I Research Dark Facts For A Living, And These 43 Are Some Of The Most Disturbing I Came Across This Year

Note: This post contains descriptions of physical violence, bodily harm, death, suicide, and cannibalism. Please proceed with caution.

If you're anything like me, you probably love a fun fact...and also a not-so-fun fact. I've spent a good chunk of this year researching dark and occasionally disturbing facts suggested by both Redditors and BuzzFeed readers like you, then summarizing them to share right here on the interwebs for your combined education and horror. So, I decided to round up all 44 of the dark facts I learned this year into this here article, which is essentially a worse and more ominous version of Spotify Wrapped. Lets get into it, shall we?

Note: Sources have been linked out to each of these facts, so if one of them really intrigues you, give the hyperlink a click to go on a deep-dive of your own! And, as always, if you have a not-so-fun fact like these, feel free to share them in the comments below and they just might end up in a future BuzzFeed Community article.

1."The Great Pox" — aka the 1495 syphilis epidemic that swept across Europe prior to the existence of the antibiotics to treat it. Like today, the first stage of the sexually transmitted infection began with painless ulcers, typically on one's genitals, that often went away on their own. The next phase manifested in the form of rashes, swollen lymph nodes, and — at its worst — pustules "which oozed a foul-smelling discharge." Again, these would go away, fooling people into thinking they were cured. In the third and final phase, permanent and more intense symptoms arose. Though they were still alive, infected people's skin and bones would literally start rotting and disintegrating on their faces. This often resulted in the collapse of their nasal cartilage, which made them appear as though they had no nose at all. Other symptoms included the formation of gummas — or "grotesque tumor-like growths" and severe damage to internal organs.

2.In August of 1986, in Cameroon, West Africa, 1,700+ people were silently killed in the middle of the night by carbon dioxide. That night Lake Nyos, a volcanic crater lake, released nearly a quarter of a cubic mile of the gas, which travelled down the volcano at speeds of nearly 45 miles per hour, killing nearly everyone in Nyos and many in surrounding villages. Of nearly 850 people who survived and were hospitalized, the clinical findings were comparable to those of people who'd been exposed to an asphyxiant gas."

3.Flight data during the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986 revealed that it was likely some of the astronauts on board were still alive after the explosion. According to NASA, at least three of the emergency breathing packs were turned on following the Challenger's explosion, leading them to believe that some of the crew remained conscious for at least 10 seconds following the disaster and were alive when it hit the water. They were believed to have been coherent enough to understand the severity of what was occurring. Reportedly, the final word they heard from the crew — which was uttered by the shuttle's pilot, Michael J. Smith, 73 seconds after they took off — was a simple, "Uh oh."

4.A corpse can ‘give birth' if a pregnant person dies. Certain results of decomposition, like bloating and gas, can force the fetus out of the womb, making it appear as though the deceased person has given birth. This rare phenomenon is known as Coffin Birth. There have been a few documented cases in history in which a smaller set of bones were found between the legs of a deceased mother who'd been buried.

5.In 1992, Stella Liebeck — a 79-year-old McDonald's customer — sued the fast food giant after suffering burns from their coffee. While many saw the case as a quick way to make a buck from a massive corporation, Stella was seriously injured. She was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson's car at the time of the incident and had ordered a hot coffee at a McDonald's drive-thru. While parked, she put the cup between her legs and opened the lid, which spilled burning hot coffee all over her. Her sweat pants soaked up the hot liquid, keeping it in contact with her skin. She suffered third-degree burns on 6% of her body, "including her vagina, perineum, buttocks, thighs, and groin area."

6.In January of 1919, The Great Molasses Flood took Boston's North End by storm. While you might think the famously thick, slow-moving syrup surely couldn't be all that deadly, the flood actually killed 21, injured 150, and caused massive damage. The 2.3 million gallons of molasses traveled at speeds up to 35 miles per hour. It "knocked an elevated train off of its tracks, crushed buildings, moved a firehouse and other buildings off their foundations, and suffocated both humans and animals."

7.On December 14, 1799, George Washington died...and was nearly (attemped to be) brought back to life. While he had succumbed to his throat ailment (there's debate as to the specific illness) fairly quickly, he tried a variety of remedies, from gargling molasses, vinegar, and butter to having his throat "swabbed with a salve and a preparation of dried beetles." Additionally, he requested his doctor to bleed him and lost 40% of his blood in the process. By the time his friend — surgeon Willian Thornton — arrived, Washington was dead and frozen due to the cold. Thornton proposed they thaw the former president in warm water, that he perform a tracheostomy, and that they inject Washington with lamb's blood in an attempt to revive him.

