History is fascinating, not least because of all of the disturbing things that have happened.
For example, have you ever heard of Unit 731? It was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
Biological weapons testing, freezing experiments, and vivisection were commonplace there and for many years the Japanese government did not recognize the horrors that were committed there.
The atrocities committed in Unit 731 were dramatized in the films Men Behind the Sun and Philosophy of the Knife, which, it should go without saying, are not casual viewing. (Seriously. Only for those with strong stomachs who can handle extreme horror films.)
Sadly, Unit 731 is not the first or last disturbing historical thing you'll read about today. People told us more after Redditor MoistPirate6130 asked the online community,
"What are some actual disturbing historical facts that you know?"
"During the construction..."
"During the construction of the film center of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, a scaffolding accident caused 169 construction workers to be buried alive in the wet quick drying cement."
yakuichi
I'll take "Top 10 Things to Never Ask Imelda Marcos" for 1000, Alex.
"The Cambodian genocide killed an estimated 1.5 to 3 million people between 1975 and 1979."
Longjumping_Toe3929
The Khmer Rouge's murder campaign is one of the most effective in recent history. The "killing fields" are visited by thousands of tourists each year.
"During the Iran-Iraq war..."
"During the Iran-Iraq war the Iraqi army laid cables all around the Hawizeh marshes (on the border of the two countries) and affixed them to big generators. When the Iranian soldiers tried crossing the wetlands the Iraqi would simply turn on the generators and the Iranians would drop dead."
"Afterwards they gathered all the bodies, laying them in long rows several layers deep until the top layer was above the surface of the water. Then they sprinkled the rows with lime and covered them in a thick layer of sand. This way they could cross the marchlands with their vehicles. They built roads out of the corpses of their enemies."
GoatintheShell3
The Iranians knew parts of the border with Iraq were heavily mined but lacked the equipment and training to safely remove mines, and doing so would have slowed any advance into Iraq.
So they convinced young men that running in groups across the minefield was the best way for them to support the war effort.
"In the 1950s..."
"In the 1950s the US government dropped “bio bombs” of “non-harmful bacterias” in public areas in order to see how they spread and how safe the people were from bio-warfare. It was called Operation Seaspray. It wound up making people sick."
[deleted]
Gee, I bet that was a surprise.
Not.
"So Governor Ratcliffe (the idiot in the purple suit with the pug from Pocahontas) was killed by the women of the Pawmunkey. They used oyster shells to skin him layer by layer until dead. And they likely let it last given the offenses Radcliffe had done toward the tribes of the area."
Silk_Facadian
Now there's something you don't read everyday...
Creative... and gruesome.
"During World War II..."
"Korean comfort women. During World War II the imperial Japanese army kidnaped thousands of Korean women and girls to be used as slaves."
mermaid_with_pants
Relations between the two countries are still strained as a result.
"People used to eat mummies. And use the ground up parts in paint."
Fillory_Alice
Mummy unwrapping parties were a thing.
Spanish Flu
"The Spanish Flu killed between 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as as many as 100 million people in the 1920s, making it the 2nd deadliest pandemic in the world after the Black Plague."
sagganuts18
Let's just say that as awful as COVID-19 has been that we're fortunate it is not anywhere near as deadly.
"They forced them..."
"The U.S. government took thousands of Filipinos from their homeland in the early 1900s and placed them in a ‘Human Zoo’ in Coney Island, New York for American entertainment."
"They forced them to wear their traditional clothing all the time despite the colder weather, perform dances and even made them eat ‘dogs’ for the audience in order to emphasize that Filipinos are uneducated savages."
FancyExtension704
The same happenend in Belgium during the colonisation of Congo under Leopold II. What horrible history.
Have you lost your faith in humanity yet? We totally understand if you have. Humans are capable of horrible things, as history has shown time and again.
Have some facts of your own to share? Feel free to share them with us in the comments below!
People Share The Craziest Things They've Ever Come Across In Declassified Government Documents
The world's governments have done some horrifying things, both during war and peace times.
Many of the worst of these didn't come to light until the documents about them were declassified.
Reddit user GayDarknessSpirit asked:
"What are some declassified government documents that are surprisingly terrifying?"
