My Little, Naive, Innocent Brain Cried After Learning About These Horrifying, Shocking, And Upsetting Things In 2023
In case you want to end the year falling down a deep and dark rabbit hole, here's a roundup of alllll the awful, unsettling, and nightmarish things I learned about in 2023:
Note: Some disturbing and graphic content ahead.
1.The existence of a middle age "punishment" device called a "Scold's bridle" — which was basically an iron muzzle that went into your mouth, pressed down on your tongue, and was meant to be very painful and traumatizing. According to the British Library, the Scold's bridle was "used to hurt and humiliate women whose speech or behavior was thought to be too offensive or unruly."
In case you're wondering, according to the British Library, "The word ‘scold’ was used as a legal term for women — and, much more rarely, men — who disturbed their neighbors’ peace with loud quarreling, gossiping, slanderous speech, or brawling.
2.In 2013, a man in Florida was swallowed alive in the middle of the night by a 17-foot-wide SINKHOLE that had formed under his bedroom. Yes, his BED. ROOM. He was asleep at the time, and his brother tried to save him, but he was too late by the time he'd rushed in to help.
According to ABC News, "Jeffrey Bush was asleep in his bedroom when the floor collapsed beneath him and he fell inside." A dresser, the TV, and most of his bed set fell and disappeared into the hole. "All I could see was the cable wire running from the TV going down into the hole. I saw a corner of the bed and a corner of the box spring and the frame of the bed," his brother Jeremy Bush told the Guardian at the time. Jeff's body was never recovered.
3.In 2008, a priest in Brazil tied himself to 1,000 balloons in an attempt at "cluster ballooning" (a form of ballooning where people are literally harnessed to a cluster of helium-inflated rubber balloons). He ended up floating out over the ocean and disappeared from contact. Although the priest had been equipped with all kinds of gear like a radio and a GPS tracking device, he was lost for months, and his corpse was eventually found in the ocean.
According to CBS News, "When Rev. Adelir Antonio de Carli took off that fateful day, he was wearing a helmet, aluminum thermal flight suit, waterproof coveralls, and parachute and was seeking to break a record for the longest time in-flight with party balloons. The experienced skydiver, who had survival and wilderness training, was also carrying a GPS tracker and a radio so he could report his position to the Brazilian Navy and air traffic control. He planned to use the money raised in his attempt to break the 19-hour record to fund a 'spiritual' rest stop in Paranagua, home to Brazil's largest grain port.
The 41-year-old Roman Catholic priest disappeared, and the balloons were found in the water. Tugboat workers found a body in early July that authorities believed belonged to the priest. Medical examiner worker Rosane Alves on Tuesday said that DNA tests had confirmed the body was de Carli."
4.In the 1920s, Dr. Dicran Hadjy Kabakjian and his family refined radium in the basement of their house in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania to supply doctors and hospitals with radium-tipped needles for cancer treatment. The radiation eventually killed them all — either through cancer, or in Dicran's case, emphysema that was likely caused by the fumes. Interestingly (and horrifyingly), when Dicran's body was exhumed for study in 1965, his skeleton registered the highest levels of radiation ever recorded in the human body.
According to the Associated Press, "The 'hot house' came to light in 1962 during a search for forgotten radium sites. In 1964, authorities spent $200,000 to decontaminate it. They declared success after removing furniture, dishes, rugs and clothing, and after replacing windows, walls, sinks, and a concrete basement floor. [...] But in 1983, during a survey of sites that might be eligible for federal cleanup assistance, the EPA found radon levels in the basement 10 times higher than allowable and gamma radiation, similar to X-rays, 3 1/2 times higher. In 1985, the house was put on the EPA’s Superfund list."
5.The female Adactylidium mite — a small arachnid — is known for its highly unusual, and quite frankly, HORRIFYING life cycle that involves incest and matricide. (Read below for the exact details, if you dare!)
Here's what happens: The females are born with fertilized eggs. After a few days, they hatch and grow inside her, and she grows several females and one male. The single male mite will mate with all of his sisters inside their mother. Then the newly impregnated females will eat their way out of the mother's body — thus killing her in the process. The male, however, simply exits and dies a few hours later.
6.In 2013, a 20-year-old amateur football referee in Brazil was decapitated after he stabbed a player to death for "refusing to leave the pitch." The referee's actions basically instigated the crowd, causing many of them to rush the field and then dismember the referee's body in retaliation.
According to the BBC, "The state's Public Safety Department said in a statement that it started when the referee, Otavio da Silva, and Mr. Santos (the football player) got into a fistfight after the player was sent off but refused to leave the pitch. Mr. Silva then pulled out a knife and wounded Mr. Santos, who died on his way to the hospital. The player's friends and relatives rushed onto the field, stoned the referee to death, and dismembered his body."
7.Some years ago, a CT scan revealed that a Buddhist monk had actually been mummified — more specifically, self-mummified — inside of a statue. This process of self-mummification involved the elaborate and difficult process of eating a special diet and drinking a poisonous tea so that the body would become too toxic to be eaten by maggots. The statue had been purchased by a private buyer at a market and initially brought to an expert for restoration when the surprising (and unsettling) discovery of the monk's body inside was made.
According to CNN, the statue "made its way from a temple in China to a market in the Netherlands and revealed an extraordinary secret — a 1,000-year-old mummified monk. The mummy was found sitting on a bundle of cloth covered in Chinese inscriptions, revealing its identity as a Buddhist monk called Liuquan who may have practiced 'self-mummification' to prepare for life after death."
8.In 2004, three transplant recipients shockingly died after receiving organs from a donor who had been unknowingly infected with rabies. According to the CDC, "This [had] never happened before." After some laboratory tests, it was believed by experts that the donor had actually been infected by a bat.
CNN reported, "Rabies tests are not routine donor screening tests. [...] The number of tests is limited because doctors have only about six hours from the time a patient is declared brain-dead until the transplantation must begin for the organs to maintain viability."
9.In 2022, a man in San Diego died after driving his car into a parked car and inadvertently impaling himself in the neck with a knife that he'd been handling at the time. It was reported that "authorities found an open knife in the Lexus and a large amount of blood. At the hospital, doctors also discovered a stab wound in his neck."
"Investigators believe that he was attempting to mix protein powder in water, got distracted, and then crashed. Either the force from the wreck or the air bags drove the knife into his neck," according to the Times of San Diego.
