
No one is arguing against this year's status as "terrible." It very much is and we'll be feeling the effects of what's happened for generations to come. Just want to make that clear before we proceed.
2020 has been rough on innumerable people, all over the country, extending its awful reach over the world. While we can live in the awful of the now, it's still critical to understand everything else we've overcome and bounced back from. This knowledge allows us to comprehend how to move beyond and what next steps to take.
Still, there's been some rough years.
Reddit user, u/child_sized_tequila, wanted to hear if we really have it all that bad when they asked:
Old-timers of reddit, which year felt worse than 2020 and why?
Oh Yeah. THAT Year...
The last quarter of 2001 was more intensely miserable. 2020 misery is more spread out and not quite as terrifying.
2001 was akin to living in a beehive just after the rock hits.
Let's Get This Perspective Out Of The Way
None of them. Seriously, I can't remember a year this bad. Not even 9/11 was this bad, we're closing in on the number of daily deaths from Coronavirus being as many or more than that single day in 2001.
But, I'm also relatively young, and I'm also a white man. I'm sure there's been far worse sh-t farther back, especially if you are anything other than white or male.
Killed Over Nothing
Relaying this for my dad and stepdad :
They both basically said during the late 60s/early 70s:
"There were a few years during the Vietnam War, and onward when we didn't know if we would be nuked into oblivion, killed by police, or if racial tensions would bubble over into massacres in the street. If all of these idiots just wore a mask, we would be fine. Otherwise most of our problems haven't changed much" - Dad
"Kids were being murdered by police on campus for protesting, and I came to draft age at a time when it was effectively a death-sentence for an 18-year-old kid. Riots were destroying cities, and we thought we were going to have an atomic bomb dropped on us. You had to live your life in a constant state of panic depending on where you lived. I don't mind watching Netflix all day, but everything else has become exhausting." - Stepdad
My dad and I work from home and my stepdad is retired. We text all day.
At Least There Was Butter
My great-grandfather used to tell me about 1944, when it was the Hunger Winter in the Netherlands. There was almost no food and most Dutch people either died or had to live off tulip bulbs. My great-grandfather was lucky though, he knew how to make butter, so he was able to trade food and was off less terrible than most people. It's truly terrible to hear about it, especially when you realise your very own grandpa was born in this time
When You Become An Adult
As a kid growing up through the last bits of the cold war was pretty terrifying once I learned what nuclear weapons were capable of.
2001 after the attacks...but at least we were more together as a nation.
2008 was scarier for me because it was the first real economic crisis of my adulthood, now I'm old hat at this stuff. Now things are a continuous dumpster fire and I just pull out some gallows humor with that thousand yard stare in my eyes.
I imagine the great depression was a bad time to live. Think about how people from that time still hoard everything they can. It becomes part of you. I had some Dutch relatives in Indonesia who were captured by the Japanese and put into prison camps during WWII. That was probably worse. They had kids, too. I remember reading the letters describing their time (I guess they must have eventually been released) and how they tried to make it fun for the children while the adults feared constantly for their lives.
Rough, But Maybe Not As Bad Yet
The year 1970. People dying or being maimed for life (both mentally and physically) in a stupid, nonsensical war. Richard Nixon President. The government refusing to listen to hundreds of thousands of people protesting the war, and people of all sorts not just college kids and hippies.
I participated in a HUGE protest in DC and walked down Pennsylvania Avenue with a lot of other people, holding the hands of my two kids. "We are speaking to our government. Never forget."
1963 was pretty bad with the Kennedy assassination.
But I don't think anything in my 79 years can compare to this year. It's just horrible in so many ways.
Assassination After Assassination
1968-1969. Started with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. It was a military disaster for the North Vietnamese, but a big surprise to the American public - they had been told the war was effectively won. And from there it just got worse.
Student riots. City riots. MLK was assassinated in early April. Then in early June, I was on a South Vietnamese hilltop firebase. One of our less English-proficient officers came up to the American advisers in the afternoon. "You know Kennedy, ya? They shoot him!" The three of us looked at him. I said, "Yeah Đại Úy (Captain), back in 1963. So?"
"NO!" he said, "They shoot him now!" Then he got frustrated with us and stomped off. Weird. What's up with the Đại Úy? We couldn't get American radio (AFVN) in the daytime, but later that night we found out what he was talking about. Another Kennedy? WTF is going on back home?