*Content Warning: This article contains mention of suicide, murder, war crimes, and other unsavory subjects.*
10.
The Pentagon papers and the Afghan Papers.
The former show that President Johnson deliberately lied to the American people and Congress about the Vietnam war and conducted an illegal, secret bombing campaign in Cambodia. A country we were not at war with. To this day unexploded ordinance still kills and maims Cambodians.
The Afghan papers show that: "U.S. policy under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump failed to bring peace and modernization to Afghanistan, but also that policymakers were aware that such an outcome was unlikely — all while emphasizing progress in public."
9.
Take a look at a bunch of nuclear accidents. We have lost bombs, left security for launching them so lax that pizza delivery guys have shown up and nearly bombed ourselves...
8.
The Katyn Forrest Massacre. After the joint invasion of Poland by Germany and the USSR, the Russians executed 22,000 Polish officers and buried their remain in mass graves in the Katyn Forrest. Years later, some of the bodies were discovered. The Soviets decided to cover up the atrocity by claiming it was the Germans that did it, based on a German pistol found in the area. Many people had their doubts but this was the Soviet Union, you couldn't just openly question the state. Just before the collapse, the truth was finally revealed.
7.
15 file cabinet drawers were filled with paperwork detailing the FBI spying operation on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Detailing just how far the FBI is willing to go to discredit a single man simply because the director doesn't like his politics. Similar, yet more refined, harassment has been used on others since then - usually resulting in people losing jobs, homes, family, friends and sometimes even requiring they flee the country in order to escape FBI harassment.
6.
COINTELPRO was a series of covert and, at times, illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations. FBI records show that COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive, including feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement or Black Power movement (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), independence movements (such as Puerto Rican independence groups like the Young Lords), and a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left.
The story of how this became known to the public is absolutely fascinating! Four or five people basically walked into an FBI office, and looked important enough that no one cared, and then snuck in at night and just stole all the s*** they could fit in a bag. They kept seeing this weird word "COINTELPRO" and they were like "coin telpro?. Then, they sent it to a journalist, where shit got wild, and the FBI had a meltdown. They wrote a book about it, but (I wanna say the NYT mad it?) there's a really good video on YouTube with interviews from the people who actually got the documents.
5.
not a clue if it were declassified, terrifying? maybe, disgusting? yes
Unit-731 - Japanese testing on people, kidnapping, amputations and reattaching limbs to different parts without any anesthetic to name some stuff they did.
The Japanese colonel in charge traded his research results (which were largely useless) with the Americans for amnesty. He died without any form of punishment.
4.
Operation Northwoods; A plan for a false flag operation that came from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Department of Defense in 1962 and given to JFK who turned it down. The plan called for the CIA to commit terrorist actions against US Civilians across the United States and frame Cuba, allowing us the right to invade and depose Castro and the communist government there. It was declassified and can be found online at the JFK Library. Terrifying that no one knows or seems to care that this was suggested by our government to the President.
3.
Project Sunshine, where the US Government bought remains of dead infants, to test for radiation. When they took limbs from them, the parents were never told. One mother wasn't allowed to dress her daughter for her funeral, because doctors had removed her legs, and didn't want her to find out.
2.
MKUltra. Partially illegal, forced mind control experiments utilizing psychoactive drugs, conducted by the CIA in 1950s/60s.
1.
Project 100,000. In the early years of Vietnam, Robert McNamara, created Project 100,000 as a way to draft those who previously failed to meet military mental and medical standards. This included a lot of Americans with an IQ below 70. Majority of these men didnt have above a 9th grade education and were, in a sense, a lot like Forrest Gump and Gomer Pyle. Because of obvious learning disabilities and difficulty understanding these "Morons" were mostly given jobs on the front lines of the war.
It was worded as a service project and they were told it would help them gain skills needed to live a better life after the service. In reality they were cannon fodder for the DOD, and died at a much higher rate than their nondisabled counterparts. These men largely couldn't read, wrote, or understand why they were in Vietnam or what they were there to do. They suffered more cases of Post Traumatic Stress, lower unemployment rates, and higher rates of divorce and suicide than non NSM veterans. Very sad story of the government taking advantage of it's own citizens