dailyrankr
A Reddit user rockingkp reached out to members of Ask Reddit community to learn more about the past events that still ache to this day. They asked, “What are some of dark events happened in history not many people know about?” Thousands of Redditors revealed some of the most horrifying historical moments (some triggering) that haven’t received much publicity.
Before you continue, let me remind you that the stories below have not been factually checked. Always do your research!
1. The Radium Girls
In the 1920s, they worked at a watch company painting the hours on the watches using radium, a radioactive element that glows in the dark. They did this with no PPE and weren’t told radium is dangerous. Meanwhile, the chemists had full PPE and worked in a sealed environment.
Worse, they were instructed to lick the tip of the brush to make a very fine point. Some of them would paint their nails or their teeth with it for fun when they went out at night.
They would develop cancer wherever the paint touched, and many of them had such decay in their jaws that their mandibles had to be held on with bandages.
2. The Vipeholm Experiment
Sweden are mostly known as a not very scary country. With good and mostly accessible dental care.
The Vipeholm experiments were a series of human experiments where patients of Vipeholm Hospital for the intellectually disabled in Lund, Sweden, were fed large amounts of sweets to provoke dental cavities (1945–1955). The experiments were sponsored both by the sugar industry and the dentist community in an effort to determine whether carbohydrates affected the formation of cavities.
The experiments provided extensive knowledge about dental health and resulted in enough empirical data to link the intake of sugar to dental caries. However, today they are considered to have violated the principles of medical ethics.
Hey, you are institutionalized and suffering and powerless – let’s make your teeth rot out of your skull.
3. The Children’s Blizzard
It occurred in January 1888 on an unseasonably warm day. The weather was nice, and many school kids were tricked into not wearing coats or jackets to school, some only in short sleeves.
While the kids were in class, the weather outside changed dramatically from warm and sunny at noon to dark and heavy like a thunderstorm, with heavy winds and visibility at 3 steps by 3 pm. Children left school to go home and do their chores (this was in Minnesota) and were expected to milk the cows and do whatever else was involved in the family farm. But they got lost in the darkness and snow, and the wind, and many froze in their town, just yards from houses or other sources of refuge. 235 people, mostly children died.
There is a novel about the blizzard out now, and there is a nonfiction book about the event as well.
4. Filipino Zoo Girl
One that really stands out is of the Filipino Zoo Girl that was on display in the Coney Island Zoo in 1914. She was bound by ropes and people tossed peanuts at her. It’s just heartbreaking to see something like that happen, especially to a child so young.
Many people have no idea that [human zoos] existed, but they are definitely a dark part of history. What’s crazy is that there have still been some that have popped up in the 21st century, although not as cruel as they used to be.
5. The Cadaver Synod, When A Dead Pope was Dug Up and Put on Trial
Around 897 AD, Stephen ordered the previous Pope Formosus’s corpse dug up, dressed in papal garb, seated on a throne, and interrogated. Since the corpse had a difficult time talking on its own, the rotting Mass of tissue was allowed a deacon to answer on his behalf.
Already being dead; however, Formosus had a tricky time defending himself and inevitably lost the trial, being found guilty of perjury and illegitimately ascending the Papacy. And to be sure everyone got the point, Stephen had Formosus’s three blessing fingers cut off, buried him, dug him up again, and finally decided to toss his corpse into the Tiber.
For these acts, some might call Stephen psychotically evil, and, based on his participation in the Cadaver Synod, it would indeed appear he was a particularly disturbed individual.