I got back on leave in December. America was nuts. I couldn't walk through the airport without starting a fight. I wasn't fighting. Someone would want to yell at me, and someone else would start yelling at him, and eventually they'd forget I was there - because I wasn't. My instructions were to keep walking. The war had come home. Racial justice had graduated to racial war.
It was almost a relief to get back to Vietnam. Seemed saner. Bad year for the USA. 1969 was only better because some of the things people were expecting to happen, didn't. But it wasn't much better.
Nightmares Forever
Bombing of Serbia 1999, NATO was only supposed to bomb military objects, but they bombed hospitals, markets, random populated areas... I was in the hospital with my dad when the sirens came on the whole hospital went to the basement, lucky the hospital wasn't hit, after the danger my dad drove us back he told me not to look out the window, being a kid I did look only to see innocent people dead along the whole street as the flea market was hit on a weekend...
I am 25yo now I still have nightmares about it occasionally. Also NATO used prohibited weapons with uranium which also caused a lot of ppl to get cancer from the radiation years after...
Through The Generations
For my maternal grandfather - 1914, when the crowned heads of Europe and their Ministers thought it would be a good idea to have a great big war.
For my mother - 1946, wandering around as an orphan in a "displaced persons" camp.
For my older cousins - 1962, the Cuban missile crisis was some scary sh-t.
THIS Is The Worst? After All That?
I'm 63.
I went through the Viet Nam war, Watergate, a president who was never elected (Ford), a president who had a good heart but was totally ineffective (Carter), hanging chads, the aids crisis, George W. Bush as a puppet president, 9/11, and the 2008 recession where my investments lost half their value.
This is the worst year I've ever lived through.
Quite A Few Off The Top Of Your Head
I'm 63, and have lately been thinking about this very question. For sheer one-thing-after-another craziness, I'd have to say 1968 was a bad time. Assassinations (RFK, MLK), massive riots so much worse than what's currently going on, Vietnam War (My Lai Massacre, Tet Offensive), heroin epidemic, a very divided nation, and more. I was a kid, but I knew things were very bad.
That said, 2020 is the worst year for this country that I've lived through. I'd have to say that if the COVID-19 pandemic had taken place in 1968, people would have masked up and done what it took to get things under control. There was a decent public health system back then and people believed in it and supported it.
I don't lose sight of the fact that, from around 1810-1940, there were lots of awful presidents, many financial scandals and market collapses, and huge injustices for minorities. I just wasn't around then to see it firsthand. Oh, yeah--2001 was not great, not only because of 9/11, but because it set the stage for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We may have have had business to take care of in Afghanistan, but Iraq was a preventable disaster that we're still dealing with.
This Is Our Nam
I agree Viet Nam and late 60s were violent and there was great unrest. What i see today that makes it worse and potentially more explosive is the income and wealth disparity.
There Has Been A Rough Lead Up To All This, Hasn't There?
Personally speaking:
2002 the dot-com bubble burst and I lost a cushy job, that was pretty bad.
2008 great recession happened, again was laid off, that was pretty bad too.
2019 was awful. I found out my recently deceased father had an entire other family. I guess technically, we were his other family. Met the ones he abandoned (my new older half siblings) last summer and it was incredibly awkward and for some reason left me hollow and extremely full of guilt.
We're Not Quite That Bad...Yet.
I'm not an oldie but I'd imagine the years between 1939-1945 were pretty rough.
Everytime I feel overwhelmed by Covid, I remember my grandmother lived through the Spanish flu, WW1 and WW2
Remember: We're Not The Only Ones Who Can Suffer
My parents still think the economic crash of 90s that happened in Finland was worse, and in Finland it killed more people in the form of suicides than Corona has thus far.
I was just born around that time. And lots of people just lost everything. Companies folded left and right. Loan intrests were crushing people.
Then right after that we got dotcom bubble.
Yeah. Finland never recovered from that actually. I don't remember the exact numbers but the percentage of people working has never reached what we had before the 90s crash. Remember reading about that when I was doing some uni work on how bad the subprime crisis was compared to ones before it. Turns out Finland did pretty well during the subprime crash.
Really Makes You Ponder How We All Survived Without Phones
My dad told stories of his childhood that I find horrifying. Probably somewhere around 1940, he was a child in what was then, small town in the rural American south. His dad was a salesman, and would travel for weeks at a time, with no one knowing when he may return. They did not have phones. The only way they could get anywhere was walking. Once, it was winter, and they were down to their last bucket of coal. He and his sisters and his mother had gone out into their yard, and picked up every last scrap they could find. They had a coal burning stove, and that was the only way they could keep warm or cook.
