We humans are meaning-seeking creatures. The question 'why?' has pushed us to explore the mysteries of the universe as well as the depths of our existence. But in the process, we learned that not every revelation brings us peace of mind.
Reddit user Yoloextreme345 made a post on the platform, asking everyone on it, "What is a fact you know off the top of your head (preferably disturbing) that you probably shouldn't?" and people immediately started sharing things they would like to forget.
From ancient funeral practices to modern celebrity lives, here are some of the most popular answers.
This post may include affiliate links.
The more the ice caps melt, the higher the likelihood that some ancient bacteria is released and ravages our population.
I said I supported AI overlords. Not bacteria overlords thank you very much
A Jewish doctor treated Hitler’s Mother(The only person Adolf ever truly loved) while she was dying of cancer.
He promised his eternal gratitude to the doctor and even after becoming a pathological anti-Semite and later the Fuhrer, he was true to his word and was adamant the doctor and his family be placed under protection from the purge.
While some may think this an act of genuine kindness, I just think about all the lives lost because Hitler never stopped to think that all Jews were capable of good and not just the one who happened to have been good to him because of immediate proximity..
It’s weird how often (especially religious) people will think ‘all XXX are bad. Except the ones I know personally and like’.
In ancient Egypt, the deceased bodies of beautiful and high ranking women were left to decay for several days before mummification to discuourage necrophilia by the embalmers.
A woodpecker retracts its tongue and wraps it around its brain to prevent injury when drilling into trees in search of insects,
Humans, being mostly Carbon, can be made into diamonds.
I plan to go the cheaper route and have my ashes be rolled into a glass paperweight. Some day I might even end up on the shelf of a Goodwill for $2.99
Edit: 3000 points has unlocked another, also disturbing fact.
Snow is so sound deadening, that your kid could be building a snowfort, have it collapse, and you wouldn't hear their cries for help. Even worse is when they're tunneling into one of those parking lot plow piles. They won't hear the plow coming.
That reports of child abuse dropped precipitously during the COVID-19 pandemic not because less children were abused but because teachers were unable to see the typical evidence of abuse because most teaching was conducted online.
Humans can live without their stomachs (and no you don’t necessarily need any ostomy bags either).
Ask me how I know…
Never mind, I’ll tell you.
I don’t have one any longer (stomach cancer).
Edit: Thank you kind strangers for the awards. ☺️ Never got one before and now I have two, scratch that FOUR Now
Edit 2:Y’all!!!! You are so sweet and kind. Thank you everyone for the well wishes, kindness and questions.
Please go get genetically tested for these things. So far 4 of the 6 members of my family don’t have stomachs anymore (all this year).
Genetic testing can save your life!
Edit 3: Fun fact: Us ones without stomachs call ourselves seahorses now because they don’t have stomachs either.
I was told by a very senior police officer (a parent of a kid I taught) that it is estimated that 30% of all missing persons reported to police who are never located have been murdered and more often than not they have been murdered by the person reporting them missing in the first place. The police know this, but lack evidence to proceed with prosecutions.
I remember hearing some dude (retired military) on a podcast talk about how fragile our electric grid really is, and if it ever went down some 60%-ish of the population would die in about 2-3 months because nobody knows how to gather food or water anymore.
"Haibo" comrade come to south africa the land of load shedding, and an absolute waste of time government.
Big corporation always calculate wether its cheaper to pay a fine/settlement rather than obey the law.
Elon Musk’s father is currently with and has a child with his step-daughter. He became her step-father when she was about 3
I think I speak with every woman on here: blood stains are easier to get out of fabric than you think they are with very few cleaning materials, provided you get to them quickly enough.
Most arsonists are found masturbating somewhere within a few blocks of their fires
That when you have a headache because you're extremely hungover, it's because your dehydrated brain is shriveling and pulling on the membranes that connect it to your skull.
Once I found that out it's made all of my hangover headaches much worse just thinking about it.
One glass of water between each two alcoholic beverage to stay hydrated. It won't totally stop you from having a hangover (especially if you drink a lot), but it can really help. (Oh, and it won't help with your alcohol level, so please don't use it as a trick to take the wheel...)
One of the most toxic chemicals on Earth is an organic mercury compound. The material safety sheet notes that it has a slightly sweet odor, but at a concentration where the smell is detectable, it is already lethal. That observation came from someone who would inevitably die from accidental exposure.
