30 Horrifying Historical Facts That Few People Know About

The Suffragists Night of Terror November 15th 1917 where 33 women fighting for the right to vote were picked up from in front of the White House and put in prison. They suffered beatings, being forced to stand/hang all night with their hands tied above their heads, being thrown around and smashed into iron furniture, and humiliation at the hands of guards. One woman was knocked out after having her head bounced off an iron bench and her cellmate became so distraught (under the impression the unconscious woman was dead) that she suffered a heart attack. She was denied medical care until the next morning.

These women were picked up off the street and thrown in jails where they were abused with no access to council. All because they dared ask Woodrow Wilson to allow them to vote.

EDIT: My comment shouldn't have more upvotes than the thread, be sure to upvote the OP! They're the one who inspired this comment :).

Second Congo War in the early 2000s left 5.5 million people dead.

Deadliest war since World War 2. A poll showed 91% of Americans had never even heard of it.

That as bad as North American slavery was it was far worse for the slaves sold in South America. The average life expectancy was 6 months, 2 if you were working in a mine. About 35% (11 million) of all slaves were sent to Brazil, 5% (388,000) were sent to the US. Despite this the US had more slaves than Brazil at all times solely because the slaves in Brazil died so many quickly.

The US government were forcibly sterilizing Native American women up until the 1970s. Meaning, the US government was (arguably still are) actively committing genocidal acts against Native peoples well into the 20th century.

King Leopold II of Belgium 1902--responsible for millions of deaths in the Belgian Congo, and had little black boys hands cut off for not producing enough rubber.

Rwandan genocide, it lasted 4 months. Four f*****g months and 1,000,000+ people died. Most died from being hacked to death by machetes.

Imperial Japan's Unit 731

Not in any school text books but as unsettling as anything throughout history.

A lot of people refer to the Jonestown incident as a mass s*****e when it was really a mass murder and people were forced to drink the cyanide flavor-aid by armed guards, and also the whole community was more horrific than most people know about and many were stuck in Jonestown against their will.

The Native American boarding school movement, popularized by the slogan "K**l the Indian, Save the Man", meant that thousands of Native children were rounded up, taken to boarding schools, had their hair and clothes changed, and were forced to speak only in English. Many people don't know that these kidnappings continued through the 1940s. My grandmother and her sisters were picked up on the school wagon in 1939 when they aeee playing outside, while their mom was gone. For weeks, she didn't know what happened to them or where they had gone. They had been taken to a boarding school. When one of my grandmother's sisters was caught speaking Cherokee at the boarding school, she was locked in the dark basement (where they stored a skeleton used for anatomy lessons) overnight. She's still terrified of the dark almost 80 years later.

Ash from the Dachau concentration camp "snowed" unto the people in Munich. This was during the summer, and no one batted an eye that there's really no reason for ash to be snowing down on them.

They later tried to claim they had no idea about what was going on at Dachau. Yeah, you did.

As an Irishman, maybe it's not totally unknown but I think the actual reality of what happened during the British occupation seems to be unknown to most people outside Ireland, even in Britain.

It was 800 years. Most shockingly, the "Famine" is just sort of known as some sort of act of God that plagued the entire country. The reality of what happened, that the "famine" only applied to certain members of society and how/why it happened just all seem to be swept under the rug. Calling it a Famine is quite disingenuous.

To this day people still make jokes about Irish people and their love for potatoes. Eh... there's a reason. There was nothing else "left" to us, and when that was gone, there was literally nothing else given to us(though, there was actually food to be had) It's not that we loved them, it was basically, that's all you have, eat it or die of starvation.

The Stolen Generation.


In Australia from 1910 - 1970, Aboriginal and mixed race children were taken from their families and abducted off the street by police. They were then sent to schools and church missions to be converted to Christianity and trained for service in white society. Girls were trained as domestic servants and boys were trained to work on farms as labourers.


I almost don't need to tell you about the physical and sexual abuse. The separation from their families. The suffering, the destruction of language and culture. Many never saw their parents or siblings again. When they were finally released from these schools, they were sent to work in white households that treated them like slaves. Physical and sexual abuse were again the order of the day. If the mixed race domestic servant produced a child by her white master? Well, that baby was taken away as well.


