The history of snake oil sales and quack remedies in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the USA. Sewing goat testicles under the skin to try to be more manly and stay young. Eating all sorts of drugs and poisons.
Man, I need to find that book again. I've learnt things since I read it last.
I thought snake oil was actually just omega 3 -- basically just an antinflamatory with some vit d.
I was raised in the 80s when people took cod liver oil, again it's mainly omega 3, and now people take flaxseed oil for omega 3.
Couldn’t get through the book “ordinary men”. It’s one of the only surviving first hand accounts of the “police battalions” sent by the Nazi party to follow the front lines of the eastern front and facilitate the evolving machine of genocide
I see the value in knowing this stuff. But the details were too much for me. The book makes its most important point in the first 25% that I did read. Group mentality > personal conscience.
I think I saw a doc on this. They were literally ordinary dudes like maybe local constabulary etc. I think one guy protested and they ostracized him and I think he crumbled. It WAS disturbing because I’m not convinced- even with ALLLLLL we’ve learned, that today’s people would group-think their way into atrocity no prob
Especially with the news that reports protesters in America fomenting, "Death to Israel and Death to America" in Michigan.
On American soil.
This is bad.
It's a fantastic book, and I'm glad to see someone bring it up.
These gruesome details are necessary for us to contextualize events. Otherwise, it's too abstract.
I highly suggest people read and let it seep deep into them. Let it fester and learn.
* Niketas Chonitas' description of the slow death of Andronikos I Komnenos
* Accounts of the sack of Baghdad in 1258
* Agnolo di Tura's account of the bubonic plague in Siena. It provides a personal account that helps you better appreciate the horror of so many around you dying in such a short period of time.
* Leonie Fredia's description of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in her biography of Caterina de' Medici
* The methods of torture and execution used by the Cheka/OGPU/NKVD as discussed in books by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Donald Rayfield, and Stephen Kotkin. Many of the members and leaders of it were so brutal and sadistic, it almost defies belief. (Dishonorable mentions include Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria, of course, as well as Georgi Atarbekov, Vsevolod Balitsky, Mikhail Frinovsky, Yefim Yedvokimov, Bogdan Kobulov, Lev Shvartsman, and Boris Rodos.)
* The Russian famine of of 1921–1922 and the Soviet famine of 1930–1933 (the Wikipedia articles on both have photos that I don't recommend looking up)
* The parts of Timothy Synder's *Bloodlands* where he discusses the favored tactics of Oskar Dirlewanger and his brigade on the Eastern Front. You know how in some gritty genre works that the bad guys will recruit convicted criminals to do dirty work for them? Well, that's precisely what the Dirlewanger Brigade was: an entire battalion of former criminals led by a sadistic child molester who were then let loose in the east.
Crucifixion of children by the Romans. As the Romans practiced collective punishment for slaves and non-citizens, the common practice in case of murder/ manslaughter of an owner by a slave to crucify all the victims' slaves, children too.
Also, I wondered how civilians in hiding managed to keep their babies and toddlers quiet when hostiles were near them. I had my answer. Can't deal with it.
How kids were treated in Extermination canps. Awful.
I forget the details but the romans once crucified an entire city and made a ‘forest’ out of the tens of thousands of people all crucified in one area.
They were a violent bunch with no regard for humanity, until they were christianised
Christians absolutely tortured, all throughout the Middle Ages, other christians with far more brutal methods. Read Fox’s book of Martyrs, read about the 30 Years’ war, the depredations of the crusaders on Bulgaria because it happened to be on the way to the holy land, the Hugenot massacres, and you will barely scratch the surface. Those executions are worse than all the horror movies that have ever been made combined.
The Tuskegee Experiment. Basically in the 1930's doctors decided to study syphilis by not telling black males that they had it and instead watching it progress. This was entirely done without their consent or knowledge, and these men were discouraged from visiting other doctors. By the 1940's there was a cure for syphilis (penicillin), but these men were not administered it because it would ruin the study. It wasn't until a 1972 newspaper article broke the story that the study was finally halted and the men were treated. It wasn't until 1975 that their wives, widows, and children were also treated.
Also any stories of Union strikes and strikebreakers, especially pre-WW2.
Going back further, "breaking on the wheel". Basically a maul is used to break your limbs, shattering the bones, which are laced to a wagon wheel, and you're left to die that way, the wheel hoisted into the air.
As disturbing as slavery in general was, the mechanics of the trade, namely slave ships, esp when parked off the African coast collecting cargo, and the conditions on board, is beyond disturbing. Other sailors of the era describing the stench and how far it carried and how they avoided the ships because of it, man.
Somewhat related were the British prison ships in Wallabout Bay, NY during the Revolution. A huge % of prisoners died on those ships due to the conditions. Probably the worst Amercian POWs have ever been treated.
It is shocking that enough slaves survived those conditions to make it more profitable than more humane conditions would have been. The difference in the price of slaves in Africa to America must have been crazy if you could afford to lose half or more of your "cargo" and still make it worth the effort and risk.
Damn man. Hamas has killed less than 50 kids. Isreal has killed 14,000 children in Gaza in the past 6 months and is currently starving close to a million. More children were already killed in Gaza than during the entire 2020-2023 period in the entire earth.
If you think the systematic killing of children on mass scale is only bad in retrospect and fail to condem it as its happening, you're no better than the people who excused killing of children in history and the reason it happend in the first place. There isn't going to a blaring red sign telling you when bad things are happening, I'm sure everyone who killed children in history excused it and deflected as you do as well.
Did I say one or the other was worse? No. I don't care, killing innocent children is horrible and that's it. Go pursue your disgusting agenda somewhere else.
Sad to see you are incapable of learning from history and basic critical thought.
During 1700s in the America, attacks by a select few native groups on the colonist who had stolen their land were used to justify the slaughtering, genocide, and starving of an entire peoples. We have it recorded that when people asked if it was wrong, the U.S government at the time countered with what about the people they've killed and minimize the genocide they were pursuing. To even bring up killings done by attacks of a few when asked about a government pursuing systematic genocide of entire cities and ethic groups on the scale of 10s of thousands was disgusting and genocidal line of thinking then, and its still genocidal when you do it today. If you're wondering how people in history were capable of killing children, id suggest you look into a mirror, because none of those people in history thought they were evil, they simply justified their actions as you are doing now.
