It’s no secret — fighting boredom is our specialty, and we recognized a long time ago that learning new and interesting insights about the world is the best way to do it. As history buffs, we love delving into remarkable moments from our past and the precious stories passed down from generation to generation. I still remember everything my grandparents told me about World War II, and I’m sure you have stories like that too.
Even so, have you ever stopped to think about the lesser-known events that have had a significant impact on the world but usually go overlooked or forgotten — our schools’ curricula frequently silent accomplices of which historical events get more recognition over others?
More often than not, we miss out on some of the most meaningful stories simply because they’re not taught in schools. They’re relegated to a small section of our books, mentioned in a line, or not included at all. And the same thing happens every day outside of school, with noteworthy but overlooked events that don’t get covered by the media, usually for lack of sensationalism or because they occur in a country far, far away from us.
Time to change that. We scoured the internet for some of the most impactful events that are often forgotten and found a goldmine of information on Reddit. This thread asked users to share which events and facts, in their opinion, make up the world’s unseen history. Thousands of users answered the call and shared their knowledge and perspectives on moments of history — both contemporary and less recent — that most people don’t know. Despite how limited our brain storage can be, some rarely mentioned events deserve their space in our memory and to be told again and again to future generations.
By exploring some of the lesser-known but significant historical events, we challenge the often limited narratives we are exposed to. From the Tulsa massacre in 1921 to the ongoing civil war in Myanmar, we’ll uncover some of the hidden history and lesser-known facts that shaped, and still do, the world as we know it.
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"Nestle buying up water rights everywhere in the world and not only is no one doing anything about it, but most idiots are also buying single-use plastic bottles to enable them by paying $$ for their own water. Ban Nestle from being allowed any water rights. They can go home to Switzerland and try it there on their own citizens and aquifers."
SomeCollegeGwy said:
"This August a VACCINE for CANCER will begin human trials in the UK using the mRNA innovations from the covid-19 vaccine. It should be able to directly target cancer cells and only cancer cells (much much superior to chemotherapy). A vaccine for Lyme disease has been completed using the same technology. And a vaccine for Malaria has been developed using the same technology."
AnDroid5539 replied:
"One of the silver linings of the pandemic was that it pushed the development of mRNA vaccines ahead by leaps and bounds. Necessity really is the mother of invention, I guess."
And yet there will still be so many people refusing to give their kids these vaccines BecAuSe ESsenTiAL OiLs aNd CRyStalS WorK BeTteR
"26 September 1983 when a Soviet officer, Stanislav Petrov, literally saved the whole planet from nuclear war by identifying a nuclear missile attack alarm as false. Everyone owes him their lives today."
Yup. He was one of 3 officers that had to sign off on the launch from a nuclear submarine, the other two got false information or something, but he wouldn’t sign off.
"It was in this documentary I saw THE shady World of fast fashion on YouTube. All these mountains of used and unsold clothes from the first world are sold to western Africa. It's a huge business there. They are then sold to vendors who resell them. The leftover clothes are sent to a dump near the ocean and the pile of them is unbelievable. It stretches for miles. The environmental problems the textile industry causes at all levels from pesticides to water use and chemicals in dyes to transport of clothes is one of the number one pollution sources on the globe."
"China, despite not having any sophisticated matching system, is the world's second-largest organ transplant industry in the world. Some human rights scientists noticed that in China one could get an organ donor with a 2-week turnaround. They thought, hmmm, the US with one of the most sophisticated match systems in the world, and the wait list is YEARS - math ain’t adding up. Well, they looked into it - found out there is rampant organ harvesting from political prisoners, and the “disappeared”. Wanna guess where the majority of those organs turned out to be originating from? First the followers of Falun Dong, and secondly the Uyghur population is China’s biggest source of organ harvesting. They were able to back calc how many people must be dying a day to hit that mark compared to in the US. 2 weeks for an organ match… for Uyghur-sourced organs alone the prediction is 25-50 thousand are being murdered annually. Many are being harvested while still alive so they can continue to be a “source”. The followers of Falun Gong? Even higher numbers initially (though this may have flipped by now). And people are claiming no genocide is happening. Bone-chilling."
CompMolNeuro said:
"Bugs. We're losing insect populations at a staggering rate. Those beasties are central to many ecosystems. If there were ever to be a trigger to catastrophic, ecological collapse, then removing the creatures at the bottom of the food chain would do it. That's what's happening all over the world right now."
zeldafitzgeraldscat replied:
"It used to be that when you were driving at night, you would see 1000s of bugs in your headlights, and you would have to stop every so often to clean them all off your windshield."
