Grimoires are books of magic, invocations, and that lot which usually describe ways to summon angels, demons, and other unworldly beings by performing some time-consuming rituals. The summoner can then use these supernatural creatures to pursue their own worldly ends like fortune or love.

Of course, for the modern man, gaining a fortune or winning the love of his beloved is simply not enough cause to memorize page upon page of ancient Hebrew. When compared to the success rate of these books, one would have a better chance of winning the lottery or expecting his beloved to accept him for who he is.

It is a dated thing to waste your time on anything less than the acquirement of unbridled power. So, we have gathered here a list of grimoires that have the common man’s larger-than-life interests in mind. These books contain spells and rituals for some truly unearthly deeds.

10 The Oupnekhat

The Oupnekhat is a Persian work possibly derived from a 19th-century German translation of an earlier Latin edition, which was likely a revision of the Hindu Upanishads. The Upanishads are several books that contain esoteric wisdom concerning Hindu metaphysics, which can be compared to various other Hindu treatises and scriptures.^[1]

The Oupnekhat aims to aid the production of wise visions. It details rituals to become one with the great being, presumably the Brahma (one of the three supreme gods in Hinduism). The practitioner tries to become the Brahma-Atma, the divine spirit, which is an altogether lovely goal.

If only the book didn’t also admonish the practitioner for needing it at all to reach this state.

9 The Sworn Book Of Honorius

The Sworn Book of Honorius is purportedly one of the oldest existing medieval grimoires, having been mentioned as early as the 13th century in written records. The prologue claims that the text was compiled to preserve the core teachings of sacred magic in the face of persecution. This is somewhat paradoxical to the heavy restrictions that the text lays out against duplication and circulation.^[2]

The 93 chapters of the book cover everything from catching thieves to saving a few souls from purgatory. There is detailed instruction on conjuring and commanding spirits, a staple for any respectable grimoire.

Among many other things, the user can view purgatory, know the time of one’s death, bury empires, become invisible, and obtain knowledge of all the sciences. As far as getting your money’s worth is concerned, there is probably no better deal than the Amazon listing for this book.

8 The Book Of Abramelin

Known in less busy circles as The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, The Book of Abramelin is a long letter addressed to the author’s son. In a bout of irresponsible parenting, the author explains magical apparatuses and rituals concerning the invocation of spirits.

The text initially spends several chapters detailing the myth of how the author came upon this knowledge and then uses several more to talk about the preparations for the rituals. Once the terms and conditions are out of the way, the user can perform the ceremony to call about spirits who then perform a feat or two for their summoner.^[3]

These feats include but are not limited to walking on water, reviving a dead body, causing an army to appear, and transforming men into animals and vice versa.

7 The Munich Manual Of Demonic Magic

The Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, a 15th-century grimoire, breaks tradition by concerning itself solely with the evocation of demonic spirits, ignoring angel folklore and less eerie spirits.

The book classifies its experiments as illusory, psychological, or divinatory.

The illusory experiments can make a thing appear as something it is not, allowing the user to become invisible or make the dead appear to be alive if they so wish. The psychological experiments grant the user influence over the minds and wills of others. And the divinatory experiments involve the cooperation of demons to know all things past, present, and future.^[4]

6 The Clavicle Of Solomon, Revealed By Ptolomy The Grecian

The Clavicle of Solomon, revealed by Ptolomy the Grecian represents one of the earliest manuscripts of the infamous Key of Solomon, the most influential grimoire in existence.

The book details some very broadly named experiments of invisibility, love, envy and destruction, mocking and laughing, and grace and impetration. Surely, one of these categories would cover every lofty thing a practitioner of magic can think of.^[5]

5 The Emerald Tablet

The Emerald Tablet is ancient enough that even its original language is debatable. The oldest documented source for the text is an Arabic work written in the eighth century.

