a bit earlier), people would take the scabs of small pox victims, cut open their wrists, and sew the scabs into themselves to inoculate against the virus. It actually was highly effective and one of the main reasons America won the revolutionary war. But other people’s scabs sewn into your own skin? Kinda f****d up…
#67
This month I am going to go into many people’s homes to fix their internet, computers, etc and yet I will be so focussed on my task that I will miss the obvious signs of child abuse, drug abuse and other similar nasty stuff.
#68
Not as disturbing as some of the ones in here but the reason dogs like squeaky noises are essentially because they remind them of a dying animal
#69
Fidel Castro loved dairy so much he attempted to selectively breed cows in Cuba to produce more milk, there was one successful subject and its name was Ubre Blanca
#70
Thanks to a forensic anthropology class, I can guesstimate the decomposing rate of a body based on climate and a few other factors (like animals and maggots). Fun fact, bodies decompose faster than people normally think. For example, a body in a hot climate whether that’s wet or dry can turn skeletal in a couple months.
#71
I can never let go of the fact that Richard Nixon's favorite food was cottage cheese with ketchup
#74
During the cold war British tornado pilots where told not to worry about having enough fuel to return to base as there wouldnt be a base to return to after the first 2 hours of war
#75
The last execution by guilloteine was in France (obviously) on September 10, 1977, Star Wars was released in May of that year
#77
Kitty guided bomb ! During World War II, the US wanted to improve the Air Force’s targeting of enemy battleships. Solution? Strap a cat to a bomb. They thought that cats hated water so much that, if you dropped a kitty bomb over the ocean they would steer the bomb toward the battleship’s deck in order to avoid getting wet. Testing proved it doesn’t work because the poor kittens pass out when thrown out a plane strapped to a bomb.
#78
If you stab a person and puncture the lungs, they can't scream. Thanks dad for this info, rip.
#79
Sheep and goat skeletons are visually identical, you can't tell them apart without DNA analysis. Edit: I've been reliably informed this is out of date, and there are now techniques to tell certain bones apart, like the humerus and jaw.
#81
Most high-value pearls are made through frankensteining living tissue from another oyster into the sexual organ of the "host" oyster.
#82
If you have a fingernail damaged enough they will just pull it out with a pair of pliers (after numbing the area of course) and just let your nail grow back.
#83
Whales build up gases in them when they’re dead this makes them look inflated and you can see somewhat large tracks in between their outer layer of skin if a whale is cut the gas is explosive and the whale itself will be filled with so much gas that it itself blows up from pressure making dead whales extremely deadly
#84
Male Pig spit contains androstenone, a hormone that makes both female pigs and female humans horny. Male pigs lick the female pigs in an effort to entice them to mate.
#85
They used to think that people who died of hypothermia were sexually assaulted. You apparently pop a boner in the final stages before you die.
#86
It takes 8 pounds of pressure to tear off a human ear; a force approximately equivalent to crushing a soda can.
#87
Lye will eventually dissolve larger chunks of flesh and bone far better than acid will, as long as you don't mind neutralizing and disposing of the unrecognizable sludge and crumbly bone shadows afterward. For small chunks of flesh, piranha solution (a sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide mix) will literally evaporate any hydrocarbon into CO2 relatively quickly, so it's good for removing small amounts of evidence, like a finger or an eyeball. Edit: Corrected grammar.
#88
Different species can technically impregnate one another. The female's egg will begin to develop but will only last for a short time until the growth fails due to gene mismatch and is naturally aborted.
#89
How ridiculously easy it is to make chemicals that go boom,they would be so unstable that they will probably go off from improper handling in an untrained environment but you can absolutely make it from household materials including making non-organic explosives (non organic explosives weren't even tested for before mid 2010's since the machines have to calibrated separately)
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CF 2 years ago
This was an absolutely stupid list and so full of inaccuracies that I just can't even.. I usually refrain from commenting because I once got so many downvotes -> suspended on an innocent comment that I felt bad for days (yes, I know I shouldn't take it personally and blah blah blah but here I am). But I had to comment on multiple stupidities on this list.
MayaGeGe 2 years ago (edited)
Yup. You'll find out a lot of people here don't specifically care about accuracy, reality, measure and argumentation, and will just downvote without commenting to support their opinion. A dude on another recent post just established that 'All museums in Western countries were displaying stolen artifacts" - which a big big exaggeration to say the least. My poor attempt to nuance that was met with mute downvotes (not that I care, it's chill beer evening). But yes, it's more about what people want to believe sometimes here. Sorry you were suspended.
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CF 2 years ago
This was an absolutely stupid list and so full of inaccuracies that I just can't even.. I usually refrain from commenting because I once got so many downvotes -> suspended on an innocent comment that I felt bad for days (yes, I know I shouldn't take it personally and blah blah blah but here I am). But I had to comment on multiple stupidities on this list.
MayaGeGe 2 years ago (edited)
Yup. You'll find out a lot of people here don't specifically care about accuracy, reality, measure and argumentation, and will just downvote without commenting to support their opinion. A dude on another recent post just established that 'All museums in Western countries were displaying stolen artifacts" - which a big big exaggeration to say the least. My poor attempt to nuance that was met with mute downvotes (not that I care, it's chill beer evening). But yes, it's more about what people want to believe sometimes here. Sorry you were suspended.
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