10.In 2007, a 44-year-old French man was discovered to have been missing 90% of his brain. Speaking with CBC, Axel Cleeremans, a cognitive psychologist at the Université Libre in Brussels, explained, "He was living a normal life. He has a family. He works. His IQ was tested at the time of his complaint. This came out to be 84, which is slightly below the normal range. So, this person is not 'bright' — but perfectly, socially apt."
The same article explained, "The man's skull was full of liquid, with just a thin layer of brain tissue left. The condition is known as hydrocephalus."
11.Ettore Majorana was an Italian theoretical physicist working in the early 1900s. He had worked with the likes of other famous physicists like Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr. However, Majorana disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1938.
A week before his disappearance, he withdrew his savings from the bank and then took a night boat to Palermo, Sicily on March 23.
Two days later, he wrote a letter to Antonio Carrelli, Director of the Naples Physics Institute, that read:
“I made a decision that has become unavoidable. There isn’t a bit of selfishness in it, but I realize what trouble my sudden disappearance will cause you and the students. For this as well, I beg your forgiveness, but especially for betraying the trust, the sincere friendship, and the sympathy you gave me over the past months.”
He wrote one more letter and then allegedly traveled back to Naples on March 25. A professor who shared a compartment with Majorana was the last person to see him (alive or dead).
12.After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, 50 emergency workers volunteered to stay behind — exposing themselves to deadly levels of radiation — in order to prevent a full meltdown of the facility. Yahoo! News reported at the time, "The remaining workers inside the Daiichi plant are not going in blindly; they are experts in their field, and well versed in the health risks they're facing."
The story continued, "They're also equipped with state-of-the-art gear designed to protect them from exposure — but those are weak safeguards against high levels of radiation exposure. Radioactive particles can penetrate just about anything a human can wear — and from there, can be readily absorbed into the skin or inhaled into the lungs."
13.António Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist who invented the lobotomy — which is now considered one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine — was actually awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for this HIGHLY invasive and life-altering procedure.
Popular in the 1930s, lobotomies were considered a "treatment" for people with mental health conditions such as schizophrenia. There are a few different types of lobotomy surgeries, but generally, it broke the connections between the frontal lobe and other parts of the brain.
14.This photo of the inside of an Arctic lamprey's mouth:
15.The story of Mary Toft, a woman in 18th-century England who scammed doctors and the public into believing that she had given birth to rabbits. She would accomplish this by literally putting small rabbits and/or their body parts up inside her vagina in secret and then "birth" them later.
As Atlas Obscura explained, "Though the rabbit births weren’t real, the pain was. According to Toft’s confessions, the ruse relied on an accomplice placing parts of dead animals into Toft’s vagina — painful, difficult, and dangerous. Per St. André’s (a surgeon-anatomist tasked with investigating Toft's case) early reports, Toft’s rabbits were often delivered with their sharp nails intact. Because these animal remains were likely hidden in Toft’s body for several weeks, historian Karen Harvey says, 'It’s astonishing she didn’t die of a bacterial infection.'"
It's unclear what Toft's motivation was for doing this, but Harvey continued to say that she didn't think Toft was "primarily responsible," and that she was "the lead role in a performance orchestrated by other people."
16.The fact that oubliettes used to exist. An oubliette (from the French "oublier" meaning "to forget") was a type of medieval dungeon that had a trap door at the top, just out of reach of the prisoner. The worst part was that the dungeon would be shaped like a really narrow passage so that the prisoner wouldn't be able to sit or even get on their knees. So, yeah, they were basically forced to stand and starve to death.
According to Owlcation, "Oubliettes were sometimes built within the walls of the upper floors of a castle rather than in the dungeon so that victims could hear and smell the life of the castle as they slowly died of deprivation in unspeakable conditions. Corpses were left to be consumed by vermin, and many oubliettes were discovered centuries later to be strewn with human bones."
17.In August 2022, Celebrity Cruises stored a dead man's body in the ship's drinks cooler where it was apparently "left to rot for six days." When the body was found, it was reportedly in "advanced stages of decomposition."
According to CNN, "Robert L. Jones,\ died due to a cardiac event while on the Celebrity Equinox cruise ship in August 2022, traveling from Fort Lauderdale to ports in the Eastern Caribbean."
Jones's wife filed a lawsuit in April 2023, stating, “When the funeral services employee in Ft. Lauderdale was brought onto the ship to retrieve Mr. Jones’s body, his body was not located in the ship’s morgue. Instead, Mr. Jones’s body had, at some time not yet known, been moved from the ship’s morgue to a cooler on a different floor than the ship’s morgue. The cooler in which Mr. Jones’s body was found by the funeral employee had drinks placed outside of the cooler, and was not at a temperature which was sufficient nor proper for storing a dead body to prevent decomposition."
18.Heather Mack, a convicted murderer from Chicago who, along with her boyfriend, brutally killed her mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, in Bali, Indonesia in August 2014. The crime drew a lot of public attention due to the fact that Mack and her boyfriend stuffed her mother's body in a suitcase.
According to NBC News, "According to the indictment, the two killed von Wiese-Mack, then stuffed the body into a suitcase and loaded it into the trunk of a taxi cab. [They] tried to cover up what they had done by 'removing items of clothing worn during the killing. Von Wiese-Mack's badly beaten body was later discovered in the taxi parked at the upscale St. Regis Bali Resort."
In April 2023, documents filed in Chicago court offered "evidence that Mack conspired with her boyfriend at the time, Tommy Schaefer, to kill von Wiese for her $1.5 million estate." According to Fox 32, on the day Mack and her mother traveled to Indonesia, she exchanged texts with Schaefer. Schaefer texted Mack, "I can’t wait to be rich… I seriously can’t wait I'm so geeked. I’m like thinking of lavish lifestyles…" to which Mack responded, "lmao…Eee Im in the [airport] lounge now…I love you…I’m about to board."
Mack, who was released from prison in Indonesia in 2021, is set to face trial on federal charges in the US on July 31, 2023.
19.The existence of Cymothoa exigua, aka the "tongue-eating louse," a parasitic isopod that severs the blood vessels in a fish's tongue, causing the tongue to fall off. After detaching the tongue, the parasite then attaches itself to the remaining stub, basically serving as the fish's new "tongue."
According to NPR, "The parasite then feeds on the fish's mucus. It also happens to be the only known case where a parasite functionally replaces a host's organ."
20.Images from the aftermath of the Apollo 1 tragedy that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. On Jan. 27, 1967, during a launch rehearsal test, a fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module, burning all three men alive.
According to NBC News, some of the last words spoken from the crew were:
"Fire!"
One word from Ed White.