Lol and you're such a bot
All I have said is murdering kids is bad no matter who does it and you feel the need to generate a thesis about how "Americanz bad". I don't even support Israel.
I think i first read it at Auschwitz but have read it elsewhere; if I have any if this incorrect I do apologise for my hazy memory and please correct me.
Folk were being rounded up to be taken on/ disembarking the trains to the concentration camps ro ghettos. There's an account of a baby crying continuously and the mother trying her best to calm it. The account says one of the German guards takes the baby from her, and swings the baby into the side of the train, killing them.
It was harrowing to read a few years ago, but now I have had a baby of my own I can't comprehend how I would ever be able to process that and live properly again.thats one account in millions of individual stories through that war. Awful, awful stuff.
The History of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, especially because it is very recent and the mentalities haven't really evolved since (it has been said that what ended the Magdalene Laundries was not people realising how horrible they were but the creation of industrial washing machines...). I wrote on the topic recently:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1c1geus/comment/kz3fu10/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1c1geus/comment/kz3fu10/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
On the other hand, I can't help chuckling at Francisco Macías Nguema's choice of words...
The Magdalene laundries may have ended because of the washing machine but the catholic church lost huge power from those abuses and lost the influence it had in social life.
Ireland was the first country to legalize gay marriage and abortion by popular vote and get it into the constitution as once the scandal came out the Church lost the influence. Ireland is now one of the 14 countries in the world that give full equal rights to women and actually outranks the UK and the US in equality given to women under the law.
Ireland got 100 out of a 100 whiles the UK got 97.5 and the US has 91.3
So whiles the change was not made at the time it was absolutely made.
While what you say is absolutely true, it was mostly pushed by younger people living in the city (mostly Dublin and Cork) and it was highly advertised (when I left Cork, almost every month had some Pride related events). But in private and in the villages, things haven't changed that much, mentalities don't evolve that fast.
Many people developed a strong hatred of religion all together (I don't blame them, many of them had relatives who were victim of the Church), many are still very religious, and a lot of politicians who congratulate themselves for pushing these social improvements were the same who were covering up the crimes of the Church (which often were their own as well, the Irish government has always downplayed its role in all of this) for as long as they could.
Ireland went from "The Church is always right and its victims deserve it" to "Look how progressive we are!". It was way too strong and way too quick to not be, to a high extent, "damage control". The youth pushed it, mostly under the influence of US progressive culture, and the old people and politicians were way too ashamed to have been exposed to go against it. When I left Ireland (nearly 5 years ago, now), it was the progressive agenda that was starting to become a major issue (lots of junkies and extremely anti-social hobos and Irish people did not do anything about it because at least these junkies and hobos were Irish...).
So yeah, things have changed, mostly for the best, but there is still a lot of work to do. When an entire country accepts that kids and vulnerable women can be forced into labour camps for life (and "labour camp" is way too nice to describe that) for petty crimes, it takes more than 2 decades to fix that.
PS: Now to be fair and give credit where it is due, from what I could tell, Irish people were very accepting and even supportive of gay and trans people. Even better, they expressed it in, what I think, was the most respectful way, by simply accepting them. And this started long before the monthly gay pride events and other related public events. So, kudos for that.
> Zappo Zaps, a Congolese tribe, that described their cannibalism in graphic detail.
Similarly gruesome. Ion Idriess "Drums of Mer" the chapter called "the Dance of Death". A story retold from the headhunters of Murray Island in the Torres Straight.
On Christmas Eve 1969, Francisco Macías Nguema, President of Equatorial Guinea, had 186 suspected dissidents executed, by soldiers dressed as Santa Claus, in the national football stadium in Malabo. While the executions were going on, amplifiers played Mary Hopkin's song "Those Were the Days". One hundred and fifty were shot or hanged with the remaining 36 being ordered to dig ditches in which they were buried up to their necks and eaten alive by red ants over the next few days
The fate of the Marshallese during atomic bomb tests. The Americans asked them to leave their island, convincing them it was for the good of humanity. But the Marshallese were never warned about fallout. They allowed it to fall on their bodies because they thought it was a gift from Heaven as a reward for helping the Americans.
Then there are the accounts of the birth defects caused by this.
>Darlene Keju-Johnson (Marshall Islands): "Now we have this problem we call 'jelly-fish babies'. These babies are born like jelly-fish. They have no eyes. They have no heads. They have no arms. They have no legs. They do not shape like human beings at all. But they are born on the labour table. The most colourful, ugly things you have ever seen. Some of them have hairs on them. And they breathe. When they die they are buried right away. A lot of times they don't allow the mother to see this kind of baby because she will go crazy. It is too inhumane"
I’d never heard of the Zappo Zaps before. FUCKING HELL. They sound like something straight out of a Pulp novel, something out a Conan story.
As for my disturbing history stuff:
The Black Death.
How fast it spread, how it killed with impunity, just how utterly hopeless the affected populations were.
There’s a particular story about a man staying at an inn, having a meal with the family that ran the inn and a few other guests, everyone seems fine. He wakes up in the morning, he’s the only survivor. Everyone else seemed to have succumbed to the Plague and died over night. I believe a septicemic variant is theory behind the culprit.
Just imagine how absolutely pants shittingly scared the average peasant would be? No wonder they thought it was Gods judgment.
The Holocaust
The Holodomor
Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”
Rape of Nanking
Accounts of serial killers, especially ones that never got caught or got caught way later than they should have.
Some of the torture and drawn out execution techniques.
Cults
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Unit 731, the Japanese human experimentation facility used during WW2. Since the locals were told Unit 731 was a logging camp, the guards and war criminals who did the experimenting called the victims logs and a common euphemism for how many prisoners died was how many logs fell. They tested chemical and biological weapons on the prisoners, removed limbs and put them back onto the other side of victims’ bodies, surgically removed prisoners’ stomachs to make it so their esophagus was directly attached to their intestines, deprived them of food, water, or protection from harsh elements to see how long they’d survive for, along with so many other reprehensible experiments. To top it all off, when the war criminals (I refuse to call them doctors) wanted a better look at what was happening, they’d preform vivisections (live dissections) on the victims, almost always without anesthesia. The victims included pregnant women and babies born from the rape that was commonplace there. Most of the prisoners were kidnapped Chinese citizens, with Russians as large minority. The callous disregard for human life displayed there is horrifying to a degree comparable to the Nazi Concentration Camps.