Some myths attribute the tablet to Hermes Trismegistus, the father of Western alchemy. Others attribute it to the third son of Adam and Eve, and still more attribute it to the fabled city of Atlantis.

The tablet heralds the secrets of the universe.^[6] And that is about all that needs to be said for it.

4 The Heptameron

The Heptameron is a guide to angel magic that can be dated to medieval times, if not further back. It has been attributed, probably falsely, to Peter de Abano, a 13th-century physician famously reputed to be a magician.

The text concerns itself with rites to conjure angels for each of the seven days of the week. It analyzes the nature of each angel and the services they can provide to the practitioner. Some highlights include the angels of Tuesday, who can provide an army of 2,000, and the angels of Wednesday, who can reveal all earthly things—past, present, or future.^[7]

3 De Nigromancia

De Nigromancia is a 16th-century Latin manuscript attributed rather falsely to the famous English scientist Roger Bacon. It is among a number of occult manuscripts ascribed to Bacon, who in his life was openly opposed to false claims of authorship and felt that books attributed to the biblical King Solomon should have been banned by law.^[8]

The title refers to necromancy, the branch of magic concerned with the raising and controlling of the dead. The book offers instruction on occult practices following from necromancy. The text focuses on ceremonial magic, specifically a branch known as Goetia, for the summoning of less amiable spirits, such as wraiths. To aid the process, several illustrations of sigils, pentagrams, and seals are provided.

2 The Picatrix

The Picatrix is a 400-page document, originally written in Arabic, which concerns itself with celestial magic. As the style of writing reflects that of a student notebook, some historians ascribe it to an unknown apprentice of a Middle Eastern magic school.

The central theme of the text is obtaining and channeling energy from the planets of the cosmos. The intention is to have the practitioner harness energy from the cosmos and use it to subjugate circumstances to his will. The text borrows from numerology and astrology to guide the rituals needed for such magic.

Unlike many Western grimoires, the book also includes bizarre recipes to be prepared for certain spells. Ingredients for these recipes include all manner of bodily fluids and psychoactive plants. The latter may be responsible for some of the grimoire’s supposed authoritativeness.^[9]

1 The Grand Grimoire

Considered one of the most famous and outrageous grimoires of black magic, The Grand Grimoire is associated with some truly outlandish myths. The authoritative manuscript is allegedly kept in the Vatican’s secret archives, and the text is said to be fire-resistant.

While it cannot be dated much sooner than the early 1800s, it is said to have been written by King Solomon himself. More so, the English translation of the book by A.E. Waite omits a significant portion of the text, apparently in an attempt to render the remaining translation useless, if not destructive, to the practitioner.^[10]

All the superstition surrounding The Grand Grimoire is justified by its contents. The defining ceremony of the book focuses on conjuring and making a pact with the devil. Once the pact is made, the conjurer can have unbridled power in his hands.

There is other instruction on making a Philosopher’s Stone, enchanting firearms, making oneself invisible, and that lot. But it seems quite diminutive as a follow-up to summoning Lucifer. Perhaps, the Vatican allegedly made the right move.

Micah is an unemployed graduate still trying to trap.

We write history as a battle between heroes and monsters. But even the darkest shade of black retains a glimmer of light. Although the people on this list deserve their labels as history’s worst monsters, every one of them has done some good—and many in ways that still affect our lives today.

10 Joseph Stalin Doubled Russia’s Life Expectancy

Joseph Stalin ruled with an iron fist that terrorized Russia. He is responsible for the wholesale slaughter of 20 million of his own people. Life under Stalin, the statistics suggest, must have been brutish and short.

In reality, though, it was the exact opposite. During Stalin’s reign, the average Russian life span more than doubled from 32 to 68 years.

Before the communist revolution, Russia’s people lived horrid, peasant lifestyles. Stalin played a major role in getting them out of that. He introduced a series of five-year plans that worked wonders.