Then, the unmistakable deep voice of Gus Grissom.
"I've got a fire in the cockpit!"
Instantly afterward, Roger Chaffee's voice.
"Fire!"
Then a garbled transmission, and then the final plea:
"Get us out!"
Then words known only to God, followed by a scream...
21.The Mummies of Venzone, a collection of dozens of naturally mummified bodies — who became that way thanks to mold — that were found in Venzone, Italy in the 1600s and date back to as early as the 1300s.
According to the town's tourism site, "The natural mummification of the 'Mummies of Venzone' is due to particular environmental conditions that occurred in some tombs of the Cathedral in which the Hypha Bombicina Pers developed, a mold with the property of dehydrating tissues inhibiting decomposition."
22.The story of David Charles Hahn, aka the "Radioactive Boy Scout," who built a homemade radioactive neutron source in his Michigan home's backyard when he was just a teenager.
According to MSN, "Hahn was able to develop a network of professional colleagues and professors that unwittingly guided him in the building of his breeder reactor. It was through this network that he learned how to extract radioactive elements from common household things, like radium from clocks and thorium from camping lanterns."
Hahn was caught when people reported to authorities that they thought they'd seen someone in the area stealing tires. Police eventually arrived at Hahn's house, questioned him, and found what they thought were bombs. Although there weren't any bombs, they did find "enough radioactive material to institute the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan." Eventually, the feds took over and cleaned up the radioactive material. It is believed 40,000 residents may have been potentially exposed to Hahn's experiments.
23.The death of Paulette Gebara Farah, a 4-year-old girl in Mexico who disappeared, but was later found dead under suspicious circumstances. Her body was discovered seemingly hidden in her own bed.
According to CBS News, national television and radio stations across Mexico had Paulette's parents on their shows, and many people came together in the search for Paulette. However, "Much of that compassion turned to rage and disbelief when investigators searching Paulette's apartment for signs that clothes or suitcases had been removed stumbled on her tiny body, wrapped in sheets and wedged between the mattress and the frame of her very own bed. The coroner said she died by suffocation."
24.The existence of this fascinating (but horrifying-looking) creature called a Cosmoderus Femoralis, aka an armored fighter cricket, which is apparently quite rare.
25.This 1950s news clipping from the New York Daily Mirror that asked, "If a Woman Needs It, Should She Be Spanked?" And then had responses by three men ranging from "Why not?" to "Yes when they deserve it" and "You bet. It teaches them who's boss."
The responses read:
Miguel Matos, Brooklyn, counterman: "Why not? If they don't know how to behave by the time they're adults, they should be treated like children and spanked. That ought to make them grow up in a hurry. If it doesn't at first, they'll soon get the idea."
Frank Desiderio, Brooklyn, barber: "Yes, when they deserve it. As a barber, I've got a lot of faith in the hairbrush. I think there are certain cases when it is advisable. When it is, there's no reason why you shouldn't go right ahead and do it. I can't knock the idea. In my business, a man sets a lot of store by the results he can get with a hairbrush properly applied."
Teddy Gallei, Brooklyn, parking lot attendant: "You bet. It teaches them who's boss. A lot of women tend to forget this is a man's world, and a lot of men who stepped down as boss of a family wish they hadn't. Spanking might help get back some of the respect they lost."
26.The story of Joe Mellen, a "psychedelic adventurer" from the UK who drilled a hole in his own skull in order to "stay high" in 1970.
According to the Times of India, "He devised a plan to ensure he could be indefinitely tripping through an archaic process known as trepanation. Apparently, he learned about an ancient process from Bart Huges, a Dutch academic in the 1960s. Mellen tried the procedure and wrote about the same in his memoir Bore Hole."
Mellen explained to Vice in 2016, "At that time, I was broke, and I certainly couldn't afford an electric drill, so I bought a hand trepan from a surgical instrument shop. It's a bit like a corkscrew, really, but with a ring of teeth at the bottom. It has a point in the middle, which makes an impression on the skull, and then you turn it until the teeth are cut into the skull."
It wasn't until Mellen's third attempt, in 1970, while using an electric drill that he felt he was "successful."
27.This terrible story of a leaping sturgeon that jumped out of the water, hit, then killed a 5-year-old girl in Florida who had been out boating with her family.
According to the Florida Times-Union, "The fish are famous for leaping more than seven feet above the water, and many people boating on the north Florida river have been injured by the large, airborne sturgeon over the years. The large, prehistoric-looking sturgeon have hard plates along their backs. They can grow up to 8 feet long and up to 200 pounds and cause serious injuries."
28.The fact that a medicine called "One Night Cough Syrup" was made in the 1800s and it contained wild ingredients like alcohol, cannabis, chloroform, and morphia, sulph (an old name for morphine).
According to Snopes, "One Night Cough Syrup, manufactured by Kohler Manufacturing Co., was indeed a real product. [...] Entirely unregulated, such drugs' effects, if any, could often be attributed to what would now be considered hardcore narcotics, recreational drugs, or some combination of the two. A series of exposes in the early 1900s and the passage of new laws led to increased scrutiny of the patent medicine market."
29.This shocking/wtfffffff video of what it looks like when an "angry" camel inflates its dulla — an organ in male camels' throats that is "believed to be associated with the display of dominance among males and for attracting females."
You can watch the whole video for the full effect here.
30.The shocking fact that the author of Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown, died as a result of doing a high kick.
According to the New York Times, "After receiving an emergency appendectomy in France, she was asked by a nurse how she was doing. 'Grand!' she replied, giving a cancan kick. It dislodged a blood clot in her leg, which swiftly traveled to her brain. She was 42."
31.The tragic story of 4-year-old Brandon Zucker, who was crushed underneath one of the vehicles in the Roger Rabbit Car Toon Spin ride at Disneyland in 2000. Brandon suffered "serious brain damage" and "never talked or walked again." He died in January 2009.
According to the LA Times, "Brandon tumbled from a spinning Roger Rabbit 'taxicab' and was trapped under another car. The vehicle rolled over him, folding his 45-pound body in half. He was stuck for about 10 minutes before being freed, suffering serious brain damage. Although he would occasionally smile and laugh, he never talked or walked again."
After the state conducted a major investigation into the incident, it was determined that Disneyland employees "did not properly load Brandon into the ride — with the smallest child farthest from the cutout entryway — and failed to fully lower the lap bar. It also ordered significant safety changes to the ride, including a sensor-equipped guard around the bottom of each car."
Brandon's family sued Disneyland and settled for an undisclosed sum to help pay for his medical care.