‘Jenkins, I’m afraid you’re dying. What did it smell like? This is important, Jenkins.’
"If you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you" doesnt mean the attorney is free
Edit: Holy s**t I didn't know this was going to catch so many eyes! For clarification this is in the US (suprise suprise) and this is on a state by state basis.
Doctors removed the eyes of Jack The Rippers last known victim in order to check if they could extract an image of the killer.
If you touch something you shouldn't, touch it again in the same place and the police can't get a fingerprint as one distorted the other.
Edit: This is no longer true as technology has solved the "issue". So wear gloves or don't do naughty things without consent.
jokes on them take the finger at the last knuckle you are all good. how do you thnk i'm typing this.
If you skin a person alive and they somehow don't die of shock, they'll actually die due to hypothermia as without skin, they become unable to regulate their core body temperature.
If you’re a cannibal, never eat the brains. Eating brains is how you catch a disease called Kuru. It is 100% lethal.
Both prions. We know next to nothing about prions, other than they exist.
Load More Replies...
Only if the person you've eaten had Kuru. Nothing happens if you've eaten a brain or flesh of a healthy human (or cow).
Any nervous tissue, and nervous tissue runs all throughout the body. It is not safe to consume any amount of human flesh. I mean all up to how you want to die. starvation or insanity dementia loss of motor functions seizures all that good stuff.
Well if you're in a plane crash in the Andies you might be willing to take the chance. (Anyone here seen the movie Alive)
Load More Replies...
Anyone else remember the X Files episode called "Our Town"? People in a small town keep turning up with a rare fatal prion disease. The only way to contract it is to eat the brain of someone who has the disease...
Bones also touched up on it in ‘The Man In The Bear,’ although their way of covering it was far more simple if I remember correctly.
Load More Replies...
How many cannibals do you need to keep that disease from going extinct?
Wait, isn't a bulb involved in that question?
Load More Replies...
Some people don't have to have Kuru for their brains to be lethal.
True, but the likelihood of finding a person pre-infected with the disease is extremely rare, so you're mostly safe. Though there are plenty of transmissible encephalopathic diseases one could more easily consume, so yeah, probably just don't be a brain-eating cannable
Interestingly enough. Primative tribes that used to practice cannibalism already know enough about this to avoid eating the brains and certain other organs. Headhunters for example only eat the eyes and the tongue of the people they kill.
Load More Replies...
But on the flip side, if you’re a woman and you live and have a child, your child is now immune to kuru. Look up the details of you want to know how exactly etc.
This was always my wife's go-to advice for our kids. Seriously, you can ask them.
Reading these comments has made me wonder if Kuru and the idea of eating brains was part of the inspiration :braaaains' type zombies. It's 11pm,. I've got work at 7, looks like I'm off.down a zombie rabbit hole.
Our knowledge of Kuru came AFTER zombie lore, but I personally think it's the answer to the question "Where do zombies come from?" I even wrote it into a short story.
Load More Replies...
I'm guessing this has no effect on zombies since they are already dead?
The food (dead person) has to have the Kuru prions in their brain in order for someone to catch it from eating the brain. In some tribes of cannibals, the likelihood of that is considerable. Unfortunately, the prions can exist for a while before anyone knows it and those cannibals ate the bodies of their fellow people even after they died from an obviously neurological disease. Not a good policy.
It's also only found in New Guinea so why would you think just eating any brain would give you this disease? You would have to eat an infected brain. Like that cannibal tribe did. The are the dead's brains as a ritual. That's how this disease was transmitted.
The phrazing disturbed me as much the fact. Great hint for all c...s.
Also, never eat the liver of carnivores, it will Vitamine A poisoning (Hypervitaminosis A).
You can only get kuru from eating the brain of someone else with the disease. So as long as they weren't a cannibal themself, you would hypothetically be safe. The reason kuru spread so badly in Papua New Guinea was that in addition to occasional cannibalising of enemies, the cannibalistic tribes people routinely ate the brains of family members who died, as a way to keep the deceased "with" them.