A few years ago I moved back to Ohio from Southern California & one of the first things I noticed was the lack of lightning bugs. It used to be, right after dusk on humid summer nights, you'd see hundreds of beautiful little lights blinking - no more. Now, I feel lucky if I see maybe 10 or 15 bugs lighting up at dusk. I did google it at the time & discovered that I am not imagining the loss of the lightning bugs, but I blocked out any specifics from my mind, I'm so heartbroken. So, for any reasons or theories about the loss of lightning bugs, you'd have to google it, sorry. I can't even handle the bad news of it today :(
YeetMeDaddio said:
"People in southern Madagascar have been facing severe drought for the last two years. More than a million left starving."
Emotional_Area_2754 replied:
"From Madagascar and currently in Madagascar rn, I confirm this...
To give more info, we are your typical predatory government state, with high corruption, not a lot of development projects, etc. I am not a huge fan myself of donating money to NGOs as it is often a band-aid solution, that isn’t sustainable, and exacerbates corruption in countries like mine (source: my international development BA and personal experience). But having been to the south myself, and seeing how scarce the resources are. Supporting NGOs that actively distribute food while waiting for the government to take responsibility is the humane thing to do. I linked an NGO that I know is helping out by giving food to the south.
It’s in French: Action contre la faim [action contre la faim] action contre la faim.
The situation: Madagascar is bigger than France in terms of surface which is a fact that not a lot of people realize. We are a biodiversity hotspot, as diverse as Costa Rica, and the south is our very own desert. It’s hard to access, as road infrastructures are poor, and it’s a very dry area, we are on the brink of the first climate change-induced famine. And there is in general no infrastructure such as schools, healthcare, etc. Hope you have a blessed day, it’s so nice to see people care, and one thing that could help is tourism, it’s a beautiful country, I am hoping you guys can google the south of Madagascar, and maybe hop on a flight and boost our local economy. Jokes aside, it’s worth it."
iremovebrains said:
"It's not that people don't know about it, you just can't imagine the scale. The opioid epidemic is extraordinary. Before I started as the medical examiner I was aware but not really aware. A full 30% of my cases are drug deaths. It's a silent genocide. There are no class, race, or religious lines. Just a parade of sick people who never got help for their trauma or mental illness and died chasing a solution for their unaddressed pain."
lowblowbro1 replied:
"For anyone reading this and wanting to know more, I'd really recommend reading the book Dopesick. Horrific actually seeing the stats on what's happened as a result of the Sackler family and their greed. The TV show was incredibly hard to watch but very well done also."
As a 17 year addict, now clean over 4 years, I can say the biggest block to me getting help, at first, was the looks, whispers, and outright knowledge of people calling me junkie...people are dying, my friends are dying and tho we hear nice words...where's the help?
Congrats on 4 years sober. Help is out there everywhere. Get yourself on Medicaid and start googling. All kinds of programs out there. There's like 2 places just in the small town I live in. Help save your friends. Get them to a clinic. It doesn't have to be in patient (although it's preferred) there are lots of out patient programs. It's hard to do on your own. People need help.
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Just remember that chronic pain patients are not addicts. We, as a community are being harmed due to this crisis as well. We are being gaslit by the government and medical community.
I'm a chronic pain patient. I am carefully monitored by a pain clinic. I use opioids. I don't ask for more that I'm given. I don't take more per day than I'm allowed to have. When you choose to not obey the rules, you will find there won't be a doctor who will prescribe anything for you. There's a clear limit on how many pills and patches I can have per month. Believe me, the state I live in knows every pill you put in your mouth. So I'm monitored by my doctor, my pharmacy, my insurance company and the state. I play by the rules and I'm proud of it. I don't take 5 pills to get high. I take 1 to take the edge off pain. But I can guarantee there will come a time when those of us who legally use pain meds, because we need them, will no longer be able to access these meds. Ruined by those who have abused. I'm well aware that should I decide to go off these meds, I know I will need to be carefully weaned off of them. I've known that from day one.
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So, I have EDS and MS and I take a daily opioid. 5mg Oxy. That's it. Everyday, if I need it. Here's my take having been on the inside of this debacle: People start taking these pills for a legitimate accident and there's no plan in place to help them step back down off the opioid. Me? I'm weirdly fortunate in that I don't get intense withdrawal if/when I stop taking. I also don't get cravings to take more. However, I've seen firsthand just how fast and how hard opioid addiction can hit. They have to take more and more almost immediately and any sort of reduction throws them into intense withdrawal. What we need to do is A: legalize it. Yes, really. Then we can set up legitimate centers for people to come and use safely. We need to destigmatize the idea of these "junkies". First off: no one is junk and we really need to change that insidious nonsense. Once we can help people use safely,THEN we can work on helping them step down their usage. Penalization and humil has only made it worse
*humiliation. Apparently I hit the comment limit cap.