They had no idea when his dad would return, and if he returned, how much money he would have. They had no way to call to ask anyone else for help, even if they did, everybody they knew was so poor back then it would have been very difficult to get help. When they were literally down to the last few pieces of coal, the church that they would frequent when their dad was in town, and able to drive them, Sent a truckload of coal to get dumped in their yard. My dad told me that to this day, he still believes that it is an absolute godsend miracle that that happened.
But, Really, Has It Been Worse Than This In The Last Hundred Years?
Okay a topic I am perfect for.
I'm 67 so I've seen a lot. 1968 was previously the worst year I'd ever seen because of race riots, oppression, my older friends getting killed in Vietnam. I've been through the Dotcom bust and a couple of stock market crashes they seem to recover. Challenger was shocking 9/11 was more shocking, I was only 10 for the Kennedy assassination but I did see Ruby shoot Oswald on live TV.
But they are all squat compared to 2020 and it's not even close.
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People who work in hotels see all kinds of people.
As people from all over the world go in and out of their revolving doors on an almost daily basis.
Though it might be the housekeeping staff who see more than anyone else, and frankly more than they would care to see themselves.
Unlike most of the staff, they have the unique position of going into the guest's rooms.
Of course, they tend to knock to make sure no one's there before entering.
But every now and again, the guests don't hear the knock or put on the "please makeup room" sign on their door instead of "do not disturb."
Leaving the poor cleaning staff with a memories they would likely do anything to forget.
"Hotel staff of Reddit, what’s the most NSFW moment you witnessed at your hotel?"
Thrills On Ice
"I worked at a hotel in a resort town in Europe."
"One of the maids called me to a room for help because it has been the location of an extremely messy sex party from the touring ice show."
"There were used condoms thrown everywhere, and half the furniture was busted."
"The poor maid was in tears, thinking she'd have to clean it."
"The hotel management called in a professional cleaning company who wore disposable suits, respirators, and eye protection."
"They got rid of most of the stuff in the room and charged a fortune to the ice show."- Abba_Fiskbullar
Get A Room! Oh, Yeah...
"I work overnights in a relatively small hotel, and at least 6/7 days a week, I hear people banging loud as hell in their rooms."
"Half the rooms have a balcony that overlooks the lobby, and those doors aren't soundproof at all."
"We had a man sleepwalk out of his room to the lobby, bucka** nude."
"We had a woman show up in the lobby in her underwear."-
Now That Takes Effort
"Night Auditor here, I've seen a LOT."
"Multiple times I've had guests come to my desk completely naked because somehow they locked themselves out.... naked... this one always confuses me."
"But probably the most NSFW was a guest who had gotten violently ill."
"We're talking projectile vomit on EVERY surface of the room, blood all over, feces, pee... everything was just destroyed..."
"Obvious call to paramedics, but I can never unsee it."- thefuzzmuffin
Amazing He Wasn't Hurt...
"I was a night shift security guard for a motel right next to the biggest casino in my state."
"It was common for addicts to hang out around the property."
"One time, this guy staying in a room did a lil too much and had a freak out."
"He was running around the walkways naked."
"I had to ward him away from peoples rooms so they wouldn’t be disturbed."
"He ended up jumping off the second story balcony and splatting on the pavement."
"He scampered up and hauled a** across the street into a car dealership."
"Not my problem anymore."- Carniverousphinctr
Will Someone Think Of The Children?!?!
"Sex party in the hot tub while children were playing in the indoor pool steps away."
"I had to break that up and throw them out."
"And deal with the numerous lengthy yet justified complaints about it."- mbgal1977
When Wigs And Disguises Won't Cut It...
"Many years ago worked at a very nice casino resort as a valet."
"Regular pulled up in his nice BMW and went to help."
"Wrote up his ticket got his keys and offered to help load up his luggage on a bell cart while we waited for a bellman."
"Opened the trunk and went to lift the suitcase and I about threw my back out."
"I wasn’t prepared for it to be so heavy."
"Gave it another go and heaved it onto the bell cart and heard a sound."
“'Mr, did your suitcase just make an oof sound…?'”