Its a prion disease, which are absolutely terrifying and are always fatal. Same as mad cow disease and fatal familial insomnia
That's only what it's called in Papua New Guinea. It's actually known as prion disease, and it's transmissible from consuming anything tainted with brains OR cells from the spinal cord. Once exposed it can take upwards of 20-25 years for symptoms to show, and the fatality rate is indeed 100% It works by disrupting the biological processes of how proteins function, and similar effects have been shown in many mammals that intentionally, or inadvertently consume brain or spinal cells of those within their own species, As SammyLawrence27 similar to mad cow.
There are several prion diseases, and Kuru is one of them. Mad cow is another.
Load More Replies... Kuru is related to Creutzfeld-Jacov syndrome (if I spelled that right, I'm getting a lottery ticket). You only get it from eating someone's brain if they're infected with it. You probably should come up with a better reason to avoid eating human brains, shouldn't you?
Cooking doesn't kill the prions that cause the disease. It is the same as Mad Cow disease, basically, which is also a prion disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2268835/
Load More Replies... •A dead body in the beginning stages of decomp smell like wet hay
•if you die alone and become a “bloater” they pop you like a big zit before removal
•the best way to remove frozen brain matter off the sidewalk is a flame thrower
Confessions of an emergency cleanup specialist ♥️😏
Dolphins throw around pufferfish like a volley ball just to play with them. They also get high off their toxins. Talk about a puff and pass.
People dying often smell sweet. Not in a sugary way, but much more in flowery way. It's the decompositions of the body already starting. It can also smell vaguely like alcohol, especially their breath
I can only speak of my dear old cat, not humans. She had a peaceful, slow way to passing, and while it was clear that she is nearing the end, for about a week it was not clear exactly when she would go. Then on her last day I knew immediately that it will be THAT day. She smelled exactly like autumn leaves. Never been near death before, but I guess the knowledge might be stored deeper than personal memories. Sure enough, she did go in about 12 hours. I kept the top I was wearing that day for a long time, because I could smell that autumn scent on it, and it was the last thing she left behind.
I once read that the average person walks past 36 murderers during their life.
Edit: the average American
A perfectly healthy person can have a seizure at any point for no apparent reason.
The human brain has neurons misfire all the time. 99.999% of the time you don't notice because there's no noticeable effect, but if the wrong couple neurons misfire at the same time it can induce a seizure.
Source: happened to me
Also doctors sort of allow everyone one seizure, obviously they investigate the cause of it and reoccurring seizures are treated differently but if they can't fully explain it and it's a one off they just accept it. I discovered this when my son had a seizure as a baby and had to attend their regular "First seizure clinic".
22 U.S. Military Veterans commit suicide each day.
Whilst sad that figure tells you very little. What is it against the “normal” rate in the USA and how much of the population do veterans make up? Whilst 1 is too many 22 a day might not be a particularly high number as the USA has a lot of military and a high population.
A person split in half by the stomach doesn't die instantly. It has some lastly moments of suffering.
Source: a person was hit by a train and split in half in front of me. He took some time to die.
That Robert Pickton, serial killer in British Columbia, used to dispose of bodies at a local fat rendering plant, meaning that many of the products made from that plant, think gummies or anything gelatin related, likely contained human remains.
This is a bit misleading. He had a hog farm and his own processing plant. Some of the bodies were fed to pigs, some were ground up & mixed with the pork meat, etc. Which does mean he could've ground misc. parts up & mixed in with the pig parts to be rendered. But the various stories/explanations come from him, and he claims he was framed, so whatever he says we have to take with a grain of salt. We know very little about what actually happened to the bodies as there's almost no evidence since he'd been working for over 30 years and the previous investigations into him (prior to the final takedown) were bungled pretty badly.
That in ancient egypt it was a regular occasion that all people watched the pharao masturbate in to the nile
A cremation oven is about 1800° F. Lava is about 2000° F. Hawaii has accessible lava.
And it will form a thin, black crust over red hot lava (as it is cooled by the air). The crust is not sturdy enough to hold a human’s weight; meaning if you walk on newer lava fields you could break through and not be found. Source: got to walk on safe week old lava in Hawaii, but the park ranger had to chase a tourist that walked farther out than was safe.
The US military conducted chemical weapons tests on 60,000 US service members during WWII. It was kept secret until the 1990’s and wasn’t widely known until NPR wrote an investigative story on it in 2015.
The body fat of a drowned person turns into a soap-like substance if they stay under water with no air contact
There is a lake in Washington State in the USA that does this. It's called Crescent Lake IIRC. I used to date a guy from Seattle and we did a road trip and bought some books about weird stuff in the state. They said that teenagers from the 60s had been found down there... saponified...