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As someone who has chronic regional pain syndrome, aka the suicide disease, we're usually an uncounted set of victims. I'm on 3600 mg of gabapentin a day (900mg, 4x/day) bc they refuse to do anything stronger, and here at least are very very anti-marijuana (that recent report saying it doesn't help with pain can fellate me; waking up is the worst part of the day, and that can mean I begin feeling human in 15 minutes instead of the 1-2 hrs I have to wait for gabapentin to reassert itself.) I am (metaphorically) tied to a bed, on top of ice packs, all bc the opioid crisis pretty much inadvertently demonized all chronic pain sufferers in the eyes of the medical community. Would a stronger, supervised pain medication or pot give me my life back? No. But it would give me some quality of life. Right now I have almost zero. My mom is the only human being I interact with that isn't a store clerk. Only person in my life. Hard to even want socialization when it feels like gravity grew knives.
I'm so sorry you're going thru all of this. I understand your pain. I'm a chronic pain patient as well. I think I'm in a bit better situation tho. Mornings are bad for me too. Especially when weather is cold. But I'm fortunate to have 2 pain clinics in my area. One affiliated with our local hospital. So I'm allowed opioids pain meds. Don't know what state you live in but my state monitors RX opioids closely. But we can get them if we're going to a pain clinic. I think vaping cannabis would probably help you. I'm considering that so I can reduce the meds I'm currently taking. However, I don't think Medicare covers medical marijuana. Don't give up. It's just a matter of finding the right doctor.
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I work for a major insurance company. My team's purpose is to reach out to members who have chronic pain and are at risk for an opioid overdose. We make sure folks know the risks and how to detox if they want. It took us until 2019 to start addressing the huge issue of untreated (or over treated) chronic pain.
In Australia your GP needs to get a special authorization code from Canberra before you can get opiate related drug relief. I believe that would mean it is closely regulated and steps would be taken to stop long term use. It also means you can't get multiple scripts by doctor shopping.
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I've been sober for four and a half years. We have a program in Washington state that puts social workers and police officers on the ground together and instead of criminalizing and arresting these drug addicts, they come and offer you help. They took care of getting me in the treatment, driving me to my appointments, and also making sure I had a different environment to go to when I got out of treatment. I now have a great relationship with these people still and I am watching them fight a losing battle but it is a much better solution then any that I've seen before in my state. I owe a specific three individuals my new life and my sobriety. And I am so grateful everyday that I am not out on the streets anymore, especially with the fact that fentanyl runs the streets now. There is life out there and recovery.
And now with vapes, young children can get involved too... (The edit was a typo)
The problem is they’ve blamed the medical profession and legit patients. The efforts to curtail prescribing has predictably made the epidemic much worse. Since strict prescribing recommendations were inacted the number of opioid deaths went through the roof. And the number of ODs from prescription meds stayed the same. Pain patients and their doctors are not the problem. But they’ve been the sole focus of the war on opioids.
Do we think governments don't "truly" do anything to solve this (and several other obvious issues) because they don't care or they want to control population numbers?
They have tried to do something about it. The problem is they didn’t take an evidence based approach. Alarmists spoke before Congress and they came out with a plan that may have seemed logical on the surface but has led to a sharp rise in opioid deaths. It was because the outcry to do “something” was so loud that they acted before doing research. Now the CDC has started to step back their strict prescribing guidelines but it’ll take time for it to trickle down.
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As an (former) EMT the majority of my calls were for ODs, and while I'd say 60-70% were due to illegal drugs like heroin. A staggering amount were due to pain killers. And that's because frankly it's surprisingly easy to get your hand on painkillers. A lot of hospitals if you go in and say you sprained an ankle a Dr will just write you a prescription. I once accidentally stabbed a box cutter into my hand. I needed 3 stitches. And the Dr tried to write me a prescription for I think it was Percocet. I refused. But hospitals need to become far more conservative with when to prescribe painkillers.
It is surprisingly difficult to legally get prescription pain meds now. And the harder they make it the worse the epidemic becomes. We warned the world over a decade ago if they made it much more difficult to get prescriptions, the deaths would go up. And guess what. Since the CDC put the strict prescribing guidelines in place opioid deaths have gone through the roof and prescription opioid related deaths stayed the same. It was never an evidence-based strategy. It was a knee jerk reaction taken without actual research.
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What are you talking about??? Seems to me your not the person that should be judging anyone. What did soccer mom's do to you? And is that what you do when someone you love is suffering? Throw your running shoes on? Your super cute Dr. Comment screams how shallow you really are
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"Pol pot wiped out almost a quarter of Cambodia's population during his reign using the Khmer Rouge. He died peacefully in his sleep in 1998, never being held accountable."
Historical_Wash_1114 replied:
"When I was a kid I saw a documentary about Pol Pot and it fu*ked me up for MONTHS! I became obsessed with the country and learned everything I could about Cambodia. Probably the first time kid me saw the true darkness of humanity. I can't even put into words how distraught I was."