32.The awful death of Ilda Vitor Maciel, an 88-year-old woman in Brazil who died after accidentally being injected with soup. Allegedly, one of the nursing technicians injected the soup into her veins instead of her feeding tube.
According to KHQ, "The nursing technician mistakenly injected the soup into the woman's IV in her right arm instead of her feeding tube. Maciel's daughter, Ana Ruth, was with her when the injection happened and said her mother started to squirm uncomfortably and stick her tongue out as soon as the soup was injected. She said she had not seen her mother that physically distraught since being in the hospital. Maciel died just 12 hours after receiving the injection."
33.The fact that A LOT of people actually go overboard on cruise ships (we're talking hundreds). And, even worse, in the past, less than a quarter of them were actually rescued.
According to USA Today, "Between 2009 and 2019, there were 212 overboard incidents globally involving passengers and crew, according to statistics. Only 48 people were rescued." Brian Salerno, senior vice president of global maritime policy at the Cruise Lines International Association, explained, "I'll stress that people don't just fall over the side. There are railings, and they're pretty high. It's almost always the result of an intentional act."
34.The first firefighter killed after responding to the 9/11 attacks was a man named Daniel Suhr...he was hit by a falling body, someone who had jumped from one of the towers.
According to Jean Suhr Ryan, Daniel's sister, "When he was down, his coworkers, other firefighters from his house and other houses, helped try to resuscitate him. When they closed the ambulance doors, the tower came down. The men from his firehouse would have been in there if he didn’t die first."
35.In 2018, construction workers in Valdosta, Georgia discovered HUNDREDS of human teeth BEHIND A WALL. The building, which was originally built in 1900, had been occupied by a dentist, although no one really knew why the teeth of all his patients had been stashed behind the wall.
According to Time, "Ellen Hill, Valdosta Main Street director, said that Valdosta is not the first town in Georgia to have discovered a trove of teeth interred in the walls of a historic building, as Greensboro and Carrolton have found the same." Hill explained, "I’m not sure if it was a common practice between dentists at that time, but it’s very strange that there were two other people that said, ‘Hey, we’ve had that happen, too.'"
36.The fiery and unimaginable death of Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who crashed down to earth while "crying in rage" in 1967. Komarov was the first human to die in a space flight after the parachute failed on his capsule, the Soyuz 1.
According to NPR, "When the capsule began its descent and the parachutes failed to open, the book describes how American intelligence 'picked up [Komarov's] cries of rage as he plunged to his death.' Some translators hear him say, 'Heat is rising in the capsule.' He also uses the word 'killed' — presumably to describe what the engineers had done to him.
Komarov was honored with a state funeral. Only a chipped heel bone survived the crash."
37.This upsetting video, which recently went viral, that shows HOW MUCH TRASH has been left and accumulated on Mount Everest by tourists (which has become a major problem).
Speaking with Newsweek, Tenzi Sherpa said, "I think the government should make strict rules for those who leave trash [on Mount Everest], and a more effective cleaning campaign project should be held."
You can watch the full video here.
38.The tragedy of Cameron Robbins, a teenager and recent high school graduate who fell overboard while on a sunset cruise ship in the Bahamas on May 24, 2023. According to reports, Cameron allegedly jumped off the ship on a dare. Video of the incident showing Cameron swimming in the water in near-total darkness went viral online.
According to the Independent, "The US Coast Guard and Royal Bahamas Defence Force spent several days searching for Mr. Robbins before suspending their search efforts on Saturday, 27 May."
39.And the death of a 23-year-old Russian man earlier this year, who was attacked and violently killed by a shark near a beach in Egypt. The disturbing video of the incident, which went viral on TikTok, showed the man being attacked and screaming, "Papa!"
According to the Independent, "The 23-year-old Russian national had gone swimming in the waters off his resort near the city of Hurghada when a shark emerged underwater and grabbed him." The article continued, "The environment ministry in Egypt later said it had caught the shark and was examining it in a laboratory to try to determine the reasons for the rare attack."
40.The existence of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, aka prion diseases — a group of "exceptionally rare brain diseases" — which have a 100% mortality rate and affect both animals and humans. An example of this would be "mad cow" disease.
According to the Guinness World Records, "These are spread by the ingestion of abnormal proteins called prions. Prions are misfolded malfunctioning versions of common proteins that have the ability to transmit their shape to the normal versions of the same protein."
41.This "omgggg whaaaaat?!?!" video of what a sturgeon's mouth looks like (SIDE EYE).
Watch the full video here.
42.The "incorruptible" body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, a nun who died in 2019 at the age of 95. Four years after her death, her body was exhumed and showed no signs of decay.
According to CNN, "When the coffin was unearthed, Lancaster’s body was apparently 'incorrupt,' which in Catholic tradition refers to the preservation of the body from normal decay. The remains were intact even though the body had not been embalmed and was in a wooden coffin." The article continued, "Experts say it is not necessarily uncommon for bodies to remain well-preserved, especially in the first few years after death."
43.The 53-year-old cold case of "trunk lady," who, thanks to modern DNA testing, has now been identified as Sylvia June Atherton, a mother of five, from Tucson, Arizona.
According to CNN, "On Halloween 1969, St. Petersburg police were called to a wooded area behind what was then a restaurant named the Oyster Bar." At the time, "Two children reported seeing two white men in a pickup truck unload the trunk in the field and leave. When the officers opened the trunk, they found a woman’s body, wrapped in a large plastic bag, police said in a statement. She had visible injuries to her head and was partially clothed in a pajama top. She had been strangled with a bolo tie, police said. Investigators were unable to identify the woman, and she was buried as 'Jane Doe' in St. Petersburg’s Memorial Park Cemetery."
44.This wild image of what an owl's ear actually looks like, which is both amazing and also looks like something out of a sci-fi horror film. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
See the full video here.
45.A man was BOILED to death — his body actually dissolved — after he illegally jumped into a hot spring in Yellowstone National Park. The man had been making an attempt to "hot pot" in the acidic pool. The entire incident was recorded by the man's sister on her cellphone.
The incident happened in 2016 and, according to BBC News, the man, Colin Scott, and his sister "had been specifically looking for an area to soak in the thermal springs, despite the potential danger and warning signs."
The story continued, "Rescue teams later found his body in the pool but abandoned attempts to retrieve it due to the decreasing light available, the danger to themselves, and an approaching lightning storm. The following day, workers were unable to find any significant remains in the boiling water."
According to the park's deputy chief ranger, Lorant Veress, "In a very short order, there was a significant amount of dissolving."