"Long story short a sex worker who was banned from the property was stowed away in there to get up to his room."- thatryanguy1
Why Stop When The Getting Is Good?
"When I was young and worked at a hotel, I was delivering a room service meal and when I got there, the door was closed but had been left just shy of being latched."
'I knocked and the guest yelled 'come in'."
"I pushed it open with the cart, walked in and he was standing there with a big grin on his face watching my reaction as I wheeled in the cart, butt naked with a woman, also naked."
"He smiled and reached out and handed me a $20 he had in his hand and said to just leave it there and close the door on the way out."
"I guess part of their kink was to show off and see my reaction."
"I was shocked, but never said anything to anyone at work."- TXjoedog
NSFW? More Like Safety Hazard!
"The most NSFW thing that I recall was the manager getting on a cleaning kick and accidentally mixing the wrong chemicals in the pool area."
"A toxic gas started to form and the whole hotel had to be evacuated at like 5 AM."- DtotheJtotheH
What Haven't They Seen?
"I did security for a hotel for a number of years."
"I've seen naked guests locked out of their rooms, wedding parties break into the pool area and jump in fully clothed."
"Had a drunk woman climb out her 3rd-floor window and chill on the roof just below."- silverwarbler
Storefront?
"Best friend was GM I was manager."
"He found over the years 4 guns, 5 lbs of weed (at once)."
"The amount of guns is what surprises me."
"Only one out of the four guns found over the years was reported stolen."- Drewpacabra
So Many Questions...
"I wasn't working at this hotel and was just a guest, but I wish I had asked the staff for the backstory."
"I'm checking into my hotel in Los Angeles and was given my keycard."
"Head to the room, open the door, and there's a naked buff dude standing next to the bed just staring at me."
"He says nothing."
"I apologize and quickly leave, assuming somehow I'd gotten the wrong room."
"I go back to the front desk and say, 'I'm sorry, but I think you gave me the wrong room. There's a naked man already in there'."
"The worker at the front desk says, 'Sh*t, not again'."
"He pulls out his walkie talkie and says, 'Security? He's back again'."
"They assigned me to a different room and I was on my way."- telarium
What hotel guests do within the privacy of their own room is their business and no one else's.
Even so, it couldn't hurt for them to remember to lock their doors.
Sometimes you just get a vibe or a tingle down your neck that you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It can be wise to trust this gut instinct, as we learned from many in the Reddit community.
Often those goosebumps or the voice in their head actually saved them from serious harm.
It all started when Redditor throwaway_district9 asked:
"what has been your most bone-chilling, hair-raising, "Let's get the hell out of here" experience?"
A Frightening Weekend
"I don't tell this story often but this seems like a good place. Back in college I used to drive up the Oregon coast on weekends, then just crash in my car when I got tired. I woke from a nap in the driver's seat and something just didn't feel quite right. It was just dusk and the light was fading pretty fast."
"I yawned and stretched and as I did so I turned my head to the side and just caught a face ducking down below my rear passenger window. I went to hit the lock button just to make sure and in my panic I accidentally unlocked the doors briefly and then locked them again."
"I stared at the window for a few minutes, knowing that someone was crouching just out of sight. Eventually, I started the car and thought I heard a scuffing sound. Whoever it was didn't reappear, but that was enough for me. As I noped out of there and pulled out back onto Highway 101, I glanced back and a bald figure in a red t-shirt with something wrapped around his face booked it into the woods on the side of the road."
"That was the end of that weekend trip. I drove the two hours back to my dorm room, white-knuckled hands locked on the steering wheel. I had to pull over a few miles down the road though to deal with the adrenaline shakes."
– jasonhackwith
What Could It Be?
"Me and a couple of my friends were walking around at night when we were around 11 or 12 and I specifically remember all of us feeling like something was off and we started joking about someone or something getting us and saying to each other we’re not afraid of anything. Then we heard a raspy growl that we all agreed had to be a mountain lion."
"All of us were in a dead sprint to my house, scared sh*tless as soon as we heard it. I didn’t live in a place where they usually are so people mostly didn’t believe us, but shortly afterwards and after some more sightings, a mountain lion was caught just 10-15 miles from my home. In hindsight it definitely wasn’t very close to us and we didn’t actually see it, but we definitely exaggerated and acted like it was right next to us."
– bringeroflightning
Not So Abandoned
"A friend and I were exploring an abandoned factory in North Philadelphia about 8 years ago, and when we got to about the third floor...I discovered a booby trap in the stairwell."