I lived in Cambodia for 9 years. Sadly, most young Cambodian people don't know much about the genocide. It is not taught in local schools. There is a Genocide Museum called Tuol Sleng, that is the most depressing place I have every been. Most of the visitors are Western tourists, I rarely saw Cambodians there, as I had to go there regularly, whenever one of my friends would visit me.
"The Carrington Event. It was the most severe recorded geomagnetic storm that happened in the 1800s. It was so powerful it set fires in telegram stations. If we had one of equal strength today it would be catastrophic and, I'm pulling a number out of my a*s here, the death toll would probably be in the millions because of how much most of the developed world depends on power. Hospitals, aircraft, etc. That's on the more extreme end of the course, we get hit by smaller solar flares often and don't even realize."
We nearly missed a Carrington level of magnitude solar flare back in 2012. If it had hit Earth, society would just fall apart and millions I believe will die due to many problems. Navigation will be tough as our satellites responisble for GPS may be knocked offline so even using most of modern technology won’t do anything. Our power grid would’ve also suffered and estimates for fixing it would be really expensive. We would still be fixing up the power grid if the storm had hit us 10 years ago
Frances_E_Farmer said:
"In the Armenian Genocide, around 1 million were killed during WW1 by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey still denies it to this day and the US only just recognized it last year."
skeletorbilly replied:
"If it wasn't for the System of Down even fewer people would know about it. It's just not taught in school."
Shockingly I learned about it from hearing something written about the Kardashians. I’m not a fan of them, but it was interesting to come across something actually newsworthy regarding them
Reddit user said:
"The Ogallala Aquifer, the largest aquifer in the world, has been drying up."
Kevin_Uxbridge replied:
"I think you mean 'being pumped dry'."
Another theft of rights and life from the native American imagine that! We are so loud about everything happening everywhere but our own backyard
"It’s not that people don’t know about Hurricane Katrina, it’s that people don’t realize that there are still people who live with its impacts, to this day, and many of their people might not have even been accounted for (Aka, missing). Many of the victims may have been swept out into the ocean, and many of them were bussed to various parts of the country. Many of these people were children separated from their parents, and never heard from again. let that marinate. I’m not saying this to spread conspiracy theories, I’m saying this because we tend to think that New Orleans rebuilt, that people died and that the dust settled. But there are thousands of people who were never accounted for, so we don’t know whether they lived or died. We don’t know how many kids were taken advantage of, or anything."
They also don't realize that coastal Mississippi was the "unnamed land mass between Louisiana and Alabama where Katrina actually made landfall. Many of the homes and businesses were washed away in the surge, which reached 30 feet in Bay St. Louis. It actually broke the Interstate 10 bridge that crosses the Pascagoula River, which was closed for weeks, forcing the interstate traffic inland. The alternate route was Highway 90 along the coast, but one entire lane of a low bridge at the lower Pascagoula River was also washed out with huge strips of asphalt standing on end. It took me nearly two hours to commute the normal 30-minute drive to work for weeks.
Coliebear86 said:
"The oldest known plague graves from "The Black Death" 1338-1352ish are in Kyrgyzstan. It is believed yersinia pestis made the jump from animals to people there, then spread across to Europe. It came back about every 50 years and is still around today."
soymrdannal replied:
"I lived in Kyrgyzstan for a short while pre-Covid. Bubonic plague is very much still a thing there, but luckily we have antibiotics to help treat it. People still die of it in extremely rural areas, though."
GreatJothulhu said:
"Witch Hunting in Africa."
sometimesagreat replied:
"People with albinism are targeted and their body parts are highly prized by witch doctors."
There are a lot of really good documentaries available for free online about this, some of them are brutal but really really good in discussing how ugly it really is
"Both foreign and domestic massive companies are buying massive swaths of residential real estate, sometimes entire towns' worth, causing rent prices to soar and obliterating the possibility of homeownership for young adults. The US and Canada have taken steps to try to prevent this, but in the US the fastest fix to stop a takeover is actually HOAs making rules against rentals."
I never thought I’d have anything nice to say about HOAs, but that is a point I’ve never considered.
"Modern-day slave markets in Uganda. Humans being sold for $14."
Bucket list: buy an enslaved person and set them free. Edit: @Thomas Sherwin and @Nicole Weymann, you make good points. I’ve always thought that giving an enslaved human being their freedom would be a great thing to do. I was not thinking about supply and demand issues.
syzygy_is_a_word said:
"Ongoing and hugely important: the global NPK fertilizer shortage. NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium) fertilizer is essential for modern agriculture, and around a quarter of the global supply used to come from Ukraine and Western Russia. Because of the war, Ukraine isn't making any, and ships aren't putting into port in the Black Sea to get out of Russia. A lot of countries absolutely depend on fertilizer from Russia to even achieve subsistence-level farming, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, but in India. China and Brazil are pretty big consumers too and Brazil is one of the largest food exporters. So by this fall, thanks to Putin's war, we're likely to see food shortages and famine across a lot of the planet."