46.In Thailand in July 2023, a woman's leg had to be amputated after it got trapped in an airport's moving walkway. Her injuries were SO severe that the amputation had to go all the way up to her kneecap.
According to CNN, the terrible incident happened at Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok at the end of the moving walkway. Immediately after the incident, the airport's moving walkways had service suspended to allow for investigation and safety checks. The family, meanwhile, requested surveillance camera footage of the accident.
47.The fact that muffler hair is a very real thing that exists...and looks absolutely TERRIFYING. In the photo below, this person woke up one day to find what looked like human hair sticking out of their car's exhaust. But, don't worry, turns out it is not any kind of human (or animal hair), just a fibrous insulating material.
"Muffler hair, it's a sound dampener inside your muffler. Totally normal for it to come out when the muffler gets old. You'll have to take the car to a shop to get some exhaust work."
48.While filming Titanic, someone secretly drugged members of the cast and crew with PCP. To this day, no one knows who spiked the clam chowder that was the culprit.
Actor Bill Paxton (who ate some of the clam chowder and was one of the people who was drugged) explained on Larry King Now, "One night we were shooting splits, we would go in at 5 o'clock, we'd take our dinner at midnight, and we would work 'til dawn. And I didn't care for the caterer much, so I was ordering my meals in. But I was having a good conversation with Jim Cameron on the set, and I said, 'Jim, are you gonna eat off the truck tonight?' He said, 'Yeah.' I said, 'Well, I'll join you.' So, we ladled up the clam chowder not knowing it was laced with PCP, and, uh, I don't know who did it or why...but I remember going back to my trailer after lunch and Jim went up to his office.
Some people are freaking out, some people are conga dancing, some people are euphoric... I was pretty stoned on something pretty bad. Me and Jim initially thought there was some neurotoxin in the clams, maybe the clams had been left out in the sun or something. And then I figure, while they're examining all these other people, I tell Jim, 'I'm not gonna hang out here. It's bedlam.' So, I wandered down back to set and drank a case of beer. That seemed to help me."
49.The Triumph carnival cruise ship disaster of 2013, which became known as the "poop cruise" from hell. The ship was stuck for almost a week at sea due to an engine fire, which then led to all kinds of technical problems...including lots of bags of poop all over the place.
According to Business Insider, "The testimonies from the passengers are truly disgusting: Hallways were flooded with human waste, there was no A/C or running water, and passengers were left to survive on limited food and water. The Triumph was given the nickname 'poop cruise' because passengers were forced to use the bathroom in bags."
And, apparently, it got so bad that bags full of "human waste" actually started piling up in the hallways, outside of people's doors. One passenger told CNN, "Just on our deck alone, there were the biohazard bags lined up across the floor. We’re talking about raw sewage at just the end of our deck alone. It was repulsive.”
50.The existence of GIANT beach worms, which just unlocked a new fear for me.
Watch the full video here.
51.The recent air travel nightmare story of a passenger discovering the floor below him, his wife, and their cats was soaked in blood and feces.
Habib Battah was traveling from Paris to Toronto on Air France on June 30, 2023, when he smelled what he thought smelled like manure coming from the footbed below his and his wife's seats.
They were also traveling with their cats, who were in carriers below the seats. At first, Battah thought maybe the cats had an accident, so he looked at the cats, but they were fine.
However, and this is where the nightmare begins, Battah then noticed a wet stain underneath the cats' carriers. He flagged a flight attendant, who gave him some wet wipes. But when he started cleaning, what got on the wipes was BLOOD RED.
As it turned out, it was human blood. According to CNN, "The day before, on a Paris-Boston flight, a male passenger had suffered what Battah says the crew called a 'hemorrhage.'" Although the passenger "survived," the aircraft had not been cleaned. Worse, because the flight was full, Battah, his wife, and the cats were unable to move their seats.
It was later confirmed by Air France that the liquid was blood and feces.
52.In some of the most heartbreaking news I've read in a while, it's been estimated that between 200,000 and 600,000 pets were left behind during Hurricane Katrina evacuations...but not because their owners didn't want to take them, but because people were basically FORCED to leave them behind.
Speaking with Vox, Sarah DeYoung, a professor at the University of Delaware who studies evacuation decision-making, explained, "A lot of people had top-down directives to not allow people to take dogs and cats with them, and bringing cats and dogs to sheltering spaces was not thought of. That caused a lot of distress, and there was a huge outcry."
The article continued, "According to a survey by the Fritz Institute, nearly half of those who chose to stay behind during Katrina said they didn’t want to leave their pets."
53.The death of Gloria Ramirez, aka the "Toxic Lady," a woman in Riverside, California whose body was so poisonous and full of carcinogens — after apparently self-administering a chemical solvent — that it was believed many hospital workers became ill after being exposed to her body and blood in 1994.
According to a Washington Post report at the time, "Officials said they have concluded that the patient, 31-year-old Gloria Ramirez, died of heart and kidney failure caused by her cervical cancer. But neither the Riverside County coroner's office nor the hospital could explain the workers' claim that the dead woman's blood emitted toxic, ammonia-like fumes that sickened them.
After two months of investigation and three autopsies, local officials in this desert-edged suburb conceded today that they still have not solved the mystery of what caused the bizarre collapse of a half-dozen hospital workers caring for an emergency room patient."
54.The existence of a plant called Dendrocnide Moroides, aka the "Deadly Stinger" or "gympie-gympie" plant, the world's most venomous plant, which is also violently painful if touched. Apparently, it causes pain so bad that it can make you feel "electrocuted and set on fire at the same time."
According to CBS News, "The hairs that cover the plant 'act like hypodermic needles,' which, if touched, 'inject a venom which causes excruciating pain that can last for days, even months.'" And those hairs can remain in your skin for up to a year, re-triggering pain.
55.This super icky photo of a (probably...hopefully?!?!) dead mummified spider that someone found in their basement.
"I found about five spiders like this in the basement of a house I was working on. I was creeped out by them so spent a while looking at them. The next day I came back, and they were all gone."
56.The invasion of giant African land snails — which pose a serious health risk to humans because they carry the rat lungworm parasite — in June 2023 that was so bad it actually prompted a quarantine in South Florida.
According to University of Florida entomologist William Kern, who spoke with Miami's Local 10 News, "If the snails crawl on uncooked vegetables, you can have a problem with it getting a human infection."
Watch a video of the snails here.
57.The terrible fact that over the Fourth of July weekend this year, 2023, 68 people were killed in crashes on California highways. Nearly half of those people were not wearing seatbelts.