Orcas will slap baby seals 80+ ft into the air with their tails until the seal's skin comes off, and eventually dies. The orcas will then not even eat it after, meaning that they literally just do it for fun.
I've learnt of some uncomfortable facts from some Aztec (Mexica) fammily which has been passed down from generation to generation, though I don't know how true this one is:
During a ritual, Aztec kings used to bring some victims up the tall pyramid so they may be sacrificed to their gods. Typically, these victims were tossed along the side of the very jagged rocks and we're usually found dead at the bottom.
The priests would gather the bodies and cut them up for distribution to the people according to importance, so the king got the best piece and his family and the other priests received some parts, etc. They inevitably ate these pieces as part of their ritual.
Of course they didn't just munch on them, they prepared them like any other meat and usually ate them with soups.
Fast forward to the time when the conquistadores came from Spain. These guys show up not long after some ritual took place, then the Aztecs welcomed them in and shared their food.
You can figure out by now where this is going, these conquistadores ate the soup so they inquired about what it was made of and sure enough they found out.
Although eating human meat was a big no no, the Spaniards actually enjoyed it. So when they inevitably conquered over the Aztecs, they ended up keeping the recipe of that soup. Instead of using human meat though, they used pork since they've said that it tastes similar.
We still eat that today, it's called Pozole (Pozilli).
There are still a few tribes who eat humans, the meat is called long pork because of the similarity in taste. Learnt that from an episode of River Monsters.
Cows can create mummified foetuses inside of their uterus. If the foetus dies and is not retrieved, the body absorbs all the liquids and humidity from the foetus, and what is left is a tiny dried up hard solid mummy of a calf.
I thought I’d heard of this in humans, but apparently that’s different. Instead, we have the extremely rare lithopedion - a ‘stone baby’ - a foetus that died (often outside the womb), and when the body can’t get rid of it, calcifies on the outside to protect the mother.
19th century murderer William Palmer's last words to the hangman who would take his life were "Are you sure it's safe?"
Charles Dickens called him "the greatest villain that ever stood in the Old Bailey."
4% of people on Death Row are innocent
Even if it was 1% , enough reason to stop it. I've always said that death is a disproportionate punishment for most crimes and too little for others. So no one gets served real justice.
The witch in Hansel and Gretel actually was cooking the two kids correctly, by using low heat cauldron over a long time with fatty meat, cuz she fattened them
Using a dead animal to try and throw off body sniffing dogs is a myth spread around to try and get people to trip up. If there's disturbed ground and some random animal 3-4ft down you can bet your booty that entire areas getting turned over.
Would it not be reasonable just strip the body, remove identifying features- hands, feet, head, body art. And just leave the body in a unfrequented place where animals can easily access it? By the time it gets found it would be scattered and eaten enough to make it impossible to know how the person died or who they vere. Never tested it of course :)
Takes 3hrs for a 180lb human to completely dissolve in a bathtub of potassium hydroxide.
During the Black Death, people would be so infected with the plague that the buboes (those lumps) that you could hear them gurgling with bacteria
Having an erection for 4+ hours can cause gangrene of the d**k which is when tissue is dead or dying due to lack of blood flow or an infection cause by bacteria. This can lead to erectile dysfunction, cosmetic issues, permanent tissue damage, and in worst cases as I've mentioned earlier, gangrene. This situation is called priapism.
Spotted hyena females have "Psuedopenises". Pretty much both sexes have penises, except the female penis replaces the vagina. This means the urethra must be penetrated by a male in order to mate. The pseudopenis also functions as a birth canal. Pretty painful birth if you ask me.
In a study, Female Spotted Hyenas have been seen trying to peg Male Hyenas. Pretty amusing but also disturbing fact.
Special thanks to my 8th grade biology teacher for this mental scar of information.
Edit: Spotted Hyena females have the pseudopenises, not all Hyenas.
This is the only species with worse birth pains than humans. The infant and maternal mortality percentage is in the 20s.
When you cremate someone with a tumor a lot of times the tumor doesn’t burn… it just smolders and smells bad.
If you need a human body to decompose faster, fill the a**s with yogurt. Don't ask how i know, please just google it instead.
Had a school presentation of this, cause it fascinates me while simultaneously horrifies me. The movie The Rock got me interested in finding out how much of it was true.