Xirenec_ replied:
"Also, Ukraine was producing huge amounts of world neon supply(supposedly over half of it), and it is needed for something in chip manufacturing."
JaThatOneGooner said:
"There is a civil war in Myanmar (formerly Burma) between a Junta coup and the people who are anti-junta. The Junta is responsible for the coup that saw the deposition of a popular democratically elected politician."
Philosophical_gump replied:
"It is insane what has happened/is going on there. The whole military Junta was in control for decades, followed by voluntary democratic reform (with the cooperation of a woman who was jailed for 15 years and is a Nobel Peace Prize winner) only to be followed by the most recent coup. I remember watching that fitness instructor video on youtube where the military vehicles roll down the street in the background when the coup started. But the real tragedy is the campaign of ethnic cleansing/genocide being carried out on the Rohingya people. A Muslim minority ethnic group. Even the now deposed Nobel peace prize winner has now been accused of ignoring/being complicit with the genocide."
But the Nobel prize winning democratic leader has never condemned or done ANYTHING about the treatment of the Rohingya, and she narrowly avoided having her Peace Prize withdrawn in 2018, when amnesty international withdrew their previous award to her. Listen to Philosphical_gump
"There's a current civil war in Ethiopia that has left approximately 600,000 dead since the beginning of 2018. It is a vicious war where both sides have been accused of forcing civilians to fight with very little training."
SuperTanker2017 said:
"That sand is the most stolen and unregulated resource in the world."
pickupurdirtyclothes replied:
"It’s the raw material for concrete (or cement—I always confuse the two). And it’s specifically river sand that’s needed because its irregular shape serves as a better binding agent. We can’t start using sand from say, the Sahara, because it’s round and can’t bind. China has used a huge percentage of the world’s sand in the last couple of decades."
I lived in Cambodia, which sold a lot of sand to Singapore, legally (condoned by the corrupt government) and illegally . There was a headline once in the Cambodia Daily; "Illegal sand exports to be taxed" which shows you what a corrupt, wacky country Cambodia is.
BoxytheBandit said:
"The Mount Toba eruption decimated the human population around 70,000 years ago. It could have been the end for us."
schilll replied:
"It's estimated that less than 1000 people existed on the southern tip of South Africa for 1000-3000 years. I've read the research that estimated less than 250 people at its lowest point. Almost all people can trace their lineage to those people. It is also speculated that fingertips wrinkle in water comes from that period. Since most of their food consisted of seafood like snails, crabs, etc. Those who were able to get the most food were also more able to reproduce. This is one of the reasons that I don't think humans will go extinct. We are like a virus, you can only kill 99.99%.of us. Some will survive and develop new traits that make us harder to kill."
"Tunguska Blast. Meteor blew up a few hundred meters above the forest in Siberia. Flattened hundreds of acres of trees. Only two or three minutes earlier, and it would’ve airburst over any number of European capital cities."
I had never heard about this before, but I'm definitely going to go look it up now!
"There’s a research that is supposed to put bioluminescent molecules in trees so streets could be lit naturally (not counting the benefit of having trees in cities)."
"Everyone is talking about climate change and a few years ago Polynesia was already under water. Some of its citizens tried to migrate to Australia but were refused because "ecological refugee" is not an UN-approved refugee status..."
"A dictator's son was just "elected" in the Philippines a few months ago."
Unfortunately, he was legally elected. His name is Bong-Bong and his mom has an awesome shoe collection, paid for by the people of the Philippines
HeavyGooses said:
"Not a singular event, but that's why it was basically forgotten about: the drying of the Aral Sea."
Cathalised replied:
"It's been great seeing Kazakhstan stepping up, damming (and consequently slowly saving) their side of it with fauna returning to the area. If only Uzbekistan could do the same..."
I learned about this in History class. Looking at the miles and miles of desert that used to be water and the creaking old buildings with no one there . . . it's heartbreaking.💔
nocticis said:
"It took me to watch HBO watchmen to learn about the Tulsa massacre. Like as many history classes I’ve had and not once was it brought up is wild."
SaltySinclair replied:
"I watched videos on it growing up. Then again I grew up in Oklahoma City so it was part of their history. It kinda shocked me when everyone started talking about it like they never heard of it then I remind myself."