8.According to the BBC, the US military has lost — and never found — at least three nuclear bombs. There have been at least 32 known instances where the US accidentally lost, launched, set off, or had a nuclear weapon stolen. These are called "Broken Arrows."

9."The first suicide hotline was created after a man — 23-year-old deacon Chad Varah — conducted the funeral of a 13 or 14-year-old girl. She killed herself after she got her period for the first time and assumed it was an STD, since no one talked about periods at the time." While the actual hotline itself didn't come into fruition until nearly two decades later, his "vision began" after that funeral in 1935.

10."The low reflective bumper on the rear of an 18-wheeler trailer is called a Mansfield Bar. It's named after actor Jayne Mansfield, who died after her driver ran into the back of a trailer at 2 a.m. in 1967. Jayne, her lawyer, and her children, including 3-year-old Mariska Hargitay, were in the vehicle. The car slid under the trailer and none of the adults survived the crash."

11."Prions, aka a misfolded protein in the brain that causes other proteins to misfold. This literally causes 'sponge brain' or small holes in the brain. Prion diseases are always fatal, and there is no known cure or treatment to slow the progression. They can be contagious or genetic. The contagious form cannot be killed by extreme heat, meaning when people with prion disease have to have surgery, those instruments used during the procedure are unable to be sterilized."

12.Chainsaws were originally a medical tool used during childbirth. Scottish doctors John Aitken and James Jeffray invented an early, hand-powered version of what we now know as the chainsaw towards the end of the 18th century. Originally it was used in childbirth for "symphysiotomy" — aka, a now-outdated medical procedure done during labor where the joint that holds the mother's pelvis together is cut to make the birth canal wider.

13.On March 18, 1937, tragedy struck a school in New London, TX, just fifteen minutes before classes were to end for the day. A massive explosion killed nearly 300, including students from fifth through eleventh grade. It was so big that it was felt by residents up to 40 miles away and reportedly shot a two-ton slab of concrete 200 feet away from the school. The explosion was caused by a cost-saving measure the school had taken earlier in the year in an effort to save $300 a month on gas. Plumbers had tapped a "residue gas line"; however, there was a faulty connection, and gas had been pooling under the school. On the day of the explosion, some students reported watery eyes and feeling lightheaded, but odors hadn't yet been added to natural gas in the 1930s, so it went undetected. That very year, gas odorization was mandated in the state of Texas.

14.It is physically possible to be so constipated that your stool backs all the way up your digestive tract and you vomit feces. This is a bowel obstruction. According to Medical News Today, to treat this, doctors would suck out the contents of the patient's stomach via a tube through their nose in order to decompress the stomach.

15."There is a condition called Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva in which damaged tissue is replaced by bone. People with this condition are slowly consumed by their own skeleton and have to choose which position they want to spend the rest of their life in after a certain point."

16.The gritty details of Travis the Chimp mauling Charla Nash in 2009. Travis — who'd been raised by Sandra Herold in a particularly human-like life — had been described as "agitated" on the day of the incident. Charla — Sandra's friend who had often looked after Travis when she was away — had arrived at Sandra's home to help for the day. Whether Charla offered to come or Sandra asked her to is debated by the two. Regardless, Charla drove over and exited the car holding an Elmo doll. Almost immediately, Travis began assaulting her. The violent attack went on despite Sandy coming after him with a snow shovel and, later, a knife. He even stopped to look her in the eyes. After police arrived at the scene, Charla was found mostly naked, "covered in nearly half [her] blood supply," and with pieces of her scalp and fingers strewn about the yard.

17.Like its sister ship, the Titanic, the Britannic met its demise at sea. In 1916, the hospital ship reportedly hit a German mine, causing an explosion. Despite the flooding of six of its compartments, it remained afloat, so the captain ordered the ship to go at full speed to land. This only made it sink faster, so he ordered it to slow back down. Unfortunately, before it did, two lifeboats full of passengers fled the ship without getting permission first. Thinking they were escaping to safety, they were sucked into the ship's propellers.

18.More than half of the 81 people that made up the Donner party were children, six of which were infants. Overall, about half of those who survived being stranded ultimately succumbed to cannibalism. In most instances, they consumed the flesh of the members of their party who died naturally, though prior to that, they considered the men of the party dueling or drawing straws to determine who would be sacrificed for food. On one occasion, though, they killed two Native American men who'd joined them prior to being stranded. The two men had refused to eat human flesh and had attempted to flee, fearing they'd be future targets. They were correct.