Under Stalin, employment doubled, industrial output increased by 40 percent, and the country experienced an annual growth rate of 18 percent. Free health care and education was granted to everyone, and diseases dropped to record lows.

9 Genghis Khan Had Surprisingly Progressive Policies

Genghis Khan and his army swept through Asia, ruthlessly murdering, raping, and pillaging in any city whose population refused to kneel. By the end of his reign, he had wiped out nearly one-fifth of the world’s population and conquered almost a quarter of its land.

Life was horrible for his enemies. But for the people living in Genghis Khan’s empire, things were actually pretty good. The Mongolian Khans ensured complete religious freedom for all of their people and let Buddhist and Muslim leaders rise to the highest levels of Mongolian government.

Genghis Khan also started one of the first international postal services. His network sent mail from Russia to China and was so massive that it established 1,400 postal stations in China alone.

The countries he conquered flourished economically because of the new opportunities Mongolia afforded them. Since these countries were allowed religious and cultural liberties, their cultures flourished, too.

8 The Nazis Were Trailblazers In Animal Rights

The Nazis were surprisingly benevolent when it came to animals. You may have heard that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. As it turns out, Joseph Goebbels shared Hitler’s sympathy for animal suffering and introduced surprisingly humane policies that still affect the way we treat animals today.

The Nazis passed a number of laws to make animal deaths as painless as possible. They dictated specific ways to prepare lobsters and crabs to reduce their suffering and set up a whole series of rules on how livestock could be butchered.

They were also the first government to ban vivisection, the practice of dissecting live animals for research. Today, that practice is strictly controlled in most developed countries—a social change we owe to the Nazis.

Unfortunately, the Nazis didn’t show the same sympathies for human beings as for animals.

7 Pope Alexander VI Saved Thousands Of Jews

Pope Alexander VI has been immortalized as the evil pope. He was the patriarch of the House of Borgia, the infamous family known for their hedonistic orgies, violent cruelty, and abuse of Alexander VI’s papal power.

To Jewish refugees, though, Alexander VI was a hero. In 1492, when Jews were expelled from Spain, 9,000 starving and exiled people made their way to the Papal States. Although others had turned the Jews away and abused them, Alexander VI invited them in and granted them protection and freedom of religion.

Other forces tried everything they could to change his mind. Still, Alexander VI kept the Jews safe under his care. There’s reason to believe that Alexander VI only did this to make Spain mad. Whatever his motives, a lot of people owe their lives to the head of the Borgias.

6 Aaron Burr Was A Champion For Women And The Poor

Today, Aaron Burr is best known as the vice president who killed founding father Alexander Hamilton in a duel. The story seems especially bizarre because it’s hard to understand how Burr got his position in the first place.

As it turns out, Burr was insanely popular before he shot Hamilton. In fact, so many people wanted him to be president that he almost accidentally stole the election from Thomas Jefferson.

The people loved Burr because he fought for their rights. In those days, only landowners could vote, but Burr helped enfranchise the poor through a loophole. He set up land co-ops where poor people could register as property owners and vote.

He was a champion of women’s rights, too. His daughter, Theodosia, was famous for being incredibly well-educated, and Burr was an ardent supporter of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

5 Mao Tse-tung Brought Peace To China

Mao Tse-tung killed more of his own people than any other leader in history. During the Great Leap Forward, his policies brought about the deaths of over 45 million people in four years.

Other than the starvations and imprisonments, though, life under Mao was actually more peaceful than it had been in a long time. Before Mao, Chinese history was filled with violence and brutality. Shortly after the dawn of the 20th century, the country fell into its infamous Warlord Era. Nearly as soon as the country started to calm down, the Japanese invaded, and that war was followed by yet another civil war.

When Mao came to power, though, the wars finally stopped—and China hasn’t endured a full-scale war since. They have sent soldiers off to support other countries and to quell rebellious states, but the rise of the People’s Republic brought a long-awaited era of peace to China.