According to KTLA News, these accidents occurred during the California Highway Patrol's "Maximum Enforcement Period," which was in place from Friday, June 30, to July 4. During this time, law enforcement increased efforts to look out for drunk and speeding drivers.
"In total, across the multi-day enforcement period, CHP officers issued 9,700 citations for speeding and made 1,224 arrests on suspicion of driving under the influence. That’s an average of one arrest every five minutes," CHP said.
58.A "half-eaten" octopus was removed from a man's throat in Singapore after he went to the hospital complaining of "swallowing difficulties."
According to the Hindustan Times, "Doctors at Singapore's Tan Tock Seng Hospital were baffled to discover an octopus stuck inside a patient's esophagus (or food pipe). The 55-year-old man had complained of difficulty in swallowing from the time he had a meal that included the mollusk.
After several unsuccessful attempts to remove the octopus from the man's throat, the doctors maneuvered the endoscope past the animal and retroflexed it, allowing doctors to extract the creature.
The doctors then used forceps to grasp its head and remove it from the patient. He was discharged two days after the surgery."
(FYI, the image above is NOT of the "half-eaten" octopus, it's just a regular Getty pic of an octopus.)
59.In 1999, the near perfectly preserved bodies of three children were discovered at the high-altitude summit of Mount Llullaillaco in Argentina. They turned out to be 500 years old and still had internal organs intact, blood present in their hearts and lungs, and skin and facial mostly "unscathed." It was found that they had simply frozen to death as they slept.
According to the New York Times, "The children were sacrificed as part of a religious ritual, known as capacocha. They walked hundreds of miles to and from ceremonies in Cuzco and were then taken to the summit of Llullaillaco (yoo-yeye-YAH-co), given chicha (maize beer), and, once they were asleep, placed in underground niches, where they froze to death.
Only beautiful, healthy, physically perfect children were sacrificed, and it was an honor to be chosen. According to Inca beliefs, the children did not die, but joined their ancestors and watched over their villages from the mountaintops like angels."
60.The prolonged and painful death of Harry Houdini. So, the gist of the story is that Houdini was punched so hard in the stomach (after claiming he could withstand the hardest punch), which then caused a ruptured appendix. What exactly caused the acute appendicitis isn't even the worst part of the story, though...
Because of the injury, Houdini had a temperature of 104 degrees (temperatures at that level, BTW, are so bad they can cause seizures). But despite being ordered to go to a hospital, Houdini actually carried on with a scheduled performance that included things like escaping a water torture chamber (which he had to be rescued from).
According to PBS News, "After the performance, Houdini checked into his hotel. He still refused medical treatment, but the pain was so great that his wife, Bess, demanded he be rushed to the nearby Grace Hospital. He underwent an emergency operation to remove his appendix, which had already ruptured and caused severe peritonitis, a raging and difficult-to-treat infection of the abdominal cavity. After a second operation, and the introduction of a new anti-streptococcal serum, the great Houdini succumbed to overwhelming sepsis. He died on Oct. 31, 1926, at the age of 52."
61.The fact that the "breast ripper," a medieval torture device with claw-like spikes that was used exactly as the name implies, actually existed. Apparently, it was used on women who were "accused of adultery, abortion, and other 'crimes.'"
62.On June 10, 1990, a British Airways flight captain was "partially ejected" (i.e. sucked out) from an aircraft after an improperly installed windscreen panel separated from its screen.
Note: The image above is from a reenactment and NOT actual footage of the incident (although the image circulates every once in a while online falsely saying it's the real photo).
According to interviews with the crew at the time, the situation was so chaotic and intense that the cockpit door was ripped off its hinges. One of the flight attendants even grabbed the captain's ankles "before he disappeared out the window" after he had been "sucked out of his seatbelt," ultimately saving the captain's life.
63.Earlier this year, a "black-market" illegal medical lab "complete with bioengineered mice, infectious agents, nearly 30 refrigerators and freezers some of which were non-operational, incubators, and more" was discovered in Reedley, California (just outside of Fresno).
According to Your Central Valley, many local officials described the site as shocking and disturbing and nothing like anything they'd seen in their 25+-year-long careers.
Some of the most shocking things found were a room housing 1,000 white lab mice (200 of which were already dead, the rest having to be euthanized), 800 different chemicals on site, many biohazards like human blood, and infectious viral, bacterial, and parasitic agents including E. Coli, malaria, and even COVID.
64.A 12-year-old boy in Israel suffered a very rare internal decapitation accident after he was hit by a car while riding his bike. Surgeons then had to perform the lifesaving procedure of reattaching his head.
According to NBC 15 News, "After the accident, Suleiman [Hassan] was airlifted to the medical center’s trauma unit, where doctors determined the ligaments holding the posterior base of his skull were severed from the top vertebrae of his spine. The condition is commonly known as internal or orthopedic decapitation."
(Note: The image above is from another internal decapitation accident.)
65.In 2016, an 18-year-old, Tyler Turner, and the instructor he was jumping in tandem with died in a skydiving accident after their parachutes didn't open.
Horrifyingly, this was not the first time a parachute failed to deploy during a jump with this company — Skydive Lodi Parachute Center. Just two years after Turner's death, a 62-year-old, Nina Lowry Mason, also died after her parachute didn't open.
According to ABC 10, the facility's owner, Bill Dause, said "he doesn't keep track of the total number of deaths, but he believes up to 18 people have died [there] since the year 2000."
66.A few years ago, a man in Arizona, whose mother died after suffering from Alzheimer's, donated her body to a facility that he was led to believe would use it for medical research. However, he later discovered that her body was sold to the US military for roughly $6,000 and then blown up in a "blast test" without consent.
Shockingly, her body was just one of 20 dead bodies that were actually sold off to the US Army for these blast experiments without the consent of the deceased or next of kin.
The company that sold the bodies, Biological Resource Center (BRC), is no longer in business. However, Reuters reported that for "over a decade, they were able to sell more than 20,000 parts from about 5,000 human bodies."
67.In July, a man, Javonnta Murphy, was found inside a barrel at a popular beach in Malibu, California.
In a strange twist, according to TMZ, authorities are currently investigating a possible connection between rapper Pop Smoke's murder in 2020 and Murphy, whose brother, Jaquan Murphy, was charged with attempted murder for Pop Smoke's death.
68.A 24-year-old construction worker in Texas was accused of being on drugs but was actually dying of heatstroke while working in Texas back in June 2022. The man, Gabriel Infante, ended up dying in a hospital from severe heatstroke and had a recorded internal temperature of 109.8°F.