19.The leading cause of death for pregnant women in America is murder. According to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, women in America who are or recently have been pregnant have a higher likelihood of being killed than dying of obstetric causes like hypertensive disorders, hemorrhages, or sepsis. Many of such cases are a result of violence from the pregnant person's partner, and "68% of pregnancy-related homicides involved firearms." The risk is highest for Black women.

20.Contrary to what was portrayed in Netflix's Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story series, what was actually found in Dahmer's Milwaukee apartment was much more sinister. According to police findings, there were "seven skulls, two human hearts, an entire torso, a bag of human organs, two skeletons, a pair of severed hands, two severed and preserved male genitalia, a mummified scalp and a 57-gallon drum that included three dismembered torsos." The Oxford Apartments that Dahmer resided in were torn down in 1992, and it remains an empty, grassy lot despite efforts to repurpose it into a children's play area.

21.For hundreds of years, people dumped human, industrial, and animal waste into London's River Thames. By 1858, it caused such a horrendous odor to plague the city that it became dubbed "The Great Stink." The river's longtime pollution caused many Londoners to become violently — and sometimes deathly — ill with cholera, typhoid, and dysentery, as water wells lied near leaking cesspools and even water pumped from outside the city was still at risk of sewer contamination. In several cholera epidemics between 1831 and 1854, roughly 30,000 Londoners died. In 1855, Royal Institution scientist Michael Faraday claimed the river's water was “an opaque pale brown fluid” and that near its bridges, people could see dense clouds of fecal matter at the surface.

22.For many, the first sign of cardiovascular disease is sudden death. Sudden Cardiac Death, as the name implies, is a medical emergency that comes with little to no warning and can kill within minutes to an hour. The condition, which is a result of "defective electrical activity of the heart," kills about 300,000 people annually.

23.Pinky toes can auto-amputate. It, of course, needs the right conditions to do so. For instance, if a diabetic patient has a well-demarcated, dry gangrene toe, the pinky toe can remove itself non-surgically. Once it starts, you can't stop it.

24.The aftermath of the American Civil War was more gruesome than most realize. Redditor u/senorgrub shared their perspective as a Gettysburg local, "The part you don't think about is the aftermath. We think they fight and leave, but [it wasn't] that simple." Infection and blood loss made battle wounds all the more deadly, which not only resulted in many dead bodies, but also contributed to the piles of amputated limbs. According to one Confederate soldier, "There were piles of legs, feet, hands and arms, all thrown together, and at a distance, resembled piles of corn at a corn-shucking. Many of the feet still retained a boot or shoe."

25.Similarly, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in and around New Orleans in 2005 was even more devastating than commonly believed. Approximately 1,170 people died in Louisiana, with 47% of the deaths being a result of acute or chronic disease and 33% being a result of drowning. 80% of New Orleans and the parishes surrounding it were flooded by 20 feet of water. Redditor u/thetruckboy shared their first-hand experience of it: "I was down there twice immediately after the storm, and the stench from dead bodies was almost overwhelming. My sister and brother-in-law bought a house on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain a few months later, and there were STILL bodies floating up on the north shore of the lake."

26.King Leopold II's treatment of the people of the Congo (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo) during the late 1800s was so cruel that other European colonial powers — despite their own violence towards Africans simultaneously — condemned it, and the Belgian parliament had to step in to take it from his control. Packaged as a "humanitarian and philanthropic mission," Leopold II's reign was brutal. If villages failed to produce an adequate yield of rubber, ivory, or minerals for trade, it was not uncommon for a member of the village — often a young child — to have their hands or feet chopped off.

27."Judith Barsi, the girl who played Ducky in The Land Before Time, was shot in the head by her own father after years of abuse at his hands."

28."When bed bugs have sex, the male stabs his barbed penis directly through the female, into her organs."

29.Female hyenas give birth through a pseudopenis. The female spotted hyena's pseudopenis, which is nearly indistinguishable from that of a male, is where the female hyenas urinate, have sex, and give birth from. As you might expect, the latter two are particularly difficult and painful. Childbirth often causes severe tearing, and there's a especially high female mortality rate during childbirth, particularly for mothers giving birth for the first time.

30."There is a whale nicknamed '52 Blue' who is the only whale who sings at a frequency of 52 hertz, meaning it can't communicate with other whales. It is considered the loneliest whale on the planet."

31."The same guy — Thomas Midgley, Jr. — invented both leaded petrol and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). I'm not sure if there is another single individual in history who caused more damage to the environment."