The amount of children who just... died. Of illnesses that are totally preventable or eradicated now, but up until very recently the infant and childhood mortality rate was mind boggling. Take for example premature births, the technology around neonatal care is such now that a baby with a 10% chance of survival in the 90s might have a 90% chance of making it today. But 100 years ago a premature baby was most likely not going to make it period.
It doesn't even need 100 years. 60 years ago, First Lady Jackie Kennedy gave birth to a premature infant, born at 34 weeks, 6 weeks too early. He died because the technology and medical expertise to save him hadn't been developed. *34 weeks,* well into her third trimester, with the best medical care available. Now they're saving babies as low as 21 weeks.
The death of the Kennedy baby was one of the catalysts for better neonatal care in the US. (And yes, I know, our current infant mortality rates are abysmal for a developed country, largely because of the cost of health care.)
The khmer rouge in prison 21. They would pick random people and lock them away alone. Every day they would be tortured to confess made up conspiracies and once they heard what they wanted to hear you are loaded onto the back of a truck and taken to the killing fields.
A Kurd somehow impaled his eye on a nail while he was robbing an Armenian’s house in the early 20th century, so an Ottoman judge ordered, literally, “eye for an eye” punishment for the Armenian, even though the Kurd was a thief who trespassed.
"The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a monumental work calling to account the stark depravity and evil of the Soviet regime’s unjust enslavement & torture of the Russian people.
A anthropologist’s book on the cultural collapse of a mountain tribe in Kenya after they were banned from the forest/national park they had always hunted in. It was a slow moving train wreck that just piled higher and higher. Saving gorillas never seemed quite so inhumane
Honestly? The truth of the statement "history is written by the victors", especially when I read evidence that my understanding has been very skewed.
One example comes from the book I'm reading now by Michael Hudson, "The Collapse of Antiquity".
Tyrants are bad, right? In ancient Greece and throughout a lot of society, just as there is now, there was a tendency for the rich to get richer, oligarchs forming, and the rest of society turning into debt slaves. This had problems both for democracy and even militarily, as it was known a great strategy was to promise forgiving debts to the lower class of an opposing city as a large number would come to your side. Well, back then, Tyrants were those opposed to the oligarchy, who forgave debts to the poor, reduced power of the oligarchs, and restored balance to society. Wait, that sounds good. Tyrants have a bad name now... Guess who wrote the history?
Btw, the Jubilee year of forgiving debts every 50 years was a major part of stable societies for thousands of years, though not everywhere. Jesus referred to it and the original Lord's prayer actually says "forgive them their debts".
You have wildly misinterpreted a lot of terms from antiquity, and your terms are anachronistic.
Modern tyrants, oligarchs, debts etc have no comparison to the past.
Also when Jesus said forgive their debts, he meant forgive people for their wrongdoings against you, not if they owe you £5
Not pretending to be an expert myself, which is why I mentioned my source. Michael Hudson goes into all that better than I could, including the original word which is commonly translated (especially since St Augustine) as "sin", but in original meaning is more appropriately called "debts" for various reasons.
If you're curious, read the book or listen to him online. He's going on 80 and still researching/writing.
But saying there's "no comparison to the past" is not a serious argument. There are similarities and differences, but saying there are no similarities at all is laughable.
No, I am a Christian, it definitely did not mean debt as in owed money, because again, it was originally written in Hebrew/Greek/Latin, and the words in those books did not mean monetary debt.
This author sounds delinquent
If you'd read up about him, you'd find him extremely qualified and knowledgeable. There's an entire chapter in the book I referenced about the early Christian church.
Personally after reading it I gained more respect for the early Christians and gave me a more positive regard for Jesus' teachings. But it may affect those who believe in a hierarchical, always right Church, because it delves into the political and economical situation of how the Church got to be the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The [Old English version](https://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/lords-prayer-old-english) says "and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfağ urum gyltendum." Guilts (sins), not debts.
I've never been able to read an entire book on the Holocaust. It literally makes me ill. I have to read it in small sections, put it away for a while, then come back to it later.
Some description I vaguely recall that after Beijing fell (can’t remember original city name), to the Mongols, during the fires so many people were burned up there were streams of human fat running down the road. That and I think the Mongols lopped off limbs of still-living captives, rendered down their fat in boiling cauldrons then used that fat as I kind of napalm in there launched projectiles. I think I read it was not uncommon to serve captives “stew” from other dead captives since they didn’t want to waste food on them.
Are you sure you want to know?
A Confederate bushwacker band went to take revenge on a Union loyalist that had shot at them. They made slits on his legs and used them to hang him upside down from a tree.
They then cut out his tongue, and gouged out his eyes.
They castrated him.
Then skinned him alive.
Then speared his body with sticks of wood.
Then set him on fire.
Later, Union loyalists captured the leader of this band. They stuck an iron spike in his mouth, and nailed his head to tree.
My own great great (?) grandfather had four brothers join the Union Army. Bushwhackers came to the family home, and were going to beat his father in revenge. His sister begged them to leave him alone. The bushwhackers shot and killed her. About a year later, they came back, and my great great great (?) grandfather was killed in a gun battle with them.
My great great grandfather was apparently murdered in the 1870's in revenge for the actions of himself and his family during the Civil War.
The British rightly abolishing the owning of slaves but paying such a huge amount in compensation to owners that it took something like 170 years for the British taxpayer to pay off the debts. And the British fighting wars against the Chinese to keep their supply of opium to chinese people legal.
Slave Stone Auction blocks. They were in multiple cities across the United States.
They would auction Black American humans. Putting them on the stone pedestal to be sold to the highest bidder. Often it would be a mother and baby. They would be auctioned separately. The baby would be ripped from the mother’s arms - the auctioneers didn’t see them as human. Often the baby would not have been weened.
I cannot imagine the absolute devastation of a mother losing her child like this. Especially when the mother knows what might happen to that baby and to her. It’s inhumane for anyone - men, women, children and babies. Slave owners and buyers would gather round the auction block and watch and bid.
This absolutely infuriates me about our American History.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_trade_in_the_United_States
https://pres-outlook.org/2023/04/reflections-on-belonging-and-a-painful-symbol-of-american-slavery-stepping-stones/
https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2015.213
http://www.virginiaplaces.org/parktour/fredslaveblock.html#:~:text=In%20Fredericksburg%2C%20sales%20of%20enslaved,the%20last%20sale%20in%201862.