4 Saddam Hussein Guaranteed Education And Medical Care To All

At the turn of the 21st century, Saddam Hussein was one of America’s greatest enemies. A powerful, dangerous man who had committed unbelievable atrocities, Hussein would have done much worse if he could’ve gotten his hands on the right weapons.

However, he also invested in some major developments that massively improved daily life in Iraq. Under Saddam, Iraq developed some of the best universities and hospitals in the Arab world—and every one of them was free. Literacy rates skyrocketed under Hussein—from 52 percent to 80 percent in just 10 years.

Of course, all the imprisonment and torture left enough of a sour taste in his people’s mouths for them to tear down his statues and celebrate his death. But many Iraqis reading about his fall in the newspaper could understand what they were reading because of Saddam Hussein.

3 Pol Pot Is Loved By Cambodian Farmers

During his reign in the 20th century, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge wiped out more than three million people, nearly half of Cambodia’s population. Although most people hated Pol Pot, some reports say that the farmers loved him.

Before Pol Pot, the country was led by a man named Lon Nol, who was infamous for his corruption. When the Khmer Rouge overthrew Lon Nol, the United States took his side and bombarded the Cambodian countryside with bombing raids.

When Pol Pot took over, he gave some of the poor rural people a lot more power. Farms that had belonged to private landowners were broken up and given to families, giving the poor a lot of control and new opportunities.

Although his account is controversial, writer Israel Shamir claims that he has spoken to Cambodian farmers and they view Pol Pot as a hero who gave them land.

2 Women’s Rights Advanced By Leaps And Bounds Under Gadhafi

Colonel Muammar Gadhafi was a monster. When the people of Libya finally rose up against him, he showered his own subjects with bombings, opened fire on protestors, and violated every law of war in his violent onslaught against those who stood against him.

Before all that, though, he actually had some incredible social policies. Gadhafi was a major proponent of social equality. He brought free, compulsory education for both men and women to Libya, along with free medical care for all. He even tried to set up free housing for everyone, although he wasn’t able to achieve that dream.

Women, in particular, blossomed under Gadhafi. They gained new opportunities in every industry, and several high-powered women made their way into Gadhafi’s government, military, and “Amazons,” his elite group of female bodyguards.

1 Ivan The Terrible Opened Up Trade Routes That Revitalized Russia

Ivan the Terrible massacred his own people in bouts of paranoia and even killed his own son. Ivan believed that everyone was conspiring to get rid of him, and he exacted revenge in horrible ways on the people he feared.

Perhaps we’re lucky, though, that nobody actually got rid of him because Ivan the Terrible did some great things for Russia. He opened up an early constitutional monarchy, letting the provinces elect their own officials to office.

He also opened up trade routes with England and Holland that improved life for a lot of people. Peasants could use the routes to move to better lands, and the economy significantly improved with increased trade.

Peter the Great would later use Ivan’s trade routes to turn Russia into a major power. Ivan’s developments let Peter bring about reforms that completely changed Russian life. So perhaps the secret behind every Great’s success is the hard work of the Terrible.

Never mind lunatics taking over the asylum; history shows they’ve always been in charge. From human experimenters to genocidal maniacs, here are the 10 craziest psychiatrists, psychologists, and neurologists ever let loose on the world.

10. George Rekers

Southern Baptist minister and UCLA-trained psychologist George Rekers came to public attention in 2000 when the state of Florida paid him to support its ban on gay adoption. He proved such a useful expert witness that Arkansas hired him to support their own ban in 2004, and then Florida hired him again in 2007. As it turned out later, he was more of an “expert” witness than they realized—just not in any credible sense. Despite his avowed anti-gay stance, he was photographed in 2010 coming back from Europe with a rentboy, a male prostitute he hired through Rentboy.com. 