32."Andy was a goose who was born without feet on a farm in Nebraska. He was disabled for the first two years of his life, until an inventor named Gene Flemings heard about his disability and decided to create a new method of movement for him. He initially tried to teach Andy to ride a skateboard but eventually settled on teaching the goose to walk in baby-sized sneakers. Since Gene worked with a local charity for disabled children, Andy became a role model, and even caught the eyes of the media, with Nike offering a lifetime supply of shoes and the pair being featured on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Andy disappeared on October 19th, 1991, and was later found with his head and wings torn off. The perpetrator was never found."

33."Spiders have exoskeletons that they shed. When you see a dead spider, it might not actually be a dead spider. It could just be its old skin that it molted, and the spider is now somewhere else and bigger."

34.One of the most common ways to get testicular torsion is simply by sleeping in the wrong position. Testicular torsion happens when the testicle rotates several times, thus blocking the blood flow to it through the spermatic cord. According to the Mayo Clinic, it often occurs "several hours after vigorous activity, after a minor injury to the testicles, or while sleeping."

35."The CIA's 'Operation Northwoods' proposed that CIA operatives should commit acts of terrorism upon the US to blame Fidel Castro and justify a war against Cuba. This was rejected by JFK. We know about this because this got declassified."

36.Dolphins can be sexually attracted to humans and will definitely try to do something about it. In the documentary The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins — which took place in the '60s — Margaret Howe Lovatt participated in said research, which aimed to teach dolphins to communicate with humans. According to The Atlantic, it started with Lovatt "moving in" with an adolescent dolphin named Peter so she could attempt to teach him. Well, she found their lessons to be particularly difficulty when Peter was aroused (which, apparently, happened often).

37.A decent amount of what doctors know about hypothermia and how to deal with it came from "Nazi science" in WWII. The Dachau Hypothermia Experiments were "medical experiments" — or, rather, brutal torture — conducted at the Dachau concentration camp with the goal of discovering the most effective treatments for immersion hypothermia. The use of their findings was highly debated, with some arguing that using it would be wholly unethical, and others considering it valid medical data that could save lives and using it in their studies.

38.There is a species of caterpillar in Great Britain — the blue butterfly caterpillar (or large blue) — that tricks ants into letting it inside their colony so it can feast on their larvae. The large blue releases pheromones and changes its body shape to mimic red ant larvae, thereby fooling the ants into thinking they got out of the colony. In turn, the ants bring them back in. It can also fool red ants into thinking it's the queen by imitating the sounds an adult queen ant makes, so the other ants feed it. In particular, it can imitate the queen in distress, which results in them feeding the caterpillar their young. This destroys the ant colony from the inside out.

39.Whale carcasses can explode. When dead whales are left on the beach or floating atop the waves, their carcasses can, in fact, explode due to the build-up of gasses like methane inside their bodies while decomposing.

40."In 2005, medical staff at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans were arrested on account of second-degree murder for reportedly euthanizing patients with a lethal dose of drugs in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The four patients, too sick to move, were stranded in the soon-to-be evacuated hospital, which was left without power. Doctor Anna Pou publicly defended her decision, claiming that it was the only humane choice in an impossible situation and that her goal was simply to help the patients through their pain."

41."On February 3, 1998, 20 people died when a cable car situated near the ski resort town of Cavalese, Italy, plummeted to the ground from 260 feet. It was caused by a United States Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler aircraft that was flying excessively fast and too low during a low-altitude training mission. The aircraft ultimately severed the cable supporting the cable car as it was descendi It was going roughly 540 mph at an altitude of 260 to 330 feet. The disaster has been named the "Strage del Cermis" (Massacre of Cermis) in Italy."

42.When an elderly person falls and ends up with a broken hip, sometimes it’s actually the hip breaking that causes the fall. According to the Mayo Clinic, simply standing and twisting one's leg can result in a hip fracture in an older adult with very weak bones. Our bones tend to weaken with age, and this is especially true for women, as lowered estrogen levels due to menopause cause bone density to decrease more rapidly than in men.

43.And lastly, melting permafrost could soon unleash deadly diseases into the world that humans have no vaccines for. According to CNN, the thawing permafrost in places like the Arctic can awaken viruses and bacteria that'd been "lying dormant for tens of thousands of years." Instances of this have happened in the past in places where permafrost has begun melting, like Siberia. For example, in the summer of 2016, there was an anthrax outbreak that was linked to Bacillus anthracis spores from an old burial ground that had been previously frozen under the permafrost. The spores made their way to the surface as the ice melted in the warmer months of the summer.