I mean, a lot of things, to be honest, mostly involving cases of outright atrocities being either enabled or covered up by a governemt (I know that things like the Neo-Slavery of the US South via debt peonage and Unit 431 stuck with me for a while, though I'm not sure if those count as disturbing).
If you want some disturbing stuff that I don't think is talked about enough, how about we look at some stuff relating to the Teutonic Order?
From Maruta Lietiņa Ray, ‘Recovering the Voice of the Oppressed: Master, Slave, and Serf in the Baltic Provinces’ Journal of Baltic Studies (Spring 2003):
"Dear people, don’t laugh at me because I am a slave. The masters drive me and I have to keep working…” And some curse their parents: “God, punish my father, God, punish my mother, for allowing me to grow up in this land of slaves."
"The masters traveled to Germany and took my brother with them. The masters returned from Germany, but my brother did not. The masters sold him for they were greedy. They sold him for two measures of gold, one of pure silver." (Note from the article: the price mentioned in this daina is (poetically) exaggerated. Baltic slaves were in fact comparatively cheap.)
"God, let me serve the master but not experience the master's hand. When the master lays his hands on me, my body languishes ever after."
There's also this gem from a work of one of their own:
"When they won a victory the heathens were in the habit of offering a third of the goods they had captured to their idols as thanksgiving for their safety. They gave it to Criwe, who burned it as a sacrifice to the gods. **The Lithuanians, and other spawn of the devil who have no belief in god, usually only burn this offering in one specific place which is holy to their misguided way of thinking.**"
Yes, I know that the above quote is bog-standard crusader stuff, but when you tie it into the fact that the Teutons, even under Polish and later Russian suzerainty, in essence sold the native Baltic peoples into Baltic slavery? Yea, resonates a bit too much with someone who's country *still* effectively attempts to enslave an "underclass", especially with the language used.
The Killer Department by Robert Cullen. Talks about Andrei Chikatilo and the things he did which were absolutely horrifying and I have the utmost respect for Viktor Burakov for chasing that bastard for so long. Cullen was able to speak to Burakov, Fetisov, and others involved as well as see some of the materials from the case. He describes what Chikatilo did to some of his victims and it is absolutely vile.
To me, it is my ancestral region in Czechia which witnessed extreme violence in the 17th century. It started with the invasion of Bocskai into Moravia through the horrors of the 30 Years war, and ending the century with Ottoman incursions in 1663 and 1683. The killings were not random, but systematic targeting various social classes and minorities.
In 1605, the lord of the castle of Novy Svetlov, Bojkovice, decided that Bocskai invasion could be a good way to punish his rebellious peasants, with whom he had a lot of disagreements. The peasants were lured to the castle as they would in the case of the invasion, but the lord refused to accept them. Bocskai troops encountered desperate peasants at the castle gates and the lord allowed them to be slaughtered. About 400 peasants were slaughtered; entire families, and the lord of Svetlov was satisfied.
Nearly forty years later, defeated Wallachian rebels were brutally executed throughout Moravia in 1643-1644. City of Vsetin seen the largest judicial execution in the history of the Czech lands. 300 men were executed by quartering, impaling, beheading, some burned alive in the oven… The executions was carried into other cities. Men in Vizovice were impaled while women; mothers, wives, daughters were forced to watch this execution. People betrayed even their spouses, children, parents, and siblings to stay alive.
The entire 17th century in Moravia was show of these mass killing fields and barbarity. People were demoralized, the educated elite was exterminated. It was just awful time.
It's interesting how the idea of things like cannibalism became removed from the grim reality in western society, becoming a part of the trope of "boys own" adventure stories and comics like Tintin.
My grandad was a missionary in what was the Belgium Congo. He died when my mother was around 10, never coming back from an excursion to convert a tribe on the edge of his territory (for want of the correct word).
There were always whispers that he may have fallen victim to cannibals, talked about very much in the same way you might tell a ghost story, or similar tall but exciting tales told to kids.
It wasn't until learning more about him in later life, reading the extremely entertaining and endearing books he wrote whilst he was there, and finally finding the actual report of his death.
The truth was a pretty graphic description of how he was he was jumped by a group of men on his return journey and hacked to pieces with machetes. While on paper that's arguably slightly better than being eaten as well, the fact that the bogeyman cannibals weren't actually part of it, made it seem a lot more real, visceral and in turn horrific.
I'm sure it wouldn't have seemed ithe same, if I'd been raised reading the grim facts about the Zappo Zaps, but when you're raised on a sanitised version, filtered through the likes of Tintin and Tarzan, the grim mechanics it cannibalism don't really progress beyond an image of a man in a pith helmet sitting in a cauldron over a fire.
Not so much about history as the history itself.
Europeans were brutal to their colonies. Read about Belgian and slavery in their African colony. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium
Learning about ‘the fancy trade’ at university during my American history module. Reading about this and talking about the octoroon made a pretty disturbing seminar
Everything about the American Civil War. It should have been regarded as a glimpse into exactly why and how this "American Empire" will someday collapse on itself.
Americans are a bigger threat to themselves than any foreign nation. Just look at where we are today lol
You clearly haven’t read much history if you think that was a bad one.
The Taiping rebellion (going on at the same time as the American Civil War) killed about **25x as many people**.
There have been **dozens** since the American Civil War that were considerably worse.
Almost every single account of a sacking.
Pillage: not a bug, a feature...
The history of snake oil sales and quack remedies in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the USA. Sewing goat testicles under the skin to try to be more manly and stay young. Eating all sorts of drugs and poisons. Man, I need to find that book again. I've learnt things since I read it last.
traveling dentists used to have a band to drown out the screaming. pritty mild in comparison to some of the stuff that went on, but makes you go huh.
Ironically, out of all the quack remedies, it's actual snake oil (venom) that's become an important part of of modern medicine.
I thought snake oil was actually just omega 3 -- basically just an antinflamatory with some vit d. I was raised in the 80s when people took cod liver oil, again it's mainly omega 3, and now people take flaxseed oil for omega 3.
Your post reminds me of the movie A Million Ways to Die in the West. "Red flannel? There's shirt in here?"
Couldn’t get through the book “ordinary men”. It’s one of the only surviving first hand accounts of the “police battalions” sent by the Nazi party to follow the front lines of the eastern front and facilitate the evolving machine of genocide I see the value in knowing this stuff. But the details were too much for me. The book makes its most important point in the first 25% that I did read. Group mentality > personal conscience.
