Post your favorite scary or unnerving article or Wikipedia page

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HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Religious Man posted:

It mostly weirds me out because I remember reading out it at a pretty young age and it freaked me out. That wikipedia page along with the one shared earlier about the Essex whaling ship really blow my mind with how casually those people seemed to attempt things that seem so filled with risk. What kind of desperation or insanity would cause those eight men who had to resort to cannibalism to survive on the high seas to return to sea only months after they were rescued? That along with how the ships transporting the Roanoke colonists just said, "Oh, lets do some privateering!" after they dropped the colonists off make me realize that the people of previous centuries were very far removed from us (first worlders) today.

I already got probated for derailing this week, so I won't get into this here, but if you'd like to discuss early modern navies, privateering, and making a living in the early modern, you're welcome to come hang out in the military history thread.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2013 19:37

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:33

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

General Panic posted:

Of course, that might have been because JFK had been dead 4 years by then.

Wouldn't "boo" have been one of the few things he would have been capable of saying? :ghost:

# ¿ Feb 24, 2013 01:05

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

MAKE NO BABBYS posted:

Ah yes, because that book is the PINNACLE of science, right?

1491 was a decently written tertiary source for the popular market, but as far as I could tell not bad. I remember thinking it was rad. You may be thinking of 1421, which is as dumb as a box of hair. (Neither one is to be confused with 1453, which was a decent book, despite the author's overemphasis of the religious motivations of the conflict.)

HEY GUNS has a new favorite as of 10:24 on Feb 26, 2013

# ¿ Feb 26, 2013 10:19

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Call Now posted:

What is it with Romanians and creepy executions?

Those dudes were Hungarian.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2013 05:13

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Axeman Jim posted:

Moorgate Tube Crash

London Underground train arrives at a terminus, and the driver just doesn't stop. Slams his train into the wall at 30-40 mph and kills himself and 42 other people. He doesn't hit the brakes, and a witness described him as just staring straight ahead right until the end. None of the theories put forward as to what happened seem to fit the facts. He wasn't under the influence of any substances. He didn't seem suicidal (he had a wad of money in his pocket that he was going to use to buy his daughter a car after his shift). He didn't have any known medical condition that would cause him to do that (and the ones that fit the bill are phenomenally rare).

The guy just drove his train into a wall, and no-one knows why.

Stroke, cerebral edema, seizure? (Even people without epilepsy can have seizures.)

# ¿ Apr 15, 2013 21:48

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Cordyceps Headache posted:

Not really unnerving, but I'm just at discovering that the Knights of Malta are still a thing, and actually have observer status at the UN, diplomatic relations with like 60 countries, and quasi-sovereign status in International Law. Just the idea that a chivalrous order from the first Crusade is still around, and still treated with respect on the international stage seems insane to me, especially when a poo poo ton of other corporate entities don't.

I walked past their offices a few times when I was in Vienna last summer. They operate a lot of EMT services in that city, I don't know about anywhere else in Austria.

# ¿ May 14, 2013 09:28

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Double Plus Good posted:

It makes me very sad and sometimes unnerved to think that I'll only ever get to witness, at most, 100 years of advancement in the human race. I want to know where we'll be 1,000 years from now, but I never will. Like, I will never, ever know how the story ends. My story, sure, but the story of everything else will go on without me and I'll never know where. Just makes me sad. I guess it's that feeling of grappling with mortality that we all feel, and maybe why sci-fi and speculative fiction is so gratifying to us. It's not certain, but it makes us feel like we've gotten a sneak peak at the future.

I'm a historian, and I'm really happy to think that future historians will be able to look at us--and that they'll probably be able to study us better than we could have studied ourselves, since they'll be able to knit it together more broadly and with less personal bias. Different viewpoints, I guess.

# ¿ May 22, 2013 23:31

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Mr. Pumroy posted:

Modern history work is great. I can experience the formation and collapse of the Ottoman Empire all from the perspective of 20 generations of a single family of Macedonian goat farmers, their lives reassembled by teams of geneticists and forensic scientists and archaeologists.

Is this literally your current project? Because that rules hard.

# ¿ May 24, 2013 00:31

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Solice Kirsk posted:

Seriously, I understand that most people don't "get" that chimps are dangerous, but the fact is that you're walking around in a place with wild animals that forbids babies from being there. I hope that lady went to prison for her neglect.

Where I come from, there are mountain lions in the hills around town. It stands to reason, therefore, that women shouldn't hike with children, lest they face legal sanctions for endangerment.

:goonsay:

# ¿ Jun 10, 2013 05:17

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Kanfy posted:

Nothing scary or unnerving about bog bodies, it's cool and interesting as heck.

Well, it sucks for the actual people of course.

http://www.tollundman.dk/heaney.asp
http://inwardboundpoetry.blogspot.com/2006/08/198-bog-queen-seamus-heaney.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/heaney/bogland.php

# ¿ Jul 6, 2013 13:22

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

into the void posted:

I've been reading another one of Richard Preston's books, because I like to have nightmares, and stumbled across this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesch_nyhan

It's an incredibly rare disease that results in a build up uric acid. The unsettling part? One of the symptoms is excessive self mutilation in the form of self cannibalism. Children with this disease will chew off their lips and fingers, particularly when stressed.