"Basically it was a trip wire that swung an axe down from the ceiling."
"Right as that fully set in, we heard someone from up above shout "YO!""
"Time to go."
"I've never covered that much ground so fast. I think we were two or three blocks away before we realized we were riding each other's bikes."
– PlayerH8rsBallz
Furniture Troubles
"When I was 16 I had a pickup truck and my parents asked me to pick up some new furniture on the way home. As I’m driving home it starts pissing rain and I was worried the furniture would get destroyed, so I pulled over on the side of the road under an overpass to wait it out."
"As I’m waiting, another car pulls up behind me. An overweight bald man steps out and begins walking towards my car. I tell him I’m waiting for the rain to stop so I don’t ruin the furniture for my parents."
"He was acting very odd and telling me he would help me out as he was fingering his belly button. I was creeped the f*ck out."
"He says one minute he has to grab something to help and leans into his car window. All of my alarm bells are going off so I figured f*ck it and just sped off furniture be damned."
"So glad I did, who knows what would have happened"
– DrPeterVankman
Volunteer To Prey
"My wife and I were on a search mission for some missing fern pickers. We were volunteers with the local search and rescue (SAR) team. We decided to stay in the search area that night and had built a pretty nice fire. We were sitting there and it was about 0200, hoping this dude would wander into camp."
"I had heard animals around us throughout the night. No surprise, we're in the middle of the woods, I'm used to animals stalking around outside my camp."
"I knew there were two animals, one one each side of us. It was at about that point when we heard a bird chirp. It came from about the place I figured one of the animals were. Then another, from the opposite side."
"I immediately realized we were being watched and stalked by at least two cougars. We very quickly climbed into the back of my truck. It's got a camper shell and is outfitted for truck camping."
– SGTRhoads16
Drive Off
"Driving Uber one night a couple years back. I picked up four guys from a club, listening to them talk I realized that two guys (one of them ordered the ride) had met the other two at the club and were on the way to get drugs from one of their cousins."
"There was an odd vibe, some of the conversation didn't seem the most linear, and I was hyper-aware that these drunk dumba**es were heading with two strangers to a drug deal. And I was the one driving them."
"I did not want drugs in my car, and I was very aware that we might be on the way to an ambush. If we'd been heading anywhere remote or sketchy I had to figure out how to end the ride."
"The two wannabe dealers kept trying to get in touch with their cousin via cellphone, went to an apartment just off a main street, and after both had gone into the building I just said "should be leave?" to the guys and we did. I still don't know if it was just a ploy for a free ride, guys too drunk or dumb to pull off a basic drug deal, or something nefarious that didn't finish."
– verminiusrex
Trust Your Gut
"I was in an upstairs lab in med school, just a friend & I practicing surgical skills. There was a main enclosed staircase down to the lobby/classrooms & a weird outdoor stairwell that nobody ever used except in fire drills. It wasn't a fire escape, but the old main entrance to the lab classroom. When I put my hand on the door handle to the main stairs, I was FILLED with a weird sense of "Get out! Not that way!" Just absolute fear, I felt trapped & anxious. For the first time in 3 years, I said "Let's take the outdoor stairs..." My friend had literally no idea there even WAS another exit."
"The next day we found out that at the exact time we were taking the outside stairs, one of our classmates was pulling a gun on the admin & students in the lobby at the base of the main stairs. He'd been kicked out of the program for his grades & snapped."
"My friend still talks about it & tells people to always trust my instincts. I actually asked her to stop telling people, because I felt so weird about it. I'm sure I just heard something in the distance that gave me that feeling, but Gavin de Becker would be proud!"
– ittybittylurker
Lightning Strike
"One time I was out in Colorado with some buddies hiking near the top of a mountain. Some bad weather started to roll in but the top was only 15 mins away so I went ahead while they went back down. As I was getting to the top I felt static in the air and the hair in my head started to stand up. I immediately started to panic cause I thought I was about to get struck by lightning so naturally I ran down without ever getting to the top. I’m not sure if I was gunna get struck but I sure as hell wasn’t sticking around to find out."
– shlable710
Bone Trail
"Hiking in the Rocky Mountains, on a trail I knew pretty well. I was leading a group of kids, maybe twenty or so middle school aged children from the camp where I worked."