The VX-nerve agent kills in a brutally painful way.
When you tell a muscle to contract, you send out a chemical (ACh) in said muscle causing it to contract. When you no longer want to tense it, you send out a new chemical (AChE) neutralising the first chemical. The VX-nerve agent prevents this new substance (AChE) from being used to neutralise the first substance (ACh).
In the movie they mention you get spasms strong enough to break your own back, which I don't know if it's true or not, but you will begin involuntarily tense every single muscle in your body (including the diaphragm muscle) with so much force it can tear it's own muscle attachment until you eventually die because you can't exhale.
If you spray mere millilitres of this substance on a door handle, the next person to grab the door handle will die. It was used to assassinate Kim Jong Un's brother Kim Jong Nam, by spraying him in the face with this substance in a regular water spray container. I believe the ones who did this also died from the very minuscule amounts that landed on them as well.
No. Just No. The ladies involved did not perish. 🙄 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Kim_Jong-nam#:~:text=At%20approximately%209%3A00%20a.m.,murder%20of%20Kim%20Jong%2Dnam.
WD-40 rapidly destroys cocaine rendering it chemically unrecognizable. If you ever need to transport cocaine bring a bucket of wd-40 in case you get pulled over
Freddie mercury’s last words were ‘pee pee’ as he needed help going to the toilet
I’m not sure I would have wanted those last moments shared with the world. But that’s me. Maybe Freddie thought it was hilarious.
Note: this post originally had 90 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
This was an absolutely stupid list and so full of inaccuracies that I just can't even.. I usually refrain from commenting because I once got so many downvotes -> suspended on an innocent comment that I felt bad for days (yes, I know I shouldn't take it personally and blah blah blah but here I am). But I had to comment on multiple stupidities on this list.
Yup. You'll find out a lot of people here don't specifically care about accuracy, reality, measure and argumentation, and will just downvote without commenting to support their opinion. A dude on another recent post just established that 'All museums in Western countries were displaying stolen artifacts" - which a big big exaggeration to say the least. My poor attempt to nuance that was met with mute downvotes (not that I care, it's chill beer evening). But yes, it's more about what people want to believe sometimes here. Sorry you were suspended.
Load More Replies...
I'm an interpreter. You wouldn't believe what we learn.
Load More Replies...
The amount of time it takes for your brain to receive input from the various senses is less than the amount of time it took for the submersible to implode near the Titanic. That means those poor people down there knew they were in trouble, knew they were probably going to die, and then, just weren't anymore. No pain, no suffering, no knowing what is happening. One instant you're there, the next you're not. It's kind of better that way, I'd say.
If a bear has been eating human flesh, its scat will be white. A bit of knowledge from search and rescue.
Bored Panda should be held responsible for allowing individuals to publish information as fact when there is no evidence to back it up.
Knew about half of these. Of those I do know, you got them all right. Good list. I learnt a lot.
This was an absolutely stupid list and so full of inaccuracies that I just can't even.. I usually refrain from commenting because I once got so many downvotes -> suspended on an innocent comment that I felt bad for days (yes, I know I shouldn't take it personally and blah blah blah but here I am). But I had to comment on multiple stupidities on this list.
Yup. You'll find out a lot of people here don't specifically care about accuracy, reality, measure and argumentation, and will just downvote without commenting to support their opinion. A dude on another recent post just established that 'All museums in Western countries were displaying stolen artifacts" - which a big big exaggeration to say the least. My poor attempt to nuance that was met with mute downvotes (not that I care, it's chill beer evening). But yes, it's more about what people want to believe sometimes here. Sorry you were suspended.
Load More Replies... I'm an interpreter. You wouldn't believe what we learn.
Load More Replies... The amount of time it takes for your brain to receive input from the various senses is less than the amount of time it took for the submersible to implode near the Titanic. That means those poor people down there knew they were in trouble, knew they were probably going to die, and then, just weren't anymore. No pain, no suffering, no knowing what is happening. One instant you're there, the next you're not. It's kind of better that way, I'd say.
If a bear has been eating human flesh, its scat will be white. A bit of knowledge from search and rescue.
Bored Panda should be held responsible for allowing individuals to publish information as fact when there is no evidence to back it up.
Knew about half of these. Of those I do know, you got them all right. Good list. I learnt a lot.