Most nightmare inducing part of the book:

"Harold, it turned out, had bitten his fingers even more severely than Matthew and had chewed off his lower lip down to his chin, at the limit of the reach of his upper teeth. Both boys were terrified of their hands and screamed for help even as they bit them".

It's as heartbreaking as it is horrifying. I can't even imagine being a parent and having to witness that.

Lesch�Nyhan Cat would be a pretty solid account name, but not a lot of people would get the joke.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2013 11:27

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

AlbieQuirky posted:

That is terrible. And yet, because I am 99% composed of gallows humor, it also reminded me of the scene in the novel An Beal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) by Myles na gCopaleen/Flann O' Brien/Brian O'Nolan where the schoolmaster changes the Irish names of all his students to "Jams O'Donnell".

Jesus Christ, another Flann O' Brian fan. My mom turned me on to At Swim Two Birds when I was an undergrad. :hfive:

# ¿ Aug 5, 2013 23:27

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Mousepractice posted:

Whattup

On that note The Third Policeman is pretty unnerving. Mostly amusing, but pretty unnerving. "all the queer ghastly things which have been happening [...] are happening in a sort of hell [...] It is made clear that this sort of thing goes on for ever".

Spoilers in the link above

I read that when I was too young and stupid to get that everything was literally going on in hell, so all I remember is being entertained by the fictional professor and the fact that bicycles had genders. :downs:

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 08:04

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Stare-Out posted:

There was a bubonic plague outbreak in a hospital in New York a few years ago too. It's not that uncommon, terrifyingly, but at the same time extremely treatable nowadays.

That only made the news because it usually doesn't show up in NY. The person who had it was someone from New Mexico, where it does exist (approx. 5 or 6 cases a year in late summer, aw yiss) who came to New York, whereupon symptoms began to manifest and nobody knew what the gently caress.

Edit: I come from New Mexico, and every year during plague season one or two cases would make the papers and they'd remind us to take care around rodents. It wasn't a big deal.

Edit 2: It does end up surprising people who aren't from there, though. A thing that happened:

Professor: "Where's HEGEL? I didn't see her in seminar last night."

Classmate (joking): "She couldn't make it, she has the plague."

Professor (utterly serious): :frogsiren:

Classmate: "Wait, what?" :stonklol:

HEY GUNS has a new favorite as of 09:40 on Sep 17, 2013

# ¿ Sep 17, 2013 00:13

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

The kid doesn't trust you? What better way to fix this problem than abandoning them! :smithicide:

I think Russia banned adoptions from the US over this, not sure. If so, thank loving God.

Zopotantor posted:

Isn't it all over the southwest USA? It's a plot point in one of Tony Hillerman's novels.

Also, Hantavirus.

Yep. It first came to the continental US in California in 1900 as part of the Third Plague Pandemic, and has remained endemic among our rodents ever since. If you live in the Southwest you should be familiar with the symptoms just in case.

HEY GUNS has a new favorite as of 01:36 on Sep 19, 2013

# ¿ Sep 19, 2013 01:30

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Say Nothing posted:

I remember reading about this condition in the book Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body, a book by Armand Marie Leroi. It basically described a skin-colored featureless sphere which a woman had given birth to. They only knew what it was due to traces of a spine being found when they autopsied it.
It's apparently sitting preserved in an anatomy museum somewhere, labelled 'Acardiac Amorphous'.
(By the way, that book is a good read.)

Well poo poo, the part of the Mahabharata where a woman gives birth to a featureless lump of flesh, which she cuts into a hundred pieces, puts into a hundred jars, and they grow into a hundred children might be based on something.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2013 10:53

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

IShallRiseAgain posted:

That rear end in a top hat murdered 30 people, because he was a stubborn jerk that refused to accept that Japan lost the war.

His story just makes me sad; like, what did he think the world was like? As far as he was concerned, he was forgotten in the middle of an eternal war.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2013 15:33

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Totally TWISTED posted:

The vastness of random poo poo SA posters get involved in. Wow.

There's a hundred thousand of us. Statistically speaking, something's bound to happen to at least one of us at some point.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2013 20:52

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:33

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

spooky_rob posted:

edit: Russell Williams

quote:

On October 22, 2010, Williams was stripped of his commission, ranks, and awards by the Governor General of Canada on the recommendation of the Chief of the Defence Staff. His severance pay was terminated and the salary he received following his arrest was seized, although he is still entitled to a pension. Subsequent to his conviction, his uniform was burned, his medals were destroyed and his vehicle crushed and scrapped.

Canada does not gently caress around.

Edit:

quote:

his medals were also later cut into pieces, [and] his commission scroll (a document confirming his status as a serving officer) was shredded...

# ¿ Dec 15, 2013 23:41

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