British colonialism at it's finest. The Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd apologised for this and many other atrocities on the 13th of February 2008.


I was talking to my mother about it not long ago. She is in her 60's and grew up poor in public housing. Her thoughts? "Well, I am sure they thought they were doing the right thing at the time." .... hell no.

Christerdom crusades to scandinavia/northern europe. (cultural apocalypse)

Esentially at least in finland, almost all information from our older history and gods was destroyed.

we used to have a lot of gods, now theyre literally just in a book thats a collection of folk stories because crusaders literally k****d all who knew anything about old gods.

i think it was more like 20% of whole population k****d because they didnt convert.

Engineers advised NASA to postpone the launch of the space shuttle challenger, due to concerns about the O-rings in the solid rocket boosters at low tempatures. They were over ruled, largely because the next launch window wasn't on a school day, and having students watch the first teacher launch to space was big PR goal.


As everyone knows, that launch failed because an O-ring in one of the SRBs failed.

That thousands of British children were sent to Canada, Rhodesia, Australia and New Zealand as part of the Child Migrants Scheme. The Child Migrants Trust was set up in 1987 to help families reunite. https://www.childmigrantstrust.com

In the 1940s - 1970s, most of these children still had parents and had been placed in British orphanages due to the crippling poverty after WW2 or were removed from parents who were deemed unable to cope (single/unwed mothers being a favourite excuse for removal). The children who were sent to these countries were often lied to: "Your parents are dead" "Your parents don't love you" "Your parents signed the release papers"... when actually, parents often didn't know what happened to their children and release papers were forged.

Learning disabled, mentally ill, physically disabled and ethnic minority children were not included, as many places like Australia wanted 'good white breeding stock'.

The abuse these children suffered when they arrived in these 'promised lands' was horrendous. The Catholic Church, Church of England, Barnardo's, Fairbridge Society and many other children's charities and Christian denominations were complicit in sending children abroad. The children were promised new lives and foster families. What they got was violence, abuse and years of hard labour at the hands of those supposedly meant to care for them.

People outside of Canada know little to nothing of our residential school system. I've heard survivors' stories and their treatment was horrifying.

The canadian government, the churches, and the RCMP (police) worked together to forcibly educate indigenous children. The RCMP would go to reserves and take kids away from their parents by force. Parents who resisted could be arrested or k****d by officers. The kids were then taken hours away to a school run by the church. By the time they got there, they would be beaten if they spoken their language or complained about the food/the conditions/their treatment, etc. Half of the day would be dedicated to scholarly education, the other half would be tedious chores (to help "westernize" the kids). The residential schools across the country went unchecked by the government. They helped fund them but really didn't pay any mind to the reports of horrific treatment from the kids. Rapes, murders, and suicides were very frequent (to listen to survivor stories I suggest We Were Children). Kids would be locked in small dark rooms for weeks if they asked to go home or misbehaved. Others would be hunted and shot like deer if they ran away. Thousands of kids died while the government did nothing. Over 2 generations of indigenous people were forcible stripped of their culture, their language, ect.

I was surprised to learn how many people didn't know about the roundup of Japanese American citizens after Pearl Harbor. I learned about it in school and thought everyone else did too.

The Great Siege Of Malta:

“Mustafa had the bodies of the knights decapitated and their bodies floated across the bay on mock crucifixes. In response, de Valette beheaded all his Turkish prisoners, loaded their heads into his cannons and fired them into the Turkish camp.”


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Siege_of_Malta.

Rosemary Kennedy's failed lobotomy, which made her mental capacity diminish to that of a 2 year old, and left her without the ability to walk or speak coherently.

Okay Im not sure how many people know this but the people I have told don't know it.

Edison electrucuted an elephant named Topsy *(she was being sentenced to death for trampling some people to death)* but Edison electrucuted her to prove his form of electricity was safer than Tesla's.

It is so f****d up that he electrucuted a poor animal to prove a point.