Jonestown massacre and the Peoples Temple "Death Tape" - 44 min cassette recording of the murder-suicide of 900+ followers of the Peoples Temple cult, 1978 ( en.wikipedia.org )
Gustl Mollath - German committed to mental institution after claiming that his ex-wife and bank where she worked were involved in a money laundering scheme (accusations that turned out to be true) ( en.wikipedia.org )
Klerksdorp sphere - Collection of mysterious spherical objects found in South Africa dated to be three billion years old ( en.wikipedia.org )
Peter Scully - Dubbed the "World's Worst Pedophile" for peddling videos of himself torturing and sexually abusing young girls on his dark web site "No Limits Fun" ( en.wikipedia.org )
Ed Gein - Man that served as an inspiration for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film. ( en.wikipedia.org )
Phineas Gage - Wikipedia ( en.wikipedia.org )
TIL when lightning rods were first introduced in the 18th century, people found them so fascinating that wearable lightning rods become fashionable, e.g. a lightning rod in your hat or umbrella. ( en.wikipedia.org )
Crooked Forest - Pine grove that grows in a deformed, curved manner for unexplained reasons ( en.wikipedia.org )
TIL that on pre-colonial Easter Island there existed an undeciphered system of writing or proto-writing, called Rongorongo, which would be one of few independent inventions of writing. ( en.wikipedia.org )
Lucy Letby - British neonatal nurse found guilty of murdering seven babies in her care ( en.wikipedia.org )
Jumping Frenchmen of Maine - Wikipedia ( en.wikipedia.org )
TIL Soviet cosmonauts carried a shotgun on space missions ( en.wikipedia.org )
It was purportedly (and probably in actuality) intended as a survival aid to be used after landings and before recovery in the Siberian wilderness, although allegedly was intended as a defensive weapon against in-space attacks by the US space program.
America Sings accident - Hostess working the America Sings attraction crushed to death by a rotating wall ( en.wikipedia.org )
Alice in Wonderland syndrome - Wikipedia ( en.wikipedia.org )
Goiânia accident - Hundreds poisoned by radiation after being fascinated by the glowing Caesium they distributed to friends, relatives and neighbors ( en.wikipedia.org )
TIL that after psychologist Timothy Leary was sentenced to prison, he had to take a test that he himself created. He used his knowledge to be assigned to a lower-security prison and escaped. ( en.wikipedia.org )
On January 21, 1970, Leary received a ten-year sentence for his 1968 offense, with a further ten added later while in custody for a prior arrest in 1965, for a total of 20 years to be served consecutively. On his arrival in prison, he was given psychological tests used to assign inmates to appropriate work details. Having...
TIL about the "The Boring Billion", a time period from 1.8 to 0.8 billion years ago characterized by more or less tectonic stability, climatic stasis, and stalled biological evolution. ( en.wikipedia.org )
Klaus Barbie - Unrelated to the recent movie. "Butcher of Lyon", Nazi officer, worked for US army after WWII, they helped him escape to Bolivia, where he worked for local dictators for 30 years. ( en.wikipedia.org )
TIL that Singapore is the only country in the world that gained independence against its will. It was expelled from Malaysia in 1965, after a 126-0 vote in the Malaysian parliament. ( en.wikipedia.org )
Fritzl case - Josef Fritzl held his daughter captive in their basement for 24 years, raped her which resulted the birth of 7 children. They were found in 2008, Amstetten, Austria ( en.wikipedia.org )
There are other unbelievable parts of the story:...
Genie (feral child) ( en.wikipedia.org )
Harold Shipman - English general practitioner found guilty of murdering fifteen patients under his care ( en.wikipedia.org )
Lithopedion - Wikipedia ( en.wikipedia.org )
Fremont Troll - An 18-ft. tall troll made of concrete that sits underneath the George Washington Memorial Bridge in Seattle ( en.wikipedia.org )
Georgia Guidestones - Huge granite stones inscribed with words of advice that the author intended to “guide humanity forward”, destroyed in 2022 ( en.wikipedia.org )