The Guardian reported, "According to [a] lawsuit, Infante began exhibiting heatstroke symptoms including confusion, altered mental state, dizziness, and loss of consciousness. His friend and co-worker Joshua Espinoza began pouring cold water over him, trying to cool him down. A foreman insisted Espinoza call the police, claiming Infante’s bizarre behavior was due to drugs, and the foreman pushed for a drug test when emergency medical services arrived."
69.The existence of the puss caterpillar, which, according to this Reddit user below, "will fuck your world up." They explained, "I grazed it twice while climbing on a float. NBD at first, but an hour later, I was hyperventilating on the bedroom floor. The pain was excruciating. Dear husband took me to the ER, and morphine did nothing."
"I’m better now, but neither morphine nor hydrocodone (I took double what they RX’d) touched the pain those first 24 hours. And the hospital hardly knew what to do with me. I had never heard of nor seen this bug before, and I’m sure I would have flicked it off had I seen it. Don’t do that because the hair is venomous and gets stuck in your skin. At least it leaves a cool scar."
70.This person on Reddit who found what looks to be human bones in a wall. They explained, "If it helps, it wasn’t a wall in a house but in the cement foundation/walls of a building that closes my backyard on the far side (if that makes sense). That wall is crumbling, and glass shards, nails, whatever have fallen out of it…and then I pulled these bones out one day."
71.Earlier this year, a 200-foot asteroid, roughly the size of an airplane, "just missed Earth," and it wasn't even DETECTED until two days after the fact because it was "hidden by the sun's glare."
If an asteroid that size would have hit Earth, to give you some reference, it's believed it would've left a 738-foot crater, "vaporized" about 235 people (in a major city like New York), and created a 328-foot-tall tsunami.
72.As a reminder to think twice before visiting Death Valley in the summer — i.e. one of the hottest places on earth — a man, Steve Curry, died there just a few weeks ago. In fact, below is a photo of Curry hiking in Death Valley the morning he died.
According to KTLA, 71-year-old Curry collapsed outside of a restroom at Golden Canyon where the temperatures had hit 121°F.
The reason photos of Curry exist from the day he died (as pictured above) is because, ironically, he had been interviewed by the Los Angeles Times about the hot temperatures in the area that day. Curry declined offers of assistance and was "determined to finish what he set out to do," which was hike Death Valley.
73.A 2-year-old boy in Nevada died from a brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, after visiting Ash Springs, a natural hot spring just north of Las Vegas.
According to NBC News, "Naegleria fowleri — a microscopic single-celled living amoeba that occurs naturally in the environment — lives in soil and warm freshwater such as lakes, rivers, and springs, and can infect people by entering the body through the nose and traveling to the brain," the state officials said.
74.On Oct. 29, 2013, there was a lethal wind turbine accident in the Netherlands where two mechanics — one 19 and the other 21 years old — were trapped and then died because of a fire that broke out on the turbine.
According to reports, "One fell to his death and was found on the ground underneath the turbine; the other died from his burns and was found inside the charred remains of the turbine."
75.This awful X-ray from a person's friend who apparently "accidentally shot himself in the leg."
76.In 2014, after being mistakenly pronounced dead, an older woman in Los Angeles was allegedly trapped in a hospital morgue, where she froze to death. According to HuffPost, "When workers went to retrieve the body of Maria de Jesus Arroyo, 80, she was found face down with injuries to her face caused when she tried to escape, according to a pathologist."
According to KCAL News, "An expert hired by the family told the judge Arroyo was actually alive in the hospital's freezer, eventually woke up due to the extreme cold, and ultimately froze to death." And a witness in the case said that she was found "with the body bag approximately half way open."
77.In August, a chemistry student in Tampa, Florida, was caught on security footage "injecting [an] opioid chemical agent" under his neighbors' door and into their condo.
According to Unilad, the victims, Umar Abdullah and his wife, and their neighbor Xuming Li had "quarreled for months [over noise complaints]. Then Abdullah and his [pregnant] wife said they noticed that they had started to feel dizzy and nauseous in their [apartment], as well as vomiting."
After having various professionals inspect their home for issues with the vents, water, and air conditioning, Abdullah finally installed a camera outside their front door. That's when he caught Li filling a syringe with liquid and injecting it under their front door.
The Unilad article continued, "Li has since been arrested by Tampa Police in connection with a number of felony charges. These include possession of a controlled substance. He is also facing a lawsuit from Abdullah for domestic violence, and the condo for breach of contract."
78.In 2012, a statue of Jesus in a Catholic church in Mumbai, India, inexplicably started leaking water. Initially, people thought it was a miracle, and it inspired some believers to drink the water in hopes that it would cure their ailments.
It was eventually discovered that the seeping water had actually been a result of clogged drain pipes behind the wall. So...yeah...it turned out people were actually drinking sewage water the entire time.
79.A man in Italy was actually crushed to death in August by thousands of wheels of cheese.
According to NBC News, "Giacomo Chiapparini, 74, a local cheese producer, was in his warehouse tending to 15,000 cheese wheels when, all of a sudden, a 30-foot-high shelf holding the wheels, which weigh about 44 pounds, gave way. That created a domino effect that sent the massive wheels flying and ultimately burying their maker." The man was covered in so much cheese that it took many, many hours to unbury him, by which time it was too late.
80.Back in 2015, some people in Chillicothe, Ohio, saw the body of a woman "hanging by her sleeve" on a fence, but they literally thought it was a Halloween decoration. It wasn't until construction workers came upon the crime scene that they realized the body was a real, dead person and not a Halloween prank.
According to CBS News, "Law enforcement officials in the southern Ohio town of Chillicothe said Wednesday that 31-year-old Rebecca Cade was apparently in a fight, ran from her attacker, and got into a lot surrounded by a fence. Police say she apparently tried to climb the fence to get away, but her clothes got caught, trapping her. [...] Officials say she was beaten to death."
81.An Ohio woman, Marie Trainer, had to have her hands and legs amputated in 2019 after being licked by a dog. According to CNN, "Trainer contracted a rare infection from the bacteria capnocytophaga canimorsus, probably when her German shepherd puppy, Taylor, licked an open cut."
82.This image of what is apparently "just" a blood egg but looks incredibly cursed, if you ask me:
"That black stuff is definitely going to crawl up your nose and turn your eyes black and take over your soul."
83.A woman in Uzbekistan, Olga Leontyeva, died in July after being stuck in an elevator for three days.