I grew up in Tulsa, and when I was in school 70’s - 80’s, it was barely taught. It’s appalling that 1) it ever happened at all and 2) how long it was swept under the rug 😡
Ursus_Arctos-42 said:
"Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) had a plot where a major drug dealer poisoned drugs with a slow-killing poison. He then offers the antidote if the USA stops the war on drugs. Instead, the President sees this as a win-win. The world will get rid of addicts, and the war on drugs can be won. The reality is even darker. The doctors pushed too strong and addictive drugs on their patients, making money for themselves and the manufacturer. When the patients got hooked, and couldn’t cut the use nor get a new prescription, they turned into illegal sources, turning themselves for raw material for the prison industry."
Jibebelele replied:
"This is a tragedy of the American capitalistic healthcare system. A healthcare system powered by greed, what could go wrong."
Tbh if it weren’t for family I’d move out of the US as soon as legally possible. Although Canada seems close enough.
SuvenPan said:
"The northern white rhinoceros or northern white rhino used to be found in several countries in East and Central Africa south of the Sahara. Since 19 March 2018, there are only two known rhinos of this subspecies left, which makes the subspecies functionally extinct. The two female rhinos live in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya and are protected round-the-clock by armed guards."
luxxlifenow replied:
"I learned this no joke at Disney World at Animal Kingdom during the kilowhatever safari ride. The tour guide told us. She also mentioned embryos are made of this species so more might be coming about soon."
They must have collected sperm from males before they died. Someone had the job of jacking off a rhinoceros.
MyFaceSpaceBook said:
"Halifax Explosion also called the Halifax explosion of 1917 or the Great Halifax Explosion, devastating explosion on December 6, 1917, that occurred when a munitions ship blew up in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Nearly 2,000 people died and some 9,000 were injured in the disaster, which flattened more than 1 square mile (2.5 square km) of the city of Halifax. Shortly before 9:00 am. Many people were blinded by the shattering glass everywhere. To this day Nova Scotia sends a Christmas tree to the city of Boston in thanks for the aid provided after the explosion."
AngryWookiee replied:
"It was the largest human-made explosion at the time, it was only surpassed by the invention of the atomic bomb. My great-grandmother told my father that the explosion rattled the dishes in her house in rural Prince Edward Island."
The Longest Johns have a sea shanty about it that's very emotional and goes into detail about what happened
"Almost every river that is being used for irrigation the world over is running deficits. Almost all of them to varying degrees of deficit. Some of them are being mentioned here like the Syr Darya which leads to the Aral sea, but Colorado in America is responsible for about 10% of the entire world's GDP. It used to flow into Mexico and now it's starting to come up short in Nevada. Much more geopolitically important rivers like the Nile and Indus are hitting much of the same deficits. As the climate is changing this is going to lead to literally billions of people being food insecure as the former flood plain which fed their farms disappear. Grapes for example come primarily from California and Peru. They are a very water intense crop. They will quite soon cost so much to produce that they will no longer be marketable. Foods like bananas or coconuts will be more affordable and take up their space in supermarkets. We need to remember the political upheaval of the Arab Spring that got started from an East Mediterranean drought. The plague and the lockdowns caused supply shocks we all still suffering from. Demand for food will be constant however the supply of the capital needed i.e. farmland, as well as the supply of labor i.e. farmers, is going to disappear in the next few decades. If nations don't start transitioning to green housing and net zero irrigation then there will be a constant conflict as we have seen the last few years almost everywhere."
10 years ago, I remember reading an article where the author was saying that we'd start to see elderberries in more products for this reason. They're pretty drought-resistant, apparently. I could probably get used to elderberry wine.
TheEyeGuy13 said:
"99% of things the CIA has done and fully admitted to, but talking about any of them makes you sound like an actual crazy person."
RomanGrande replied:
"It’s wild how I thought that the CIA is wild coz of movies and series I have watched, but they pale in comparison to the things I am reading… IRL CIA sounds way worse."
How about smuggling heroin from Vietnam into the USA? The airline was called Air America and it was a CIA front.
JustAPerspective said:
"There are 1,000,000,000 years of missing geological Earth history. The belief is that humans evolved over six million years. That leaves a tremendous amount of room for other things to have happened, right here on Earth."
Opeth-Ethereal replied:
"This is particularly interesting because we have no idea what happened in all of that time. What if the Cambrian explosion was simply a second wave of life after a massive extinction event (the snowball earth)? Crazy."
Passing4human said:
"The fact is that petroleum is not just a source of fuel but also essential for manufacturing fertilizer and pesticides. When the oil runs out it's not just the horror of having to take mass transit, it's that a lot of people don't eat."
thetruthhurts2016 replied:
"As much as 99% of pharmaceutical feedstocks and reagents coming from petrochemical sources."
It’s horrifying how much society depends on unhealthy, unsustainable sources for everything.
Swampsnuggle said:
"Syria. Congo cobalt mines."