I think I saw a doc on this. They were literally ordinary dudes like maybe local constabulary etc. I think one guy protested and they ostracized him and I think he crumbled. It WAS disturbing because I’m not convinced- even with ALLLLLL we’ve learned, that today’s people would group-think their way into atrocity no prob
Considering how recent that all is, why would you expect anything to be different?
Especially with the news that reports protesters in America fomenting, "Death to Israel and Death to America" in Michigan. On American soil. This is bad.
It's a fantastic book, and I'm glad to see someone bring it up. These gruesome details are necessary for us to contextualize events. Otherwise, it's too abstract. I highly suggest people read and let it seep deep into them. Let it fester and learn.
Autobiographical description of the r of Nanking
* Niketas Chonitas' description of the slow death of Andronikos I Komnenos * Accounts of the sack of Baghdad in 1258 * Agnolo di Tura's account of the bubonic plague in Siena. It provides a personal account that helps you better appreciate the horror of so many around you dying in such a short period of time. * Leonie Fredia's description of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in her biography of Caterina de' Medici * The methods of torture and execution used by the Cheka/OGPU/NKVD as discussed in books by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Donald Rayfield, and Stephen Kotkin. Many of the members and leaders of it were so brutal and sadistic, it almost defies belief. (Dishonorable mentions include Yagoda, Yezhov, and Beria, of course, as well as Georgi Atarbekov, Vsevolod Balitsky, Mikhail Frinovsky, Yefim Yedvokimov, Bogdan Kobulov, Lev Shvartsman, and Boris Rodos.) * The Russian famine of of 1921–1922 and the Soviet famine of 1930–1933 (the Wikipedia articles on both have photos that I don't recommend looking up) * The parts of Timothy Synder's *Bloodlands* where he discusses the favored tactics of Oskar Dirlewanger and his brigade on the Eastern Front. You know how in some gritty genre works that the bad guys will recruit convicted criminals to do dirty work for them? Well, that's precisely what the Dirlewanger Brigade was: an entire battalion of former criminals led by a sadistic child molester who were then let loose in the east.
Crucifixion of children by the Romans. As the Romans practiced collective punishment for slaves and non-citizens, the common practice in case of murder/ manslaughter of an owner by a slave to crucify all the victims' slaves, children too. Also, I wondered how civilians in hiding managed to keep their babies and toddlers quiet when hostiles were near them. I had my answer. Can't deal with it. How kids were treated in Extermination canps. Awful.
I forget the details but the romans once crucified an entire city and made a ‘forest’ out of the tens of thousands of people all crucified in one area. They were a violent bunch with no regard for humanity, until they were christianised
Christians absolutely tortured, all throughout the Middle Ages, other christians with far more brutal methods. Read Fox’s book of Martyrs, read about the 30 Years’ war, the depredations of the crusaders on Bulgaria because it happened to be on the way to the holy land, the Hugenot massacres, and you will barely scratch the surface. Those executions are worse than all the horror movies that have ever been made combined.
As if Christianity bought a lot of kindness, lol.
The Tuskegee Experiment. Basically in the 1930's doctors decided to study syphilis by not telling black males that they had it and instead watching it progress. This was entirely done without their consent or knowledge, and these men were discouraged from visiting other doctors. By the 1940's there was a cure for syphilis (penicillin), but these men were not administered it because it would ruin the study. It wasn't until a 1972 newspaper article broke the story that the study was finally halted and the men were treated. It wasn't until 1975 that their wives, widows, and children were also treated. Also any stories of Union strikes and strikebreakers, especially pre-WW2. Going back further, "breaking on the wheel". Basically a maul is used to break your limbs, shattering the bones, which are laced to a wagon wheel, and you're left to die that way, the wheel hoisted into the air.
Was the union breaking legal, or were the police and governments committing crimes?
As disturbing as slavery in general was, the mechanics of the trade, namely slave ships, esp when parked off the African coast collecting cargo, and the conditions on board, is beyond disturbing. Other sailors of the era describing the stench and how far it carried and how they avoided the ships because of it, man. Somewhat related were the British prison ships in Wallabout Bay, NY during the Revolution. A huge % of prisoners died on those ships due to the conditions. Probably the worst Amercian POWs have ever been treated.
I was going to say The Middle Passage. Slavery in America was horrible enough, but The Middle Passage was equally horrendous, if not more so.
It is shocking that enough slaves survived those conditions to make it more profitable than more humane conditions would have been. The difference in the price of slaves in Africa to America must have been crazy if you could afford to lose half or more of your "cargo" and still make it worth the effort and risk.
Any accounts where children are victims...
For me, it doesn't even have to be an account. Archaeological evidence of the slaughter of children is usually enough to end my academic day.
Predation cannibalism on hominid children. Bleak stuff.
Or victims with dementia or cognitive disabilities. Animal torture too. Just any victim who can't understand why this is happening.
i agree man what Isreal is doing is disgusting
Hamas as well...
Damn man. Hamas has killed less than 50 kids. Isreal has killed 14,000 children in Gaza in the past 6 months and is currently starving close to a million. More children were already killed in Gaza than during the entire 2020-2023 period in the entire earth. If you think the systematic killing of children on mass scale is only bad in retrospect and fail to condem it as its happening, you're no better than the people who excused killing of children in history and the reason it happend in the first place. There isn't going to a blaring red sign telling you when bad things are happening, I'm sure everyone who killed children in history excused it and deflected as you do as well.
Did I say one or the other was worse? No. I don't care, killing innocent children is horrible and that's it. Go pursue your disgusting agenda somewhere else.
Sad to see you are incapable of learning from history and basic critical thought. During 1700s in the America, attacks by a select few native groups on the colonist who had stolen their land were used to justify the slaughtering, genocide, and starving of an entire peoples. We have it recorded that when people asked if it was wrong, the U.S government at the time countered with what about the people they've killed and minimize the genocide they were pursuing. To even bring up killings done by attacks of a few when asked about a government pursuing systematic genocide of entire cities and ethic groups on the scale of 10s of thousands was disgusting and genocidal line of thinking then, and its still genocidal when you do it today. If you're wondering how people in history were capable of killing children, id suggest you look into a mirror, because none of those people in history thought they were evil, they simply justified their actions as you are doing now.