"I turned a corner and saw a jaw bone of a deer. Pretty cool, showed it to the kids. Didn't have any flesh on it, so I assumed it was pretty old."
"A hundred feet further down the trail I find another bone. Femur maybe (I specialized in insect populations, not deer anatomy.) This one looked a little fresher. Another ways down, another bone."
"I'm getting a little nervous at this point, so I explain that we should probably turn around and head back. My students all groan that they want to see more dead stuff, but I shepherd them down the train and back to camp."
"Two days later we got a call at the camp that someone had been attacked in the area by a mountain lion. Apparently a mountain lion had set itself up in the caves on the cliffside and it had gotten pissed when someone got too close."
"I'm glad we left the area, even if my students would have loved to see more dead stuff."
– SalemScout
Yeah, I would've left too!
Do you have any similar experiences? Let us know in the comments below.
It's never a good feeling to learn that your partner has been unfaithful.
Hearing this news almost instantly gets your mind racing, wondering what it was which led them to do this.
"Was I not present enough?"
"Have I let myself go?"
"Do they not love me anymore?"
If there's anything that could make you feel any worse than this sad list of possibilities, it's whenever they try to justify their behavior.
Often coming up with the most ludicrous excuses for breaking their partner's hearts, which they somehow thought might actually work or at least earn them a little sympathy.
When the only thing they likely got was an open door and a swift goodbye.
"People of Reddit, what is the dumbest reason your (ex) partner gave for cheating?"
So Much For "Till Death do Us Part".
"'You are dying! Do you really want me alone when you are dead?'"
"I was fighting cancer."
"He also told me that I was disgusting and he felt gross touching me."
"Luckily, both types of cancer are out of my life."- Mr_BigDuck
You Could Have At Least Left A Message!
"'You didn't answer your phone, was I supposed to spend Saturday night alone?'"
"I was at work, and so were you, we worked together you f*cking moron."- sixesand7s
Love At First Sight... Or Not
"She met someone that she immediately saw herself marrying."
"A month after we broke up she moved across the country, got married, called me to tell me she made a mistake, got divorced, moved back home, got pregnant and then got married again."- Zarrush
Gonna Have To Do Better Than That...
"Her response once I caught her was that she was flat-out horny."
"But after I said that’s why you have a boyfriend it was kinda funny how she went dead silent."- PuzzleheadedFarm7417
Um...
"He said that he cheated on me because I wanted to have too much sex."
"More than 5 years later I still can't find any logic in that."- Etrixie
So Much For Commitment
"'It's not like we're married'."
"Apparently I can't expect respect from someone who goes from calling me 'love of my life' to blowing her high school shag toy when he comes back to town."- FortGeek
It Never Is...
“'It’s not what you think it is!'”
"After I walked in on them making out."
"While she was on his lap."
"Both without shirts."- MrSirChris
Two Whole Weeks...
"I couldn't have sex for two weeks so I could recover from surgery so she thought it wasn't cheating'."- Henchforhire
What The Actual...
"My ex-girlfriend said I forgot you were alive."
"For details, I wasn't in the military, I was at university."- Ali8ly
That Only Makes It Worse
"It was his kid's mom so it didn't count."- kittenxx96
"In Sickness And In Health"...Oops!
“'I have needs for sex you aren’t helping me with!'"
"Said to me the day I get home from spending a week in the hospital with kidney failure (lupus)."- EndlesslyUnfinished
We Can Only "Open" Our Hearts So Much...
"Well, I know this guy that was convinced he was in an open relationship, except he forgot to let his girlfriend know.."
"She found out 7 years into the 'open relationship'."
"With multiple women, in 4 continents."
"Oh he also had a book where he'd categorize them."- ProfessionalSpite866
Santa? SANTA?!?!
"My serial cheater ex-once told me while in a fit of tears."
"'I can't stop cheating, I just have so many issues, my mom lied about Santa when I was a kid and it really f*cked me up'."
"'I don't think I can trust people because of it so I cheat'."- pastelflorist
No One Likes To Be Treated Like A Piece Of Meat...
“It’s like if you order the same subway sandwich for a year, eventually you’re gonna get bored of it."
"But you try another flavor and when you go back to the original one it’s better than you remembered'.”
"Felt not so good being compared to a 6 inch BLT tbh."- NucularOrchid
Oh, nothing, except commitment and fidelity...
"'She was prettier than you, what did you expect?'"