Emergency_Flounder58 replied:
"The cobalt mines are just insane. The entire world should know about this but doesn’t. To see the images of them is really sad."
"Chang Kai Shek intentionally broke the flood walls of the yellow river during the Japanese invasion of China in WWII. The Japanese were invading from the north and circling in on Wuhan, the capital at the time. Shek was advised that breaching the river should flood the invaders. This was an incorrect assumption. The yellow river in China has a long history of changing courses, and they failed to predict that recourse correctly. It instead flooded mostly to the south, flooding and killing millions, and destroying homes and cities. Also, the yellow river is very silty from the dirt in the mountains, and covers over a 3rd of all the farmland in China with a thick layer of clay, destroying the farmland for decades. This led to mass deaths and general lawlessness in the chunk that was flooded. Oh, and the floods didn’t even really bother the Japanese. They retreated for a little bit, took another path to Wuhan, and captured it a few months later anyway. So Shek just murdered millions of his own people in possibly the worst known backfire in human history."
Wow. It’s like the leaders of China not only don’t care about the rest of the world but their own people either.
"Everyone knows what the Holocaust is. Everyone. There’s an entire class in school about it. But what very, very few people know is the event that started it all. September 29th, Ukraine. THE MASSACRE AT BABI YAR. I seriously recommend that you look into it, I’ve explained this horror story too many times before."
“Babi Yar (Russian: Ба́бий Яр) or Babyn Yar (Ukrainian: Бабин Яр) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first and best documented of the massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, killing some 33,771 Jews. The decision to murder all the Jews in Kyiv was made by the military governor Generalmajor Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and the Einsatzgruppe C Commander Otto Rasch. Sonderkommando 4a as the sub-unit of Einsatzgruppe C, along with the aid of the SD and Order Police battalions with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police backed by the Wehrmacht, carried out the orders.[2][3][4] Sonderkommando 4a and the 45th Battalion of the German Order Police conducted the shootings. Servicemen of the 303rd Battalion of the German Order Police at this time guarded the outer perimeter of the execution site.”
User No 1 said:
"I don't know how many people know this but I haven't seen many people talking about the folk dwelling near massive landfills of trash in India, and making living by scavenging the trash and selling items for the little profit they live off of."
CloudsTasteGeometric replied:
"This isn't just an Indian problem - it's huge in Guatemala as well. If you're interested in learning more or donating to the cause check out International Samaritan."
I went on a mission trip in high school to a Mexican dump that had 100's of people living there.
"When the government secured Nikola Tesla’s work after he passed away."
ReindeerNo3921 said:
"Long-haul trucking in the US is dying. No one wants to do it because it pays poorly, and no one wants to get into it because the pay is really bad, and depending on which company you try to go thru the benefits are also awful. I knew 2 guys that tried to become truckers. One gave up because he said 50% of truckers are drunk or on drugs and he didn’t want to be involved when it comes out. The other got a job that paid way more than just driving a box truck around the city. It’s definitely going to be a problem when the current truckers are too old to keep going. Everything is going to get expensive and everyone will be super confused about why the poor got poorer."
mr_marshian replied:
"That's what trains are supposed to be for."
We don't use trains for several logistical reasons. But this is why i think the major trucking highways should have self driving truck only lanes. Safer if the trucks don't have humans doing stupid things in front of them. But the trucks never enter the cities. They have a parking zone like a rest stop where a human driver takes over to handle the city driving and deliveries. Then it goes back to the parking zone and proceeds to it's next destination.
"The Great Chinese famine. The natural ones were horrific enough but this was a man-made one, the scale of death is hard to comprehend. A series of famines that come about due to economic changes (collectivization of agriculture) in China between 1958 and 1961 ranged between 15 million and 55 million. The range itself is scary."
There is a really good and heart rending book done on this called: Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 - The author gets into a lot of details into what the causes were and he's won awards on this book - however he has been monitored by the Chinese Government since it's publication and the book is banned in China last I knew.
"Bhopal Disaster. A preventable gas leak killed thousands of people almost instantly and injured over half a million people. The deaths and injuries could’ve been avoided, but they turned off the emergency sirens. And of course, the victims barely got any reparations or justice."
It's so much worse than that honestly. Corners were cut, safety measures ignored, etc etc. The affected families were given barely anything to make up for it, as well.
ProfessorMx said:
"Afghanistan was able to fuel its war against the US by selling opium, the major market of which is in the US. For 20 years, the US couldn't curb the cultivation of opium and ultimately had to evade it. American consumption of Drugs: 1 American War on terror: 0."
dirtyhappythoughts replied:
"America war on drugs: also 0."
Ghostforever7 said:
"Two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. Thankfully they never detonated."