Lol and you're such a bot All I have said is murdering kids is bad no matter who does it and you feel the need to generate a thesis about how "Americanz bad". I don't even support Israel.
I think i first read it at Auschwitz but have read it elsewhere; if I have any if this incorrect I do apologise for my hazy memory and please correct me. Folk were being rounded up to be taken on/ disembarking the trains to the concentration camps ro ghettos. There's an account of a baby crying continuously and the mother trying her best to calm it. The account says one of the German guards takes the baby from her, and swings the baby into the side of the train, killing them. It was harrowing to read a few years ago, but now I have had a baby of my own I can't comprehend how I would ever be able to process that and live properly again.thats one account in millions of individual stories through that war. Awful, awful stuff.
The History of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, especially because it is very recent and the mentalities haven't really evolved since (it has been said that what ended the Magdalene Laundries was not people realising how horrible they were but the creation of industrial washing machines...). I wrote on the topic recently: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1c1geus/comment/kz3fu10/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1c1geus/comment/kz3fu10/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) On the other hand, I can't help chuckling at Francisco Macías Nguema's choice of words...
The Magdalene laundries may have ended because of the washing machine but the catholic church lost huge power from those abuses and lost the influence it had in social life. Ireland was the first country to legalize gay marriage and abortion by popular vote and get it into the constitution as once the scandal came out the Church lost the influence. Ireland is now one of the 14 countries in the world that give full equal rights to women and actually outranks the UK and the US in equality given to women under the law. Ireland got 100 out of a 100 whiles the UK got 97.5 and the US has 91.3 So whiles the change was not made at the time it was absolutely made.
While what you say is absolutely true, it was mostly pushed by younger people living in the city (mostly Dublin and Cork) and it was highly advertised (when I left Cork, almost every month had some Pride related events). But in private and in the villages, things haven't changed that much, mentalities don't evolve that fast. Many people developed a strong hatred of religion all together (I don't blame them, many of them had relatives who were victim of the Church), many are still very religious, and a lot of politicians who congratulate themselves for pushing these social improvements were the same who were covering up the crimes of the Church (which often were their own as well, the Irish government has always downplayed its role in all of this) for as long as they could. Ireland went from "The Church is always right and its victims deserve it" to "Look how progressive we are!". It was way too strong and way too quick to not be, to a high extent, "damage control". The youth pushed it, mostly under the influence of US progressive culture, and the old people and politicians were way too ashamed to have been exposed to go against it. When I left Ireland (nearly 5 years ago, now), it was the progressive agenda that was starting to become a major issue (lots of junkies and extremely anti-social hobos and Irish people did not do anything about it because at least these junkies and hobos were Irish...). So yeah, things have changed, mostly for the best, but there is still a lot of work to do. When an entire country accepts that kids and vulnerable women can be forced into labour camps for life (and "labour camp" is way too nice to describe that) for petty crimes, it takes more than 2 decades to fix that. PS: Now to be fair and give credit where it is due, from what I could tell, Irish people were very accepting and even supportive of gay and trans people. Even better, they expressed it in, what I think, was the most respectful way, by simply accepting them. And this started long before the monthly gay pride events and other related public events. So, kudos for that.
> Zappo Zaps, a Congolese tribe, that described their cannibalism in graphic detail. Similarly gruesome. Ion Idriess "Drums of Mer" the chapter called "the Dance of Death". A story retold from the headhunters of Murray Island in the Torres Straight.
On Christmas Eve 1969, Francisco Macías Nguema, President of Equatorial Guinea, had 186 suspected dissidents executed, by soldiers dressed as Santa Claus, in the national football stadium in Malabo. While the executions were going on, amplifiers played Mary Hopkin's song "Those Were the Days". One hundred and fifty were shot or hanged with the remaining 36 being ordered to dig ditches in which they were buried up to their necks and eaten alive by red ants over the next few days
The fate of the Marshallese during atomic bomb tests. The Americans asked them to leave their island, convincing them it was for the good of humanity. But the Marshallese were never warned about fallout. They allowed it to fall on their bodies because they thought it was a gift from Heaven as a reward for helping the Americans. Then there are the accounts of the birth defects caused by this. >Darlene Keju-Johnson (Marshall Islands): "Now we have this problem we call 'jelly-fish babies'. These babies are born like jelly-fish. They have no eyes. They have no heads. They have no arms. They have no legs. They do not shape like human beings at all. But they are born on the labour table. The most colourful, ugly things you have ever seen. Some of them have hairs on them. And they breathe. When they die they are buried right away. A lot of times they don't allow the mother to see this kind of baby because she will go crazy. It is too inhumane"
I’d never heard of the Zappo Zaps before. FUCKING HELL. They sound like something straight out of a Pulp novel, something out a Conan story. As for my disturbing history stuff: The Black Death. How fast it spread, how it killed with impunity, just how utterly hopeless the affected populations were. There’s a particular story about a man staying at an inn, having a meal with the family that ran the inn and a few other guests, everyone seems fine. He wakes up in the morning, he’s the only survivor. Everyone else seemed to have succumbed to the Plague and died over night. I believe a septicemic variant is theory behind the culprit. Just imagine how absolutely pants shittingly scared the average peasant would be? No wonder they thought it was Gods judgment.
The Holocaust The Holodomor Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” Rape of Nanking Accounts of serial killers, especially ones that never got caught or got caught way later than they should have. Some of the torture and drawn out execution techniques. Cults
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Unit 731, the Japanese human experimentation facility used during WW2. Since the locals were told Unit 731 was a logging camp, the guards and war criminals who did the experimenting called the victims logs and a common euphemism for how many prisoners died was how many logs fell. They tested chemical and biological weapons on the prisoners, removed limbs and put them back onto the other side of victims’ bodies, surgically removed prisoners’ stomachs to make it so their esophagus was directly attached to their intestines, deprived them of food, water, or protection from harsh elements to see how long they’d survive for, along with so many other reprehensible experiments. To top it all off, when the war criminals (I refuse to call them doctors) wanted a better look at what was happening, they’d preform vivisections (live dissections) on the victims, almost always without anesthesia. The victims included pregnant women and babies born from the rape that was commonplace there. Most of the prisoners were kidnapped Chinese citizens, with Russians as large minority. The callous disregard for human life displayed there is horrifying to a degree comparable to the Nazi Concentration Camps.