"We were engaged and had been dating for 3 years."- kathjoy
No doubt all these poor people are grateful for dodging the bullet that staying with these people would have been.
Even if it can't quite make up for the pain and embarrassment these experiences brought them.
History is full of mystery.
There are things we may never know.
That is true, but some answers have to be possible.
Are we looking hard enough?
Humans have murdered, robbed, and pillaged their way all over the Earth.
We've left a trail of unknown scattered throughout time.
This is why history is so fascinating.
There will always be new and obscure topics for documentaries.
Redditor InsertBurnsHere wanted to discuss the world's most unresolved issues, so they asked:
"What is the biggest unsolved mystery in human history?"
The mysteries that haunt me are all murder stories.
When will we find the killers?!
The Absconded
"Who was behind the Gardner Museum heist? Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art was taken, and we have little to no clue who was behind it, and none of the paintings have surfaced."
Stillwater215
The Linear Truth
"In 1893, British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans purchased some ancient stones with mysterious inscriptions on them at a flea market in Athens. On a later trip to the excavations at Knossos on the island of Crete, he recognized one of the symbols from his stones and began a study of the engraved tablets being uncovered at various sites on the island."
"He discovered two different systems, which he called Linear A and Linear B. While Linear B was deciphered in the early 1950s (it turned out to represent an early form of Greek), Linear A, above, has still not been deciphered."
"There is an entire culture of information that predates much of our history, a window into ancient humanity that is simply locked away from us because we don't know how to read it."
Atamask
Exact Dates
"An active one in the archaeology world is the exact time frame of when humans made it to the Americas. The date keeps getting pushed back with more controversial discoveries that then just turn to evidence as they pile up. It’s a fascinating story to see unfold."
DocAuch22
"Yeah I like this one too, I think many of the traces of early settlement are likely submerged. Sea levels were much lower during the ice age and the majority of human settlements are along the coasts so a huge piece of our history is probably lying on the seafloor completely undisturbed and possibly well preserved."
who519
Monarchs
"So the Monarch Butterfly migrates to Mexico and back every year. During the year there are a full 4 generations of butterflies that live and die during the journey. Upon returning back from Mexico, the butterfly manages to find the same trees it's relative started out at despite never having been there."
MasonS98
Dark Energy
"We like to think we understand the universe and that physics is a well grounded discipline, and in some ways it is. However we have no idea what dark matter or dark energy is and yet we think it makes up 27% and 68% of the universe respectively."
Ok_Passenger_4202
The Universe is vast and scary, like the sea.
The End
"The final words of the emperor Titus were 'I have but one regret'. We don't know and never will what that regret was."
Ayearinbooks
5000 BCE
"That most of human history is undocumented and we will never know our entire history as a species. We didn’t start recording our history until 5000 BCE, we do know we shifted to agrarian societies around 10,000 BCE but beyond that we have no idea what we were like as a species, we will never know the undocumented parts of our history that spans 10s of thousands of years."
"We are often baffled by the technological progress of our ancient ancestors, like those in SE Asia who must have been masters of the sea to have colonized the variety of islands there and sailed vast stretches of ocean to land on Australia and New Zealand."
"What is ironic is we currently have an immense amount of information about our world today and the limited documented history of our early days as a species but that is only a small fraction of our entire history."
patlaff91
How Big?
"I don't know about 'biggest,' but I always thought the Voynich Manuscript was very interesting. A huge book written in an unknown language or cipher that has never been translated or decoded with diagrams of plant species that don't exist. Lots of theories surrounding it, but no definitive answers as to the origins or the content."
AbortionSurvivor777
Who made it?
"Not sure if it's THE biggest mystery. But the Antikythera mechanism is pretty wild."
"Dated to at least 60BC, possibly as old as 200BC, it's as complex as clockworks that didn't show up until the 1400s, over a millennium later!"
"It's just such a strange technological anomaly. Who made it? What else did they make and why haven't we found more stuff as advanced?"
SmokedMessias
Magic Tins
"Why did we all just globally decide that those blue Dutch cookie tins hold sewing supplies?"
MysteriousStaff3388
"They’re large enough to hold sewing scissors, along with other notions, and made of metal so that the scissors and needles can’t poke through them. Or at least that’s the consensus r/sewing seems to have come to."
butter_milk
My grandma had like 20 of those tins.
Good times.
Do you have any mysteries to add? Let us know in the comments below.