Leontyeva was apparently a mail carrier and making deliveries on one of her routes when the incident happened. According to reports, "Footage showed the moment Olga stepped into the lift on the ground floor of the nine-story building before the tragedy unfolded. Her family alerted the authorities on July 26, and her body was discovered lifeless the next day following an intense search."
84.In August, a woman in Los Angeles found a dead body in her 26-year-old son's room. According to KTLA, "A woman told officers that she entered her son’s room due to a gas smell, and when she went inside, she found what appeared to be a body. Police said they found the victim, a female believed to be in her 20s, wrapped in plastic. She was pronounced dead at the scene."
The victim, Hannah Rachel Collins, was reportedly from Richmond, Mississippi. According to a family member, she had not been heard from since early August and had moved to Los Angeles in June. The identity of the 26-year-old suspect has not been released, and the case is still being investigated.
85.In 2009, a man in Russia went in for surgery to have part of his lung removed for what doctors believed was a tumor. However, when doctors took a closer look, they apparently found a 5-centimeter-long spruce inside his lung.
The doctors believed that the man had accidentally inhaled a seed that then sprouted inside him.
86.A human skull was found in a donation box at a Goodwill store in Arizona earlier this month. According to CBS News, "An employee called in the gruesome find because they feared it might be related to a criminal or missing-persons case. In a photo shared by the Goodyear Police Department, the skull is withered, with what appears to be a prosthetic blue eye attached to the right socket."
Authorities later determined that the skull was likely not related to a criminal case, and that although it was, in fact, a human skull, it appeared to be "historic, ancient, and does not appear to have any forensic value at all."
87.In October, a woman visiting Typhoon Lagoon, Walt Disney World's water park in Florida, said she sustained "severe gynecologic injuries" after going down a water slide.
The woman, Emma McGuinness, filed a lawsuit with Walt Disney Parks and Resorts that explained, "After descending the 214-foot slide, called Humunga Kowabunga, the standing water at the ride's bottom abruptly brought her to a rapid stop, forcing her swimsuit into a painful 'wedgie.' She experienced immediate and severe pain internally and, as she stood up, blood began rushing from between her legs."
The lawsuit also stated her injuries included "'severe vaginal lacerations,' damage to her internal organs, and a 'full thickness laceration' that caused her bowel to 'protrude through her abdominal wall.'" The suit is seeking at least $50,000 in damages.
88.Back in September, an alligator in Largo, Florida was spotted with human remains in its mouth. A resident, Jamarcus Bullard, who spotted the alligator, explained, "I threw a rock at the gator just to see if it was really a gator, and, like, it pulled the body, like it was holding on to the lower part of the torso, and pulled it under the water."
The victim was later identified as a 41-year-old woman named Sabrina Peckham. According to Peckham's daughter, the woman was homeless and lived near the water. According to the local Sheriff's Office, the alligator was "humanely killed."
89.A man named Charles Osborne had hiccups for 68 years straight.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, "Ever since an accident on June 13, 1922, Osborne had hiccuped nonstop. The condition persisted for more than six decades, only ending in 1990, a full 68 years after it began. Osborne’s plight remains the longest attack of hiccups confirmed by Guinness World Records." It was estimated he hiccuped 430 million times before dying in 1991 at the age of 97.
90.Apparently, the notebooks belonging to Marie Curie, who won two Nobel Prizes for her pioneering research on radioactivity, will remain highly radioactive for another 1,500 years because of the contamination from radium 266 (which has a half-life of roughly 1,600 years).
Stored in lead-lined boxes at France's national library in Paris, the notebooks are able to be seen by visitors; however, guests must sign a liability waiver and wear protective gear.
91.This image of a pacu fish, which has "human-like" teeth. The pacu fish is a cousin of the piranha, fwiw.
The pacu (Piaractus brachypomus) is a freshwater fish species in the Caracins family (family Characidae) of order Characiformes (characins).
92.The practices of Carl Tanzler, a radiology technician in Florida who became "obsessed" with a young woman/patient named Maria Elena "Helen" Milagro de Hoyos, even after she died. After Elena died, he removed her body from her grave, embalmed her corpse, and lived with it for seven years until authorities discovered it.
93.In the 1800s, dentures were made out of the real teeth of dead people. According to the BBC, "The prospect of thousands of British, French, and Prussian teeth — sitting in the mouths of recently-killed soldiers on the battlefield at Waterloo — was an attractive one for looters."
"They would have been shaped and sorted to make it look like each set of upper and lower front teeth had come from a single body. The sets would have been sold to early dental technicians who would boil them, chop off the ends, and then shape them onto ivory dentures."
94.Harvard has a century-old book that is actually covered in human skin. The title of the book from the 1880s is Des destinées de l’ame (The Destinies of the Soul), and in 2014, one of the university's curators confirmed that it's bound in human skin.
According to the Verge, "The book has been sitting in Harvard's Houghton Library since the 1930s and has had a note inside it from the donor, who explains that he had the book bound in human skin."
95.In October, a 69-year-old man in Florida "plunged" to his death in someone's front yard while he was skydiving... And it was all caught on a surveillance camera from a neighbor's home.
The person whose yard he landed in, James Sconiers, told a local TV station that he went out to check on the man, but got no response. And another neighbor said, "I work in the medical field. That’s the worst I’ve ever seen."
96.This weird leaf someone found in their bag of spinach that looks like it'd really mess you up if you ate it:
"Some of these ended up in spinach bags in Australia, and some people started getting really sick/'psychedelic' experiences. There was a massive recall. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name."
"This bag was purchased from a store in Australia, too. Lots of people are suggesting Nightshade weed."
—skalliwag___ (OP)
97.Finally, apparently snails are one of the world's most deadly creatures — more deadly than sharks, lions, and wolves combined. The reason? They carry a parasitic disease called schistosomiasis, which is responsible for more than 200,000 deaths a year.
According to Susanne Sokolow, a disease ecologist at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, “You do contract it from just wading, swimming, entering the water in any way, and the parasites basically exit the snails into the water and seek you. And they penetrate right through your skin, migrate through your body, end up in your blood vessels where they can live for many years, even decades. It's not the worms that actually cause disease to people, it's the eggs. And those eggs have sharp barbs because they eventually need to make it back out of the human body and back into the water and find that there are snails that they need to complete their reproduction cycle. And so those eggs can lodge in different tissues and cause severe symptoms ranging from anemia and fatigue, all the way to various severe symptoms, even death in about 10 percent of chronic cases.”