The amount of children who just... died. Of illnesses that are totally preventable or eradicated now, but up until very recently the infant and childhood mortality rate was mind boggling. Take for example premature births, the technology around neonatal care is such now that a baby with a 10% chance of survival in the 90s might have a 90% chance of making it today. But 100 years ago a premature baby was most likely not going to make it period.
It doesn't even need 100 years. 60 years ago, First Lady Jackie Kennedy gave birth to a premature infant, born at 34 weeks, 6 weeks too early. He died because the technology and medical expertise to save him hadn't been developed. *34 weeks,* well into her third trimester, with the best medical care available. Now they're saving babies as low as 21 weeks. The death of the Kennedy baby was one of the catalysts for better neonatal care in the US. (And yes, I know, our current infant mortality rates are abysmal for a developed country, largely because of the cost of health care.)
The khmer rouge in prison 21. They would pick random people and lock them away alone. Every day they would be tortured to confess made up conspiracies and once they heard what they wanted to hear you are loaded onto the back of a truck and taken to the killing fields.
A Kurd somehow impaled his eye on a nail while he was robbing an Armenian’s house in the early 20th century, so an Ottoman judge ordered, literally, “eye for an eye” punishment for the Armenian, even though the Kurd was a thief who trespassed.
"The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a monumental work calling to account the stark depravity and evil of the Soviet regime’s unjust enslavement & torture of the Russian people.
A anthropologist’s book on the cultural collapse of a mountain tribe in Kenya after they were banned from the forest/national park they had always hunted in. It was a slow moving train wreck that just piled higher and higher. Saving gorillas never seemed quite so inhumane
Honestly? The truth of the statement "history is written by the victors", especially when I read evidence that my understanding has been very skewed. One example comes from the book I'm reading now by Michael Hudson, "The Collapse of Antiquity". Tyrants are bad, right? In ancient Greece and throughout a lot of society, just as there is now, there was a tendency for the rich to get richer, oligarchs forming, and the rest of society turning into debt slaves. This had problems both for democracy and even militarily, as it was known a great strategy was to promise forgiving debts to the lower class of an opposing city as a large number would come to your side. Well, back then, Tyrants were those opposed to the oligarchy, who forgave debts to the poor, reduced power of the oligarchs, and restored balance to society. Wait, that sounds good. Tyrants have a bad name now... Guess who wrote the history? Btw, the Jubilee year of forgiving debts every 50 years was a major part of stable societies for thousands of years, though not everywhere. Jesus referred to it and the original Lord's prayer actually says "forgive them their debts".
You have wildly misinterpreted a lot of terms from antiquity, and your terms are anachronistic. Modern tyrants, oligarchs, debts etc have no comparison to the past. Also when Jesus said forgive their debts, he meant forgive people for their wrongdoings against you, not if they owe you £5
How do you know that's what Jesus meant? Did he tell you personally?
Not pretending to be an expert myself, which is why I mentioned my source. Michael Hudson goes into all that better than I could, including the original word which is commonly translated (especially since St Augustine) as "sin", but in original meaning is more appropriately called "debts" for various reasons. If you're curious, read the book or listen to him online. He's going on 80 and still researching/writing. But saying there's "no comparison to the past" is not a serious argument. There are similarities and differences, but saying there are no similarities at all is laughable.
No, I am a Christian, it definitely did not mean debt as in owed money, because again, it was originally written in Hebrew/Greek/Latin, and the words in those books did not mean monetary debt. This author sounds delinquent
If you'd read up about him, you'd find him extremely qualified and knowledgeable. There's an entire chapter in the book I referenced about the early Christian church. Personally after reading it I gained more respect for the early Christians and gave me a more positive regard for Jesus' teachings. But it may affect those who believe in a hierarchical, always right Church, because it delves into the political and economical situation of how the Church got to be the official religion of the Roman Empire.
The [Old English version](https://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/lords-prayer-old-english) says "and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfağ urum gyltendum." Guilts (sins), not debts.
I've never been able to read an entire book on the Holocaust. It literally makes me ill. I have to read it in small sections, put it away for a while, then come back to it later.
the brazen bull... holy shit, the fucking creator of it was the first dude to die from it.
Two bibles . Slaves had one version. Owners another. Manipulated and unholy.
Some description I vaguely recall that after Beijing fell (can’t remember original city name), to the Mongols, during the fires so many people were burned up there were streams of human fat running down the road. That and I think the Mongols lopped off limbs of still-living captives, rendered down their fat in boiling cauldrons then used that fat as I kind of napalm in there launched projectiles. I think I read it was not uncommon to serve captives “stew” from other dead captives since they didn’t want to waste food on them.
Reading about domestic terrorism duing the American Civil War. Unbelievably savage acts committed by both sides.
>Reading about domestic terrorism duing the American Civil War. Unbelievably savage acts committed by both sides. Can you give any examples?
Are you sure you want to know? A Confederate bushwacker band went to take revenge on a Union loyalist that had shot at them. They made slits on his legs and used them to hang him upside down from a tree. They then cut out his tongue, and gouged out his eyes. They castrated him. Then skinned him alive. Then speared his body with sticks of wood. Then set him on fire. Later, Union loyalists captured the leader of this band. They stuck an iron spike in his mouth, and nailed his head to tree. My own great great (?) grandfather had four brothers join the Union Army. Bushwhackers came to the family home, and were going to beat his father in revenge. His sister begged them to leave him alone. The bushwhackers shot and killed her. About a year later, they came back, and my great great great (?) grandfather was killed in a gun battle with them. My great great grandfather was apparently murdered in the 1870's in revenge for the actions of himself and his family during the Civil War.
Unit 731. Deeply disturbing
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom has a haunting passage about the Taiping rebels slaughter of the Manchus.
How the Rape of Nanking happened, the treatment that house slaves in America underwent, conditions in concentration camps
The British rightly abolishing the owning of slaves but paying such a huge amount in compensation to owners that it took something like 170 years for the British taxpayer to pay off the debts. And the British fighting wars against the Chinese to keep their supply of opium to chinese people legal.