Shevek99 replied:
"I can top that. Two American military aircraft, one of them carrying 4 hydrogen bombs, collided in flight and fell in Almería, on the Spanish coast."
I was waiting for someone to mention this! The entirety of my dad's family lived within 60 miles of Goldsboro, it's insane to think what could've happened to them all if they'd detonated.
"Operation Morning Light. A nuclear Russian satellite crashed in the Canadian north in the 70s, during the cold war. Operation Morning Light was the name of the clean-up endeavor. This incident has had a major impact on the land, the animals, and the people. Many suspect the increased cancer rates experienced around the Great Slave Lake are a result of the crash."
nowhereman136 said:
"The amount of people who don't know what the Seven Years' War was is pretty surprising. While it was mostly between England and France in the 1750s, it was basically World War Zero, being fought by several nationals on a global stage. For people in the US, the French and Indian War was actually just a small part of the Seven Years' War. This was was fought in Europe, America's, Asia, and Africa. It lead to revolutions in America's and Europe and was a precursor to the Napoleonic Wars."
lobstaman1 replied:
"The 30 years war and the wars of religion, in general, were devastating, both by the wartime death toll and the civilian casualties through atrocities, famine, and disease."
Comfort_Lucky said:
"The Panama Papers."
Acc87 replied:
"A lot has happened with its data and is still happening. It's mostly dull legal stuff tho, so almost no media coverage."
"1755 Lisbon earthquake. One of the deadliest in history changed the political, social, and intellectual landscape in Europe so much that the aftermath we can still experience today. Kant alone had 3 papers written about it. And nobody I know, including highly educated people, has ever heard about it."
Basic_Football_6766 said:
"Something I think about all the time is that super volcano underneath Yellowstone that could take us out at any moment. I'm sure it's not considered a serious world event, but it's serious and something people tend to forget about very easily."
jdyerjdyer replied:
"I'm more concerned with the island in the Azores. All it would take is some evil person with a crate of dynamite to slip in one night and plant some along the fault of the volcano there. The fault basically splits the island in two, is very unstable, and has enough material that it would cause a 300-meter tall wave to race across the Atlantic destroying the Eastern seaboard and covering all of FL and South GA up to within 50 miles of Atlanta. Afaik, there is no one really guarding or watching that island. Although the supervolcano could be triggered by drilling, I doubt the equipment needed would go unnoticed... But then again, the park is rather large..."
"The president of Gabon used deep fakes after suffering a stroke and wouldn't appear in public amidst a myriad of corruption claims and human rights violations committed by the Gabonese government. It's still rumored that he's possibly dead and the regime hasn't revealed it."
On a more positive note: it's been discovered that mealworms can eat styrofoam and other forms of nondegradable plastic. They eat it and poop out monomers, so to say, and afterwards the mealworms are still safe to eat so you don't lose them as a potential foodsource. Parallel to this another group isolated two enzymes responsible for plastic breakdown in the GI tract of these worms, and determined the structure of the proteins. If you know the structure, then it's possible to produce them on a larger scale in the future for more effective plastic waste management. https://news.stanford.edu/2019/12/19/mealworms-provide-plastic-solution/ (and the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282046766_Biodegradation_and_Mineralization_of_Polystyrene_by_Plastic-Eating_Mealworms_Part_1_Chemical_and_Physical_Characterization_and_Isotopic_Tests_
A Redditt cut and paste with comments from Redditt already left on there to save any of us making any comments from BP..... wow ... be still my beating heart ... such originality ...
Yep. Usually BP at least cuts out the comments. Sigh.
Load More Replies...
I never said capitalism is bad let's be communists.... I've lived in Denmark where people pay 50% of their income in tax yet get free health care, education. Please be reasonable
On a more positive note: it's been discovered that mealworms can eat styrofoam and other forms of nondegradable plastic. They eat it and poop out monomers, so to say, and afterwards the mealworms are still safe to eat so you don't lose them as a potential foodsource. Parallel to this another group isolated two enzymes responsible for plastic breakdown in the GI tract of these worms, and determined the structure of the proteins. If you know the structure, then it's possible to produce them on a larger scale in the future for more effective plastic waste management. https://news.stanford.edu/2019/12/19/mealworms-provide-plastic-solution/ (and the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282046766_Biodegradation_and_Mineralization_of_Polystyrene_by_Plastic-Eating_Mealworms_Part_1_Chemical_and_Physical_Characterization_and_Isotopic_Tests_
A Redditt cut and paste with comments from Redditt already left on there to save any of us making any comments from BP..... wow ... be still my beating heart ... such originality ...
Yep. Usually BP at least cuts out the comments. Sigh.
Load More Replies... I never said capitalism is bad let's be communists.... I've lived in Denmark where people pay 50% of their income in tax yet get free health care, education. Please be reasonable