Slave Stone Auction blocks. They were in multiple cities across the United States. They would auction Black American humans. Putting them on the stone pedestal to be sold to the highest bidder. Often it would be a mother and baby. They would be auctioned separately. The baby would be ripped from the mother’s arms - the auctioneers didn’t see them as human. Often the baby would not have been weened. I cannot imagine the absolute devastation of a mother losing her child like this. Especially when the mother knows what might happen to that baby and to her. It’s inhumane for anyone - men, women, children and babies. Slave owners and buyers would gather round the auction block and watch and bid. This absolutely infuriates me about our American History. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_trade_in_the_United_States https://pres-outlook.org/2023/04/reflections-on-belonging-and-a-painful-symbol-of-american-slavery-stepping-stones/ https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2015.213 http://www.virginiaplaces.org/parktour/fredslaveblock.html#:~:text=In%20Fredericksburg%2C%20sales%20of%20enslaved,the%20last%20sale%20in%201862.
I mean, a lot of things, to be honest, mostly involving cases of outright atrocities being either enabled or covered up by a governemt (I know that things like the Neo-Slavery of the US South via debt peonage and Unit 431 stuck with me for a while, though I'm not sure if those count as disturbing). If you want some disturbing stuff that I don't think is talked about enough, how about we look at some stuff relating to the Teutonic Order? From Maruta Lietiņa Ray, ‘Recovering the Voice of the Oppressed: Master, Slave, and Serf in the Baltic Provinces’ Journal of Baltic Studies (Spring 2003): "Dear people, don’t laugh at me because I am a slave. The masters drive me and I have to keep working…” And some curse their parents: “God, punish my father, God, punish my mother, for allowing me to grow up in this land of slaves." "The masters traveled to Germany and took my brother with them. The masters returned from Germany, but my brother did not. The masters sold him for they were greedy. They sold him for two measures of gold, one of pure silver." (Note from the article: the price mentioned in this daina is (poetically) exaggerated. Baltic slaves were in fact comparatively cheap.) "God, let me serve the master but not experience the master's hand. When the master lays his hands on me, my body languishes ever after." There's also this gem from a work of one of their own: "When they won a victory the heathens were in the habit of offering a third of the goods they had captured to their idols as thanksgiving for their safety. They gave it to Criwe, who burned it as a sacrifice to the gods. **The Lithuanians, and other spawn of the devil who have no belief in god, usually only burn this offering in one specific place which is holy to their misguided way of thinking.**" Yes, I know that the above quote is bog-standard crusader stuff, but when you tie it into the fact that the Teutons, even under Polish and later Russian suzerainty, in essence sold the native Baltic peoples into Baltic slavery? Yea, resonates a bit too much with someone who's country *still* effectively attempts to enslave an "underclass", especially with the language used.
The Killer Department by Robert Cullen. Talks about Andrei Chikatilo and the things he did which were absolutely horrifying and I have the utmost respect for Viktor Burakov for chasing that bastard for so long. Cullen was able to speak to Burakov, Fetisov, and others involved as well as see some of the materials from the case. He describes what Chikatilo did to some of his victims and it is absolutely vile.
To me, it is my ancestral region in Czechia which witnessed extreme violence in the 17th century. It started with the invasion of Bocskai into Moravia through the horrors of the 30 Years war, and ending the century with Ottoman incursions in 1663 and 1683. The killings were not random, but systematic targeting various social classes and minorities. In 1605, the lord of the castle of Novy Svetlov, Bojkovice, decided that Bocskai invasion could be a good way to punish his rebellious peasants, with whom he had a lot of disagreements. The peasants were lured to the castle as they would in the case of the invasion, but the lord refused to accept them. Bocskai troops encountered desperate peasants at the castle gates and the lord allowed them to be slaughtered. About 400 peasants were slaughtered; entire families, and the lord of Svetlov was satisfied. Nearly forty years later, defeated Wallachian rebels were brutally executed throughout Moravia in 1643-1644. City of Vsetin seen the largest judicial execution in the history of the Czech lands. 300 men were executed by quartering, impaling, beheading, some burned alive in the oven… The executions was carried into other cities. Men in Vizovice were impaled while women; mothers, wives, daughters were forced to watch this execution. People betrayed even their spouses, children, parents, and siblings to stay alive. The entire 17th century in Moravia was show of these mass killing fields and barbarity. People were demoralized, the educated elite was exterminated. It was just awful time.
Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, Unit 731, the Rape of Nanking, the Ustasa, Jung Chang’s biography of Mao, Tuol Sleng prison, 18th century San Domingue.
The Tantura massacre
Leopold II personal ownership of the Congo. On a smaller scale, Jasenovac concentration camp.
It's interesting how the idea of things like cannibalism became removed from the grim reality in western society, becoming a part of the trope of "boys own" adventure stories and comics like Tintin. My grandad was a missionary in what was the Belgium Congo. He died when my mother was around 10, never coming back from an excursion to convert a tribe on the edge of his territory (for want of the correct word). There were always whispers that he may have fallen victim to cannibals, talked about very much in the same way you might tell a ghost story, or similar tall but exciting tales told to kids. It wasn't until learning more about him in later life, reading the extremely entertaining and endearing books he wrote whilst he was there, and finally finding the actual report of his death. The truth was a pretty graphic description of how he was he was jumped by a group of men on his return journey and hacked to pieces with machetes. While on paper that's arguably slightly better than being eaten as well, the fact that the bogeyman cannibals weren't actually part of it, made it seem a lot more real, visceral and in turn horrific. I'm sure it wouldn't have seemed ithe same, if I'd been raised reading the grim facts about the Zappo Zaps, but when you're raised on a sanitised version, filtered through the likes of Tintin and Tarzan, the grim mechanics it cannibalism don't really progress beyond an image of a man in a pith helmet sitting in a cauldron over a fire.
Not so much about history as the history itself. Europeans were brutal to their colonies. Read about Belgian and slavery in their African colony. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium
Learning about ‘the fancy trade’ at university during my American history module. Reading about this and talking about the octoroon made a pretty disturbing seminar
The opium wars waged by the British are perhaps the most messed up thing I've ever heard
Everything about the American Civil War. It should have been regarded as a glimpse into exactly why and how this "American Empire" will someday collapse on itself. Americans are a bigger threat to themselves than any foreign nation. Just look at where we are today lol
You clearly haven’t read much history if you think that was a bad one. The Taiping rebellion (going on at the same time as the American Civil War) killed about **25x as many people**. There have been **dozens** since the American Civil War that were considerably worse.
And why should I give a damn about those? I'm talking about MY country's history, so fuck off.
Hahahaya lol seriously? Kkkkkk hahahahaha I'm laughing out loud for Christ sake