His hypocrisy was unforgivable. As an expert witness for Arkansas and Florida, Rekers claimed (among other things) that there was a higher risk of gay parents molesting their children or giving them AIDS. He also devoted much of his life to convincing heterosexual parents to reject their gay children. And his earlier doctoral studies at UCLA, in which he attempted to cure homosexuality, led directly to one man’s suicide. 

As for the rentboy in 2010, Rekers claimed to have hired him for help with his luggage, adding that once he realized his mistake, he spent the entire 10-day trip to London and Madrid converting the young man to Christianity.

9. Colin Bouwer

As Head of Psychiatry at the University of Otago, New Zealand, Colin Bouwer had all the access he needed to murder his wife using glucose-lowering drugs. Having gotten hold of them by forging prescriptions, he secretly administered them to induce hypoglycemia and simulate a pancreatic tumor—hospitalizing his wife many times. Doctors acting on Bouwer’s information subjected his wife to unnecessary invasive procedures. And it wasn’t until after her death that all the drugs were found in her system. Authorities also uncovered emails from Bouwer questioning experts on hypoglycemia (under an alias). His motive? He was having an affair with a colleague.

Interestingly, given the ongoing debate in psychiatry over whether psychopathy is genetic, Bouwer’s son later killed his own wife in South Africa. Then, with the help of his mum, he tried to make it look like a break-in and violent rape.

8. Aubrey Levin

Stationed at the notorious Ward 22 in Apartheid-era Pretoria, Colonel Aubrey Levin made a name for himself administering electroshock therapy to gay soldiers. That name was “Dr Shock”. Earlier in his career, he’d actually written to a parliamentary committee to urge them not to legalize homosexuality, saying he could zap it out of people instead. As Chief Psychiatrist for the military, his process was simple: he showed patients photos of naked men and encouraged them to fantasize, for which he gave them increasingly powerful electric shocks. He used a similar process on drug users and pacifists. And those who didn’t respond well to treatment (i.e. pretty much all of them) were thrown into a labor camp called Greefswald. 

It’s interesting to note here that Levin was raised Jewish by parents who lived through the Second World War and yet ardently supported South Africa’s openly antisemitic National Party.

After Apartheid, Levin emigrated to Canada to escape retribution. There, he sexually assaulted a number of male patients referred to him from prison for treatment. It wasn’t until one of them taped his advances that authorities believed the complaints and 30 other men came forward. Although he managed to silence the media, Levin was convicted in 2013—along with his wife, who tried to bribe a juror. He was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served one and a half, and he had to undergo a thorough psychiatric evaluation.

7. Andrei Snezhnevsky

“Sluggish schizophrenia” was a convenient diagnosis made up by Soviet psychiatrists. It gave authorities a pretext to arrest and institutionalize basically whoever they wanted. It was deliberately vague. Said to have a slow onset, but with symptoms that could start at any time, it made it perfectly reasonable to round up people showing no psychotic symptoms whatsoever.

One of the main psychiatrists behind this scheme was Andrei Snezhnevsky. A diagnosis of “sluggish schizophrenia” by the likes of him meant immediate confinement in a maximum security psychiatric facility, along with the loss of civil rights and future employability.

6. Harry Bailey

Australian psychiatrist Harry Bailey was an enthusiastic proponent of “deep sleep therapy”, that is, using barbiturates to induce comas for days or weeks as a treatment for mental health issues. Between 1962 and 1979, he was directly responsible for the deaths of 24 of his unsuspecting patients. Of the other 24 who survived his “therapy”, albeit with permanent brain damage, 19 committed suicide later.

The treatment had always been controversial. It was typically used to bypass resistance when administering ECT. But it was clearly dangerous. 

Authorities took a while to catch up with his head count, but when they did the public was outraged. The Church of Scientology was particularly vocal in its condemnation of Bailey. In the end, the Chelmsford Royal Commission was set up to investigate and it put so much pressure on him that he took his own life with barbiturates. His suicide note said: “Let it be known that the Scientologists and the forces of madness have won.” There followed some long overdue reforms in Australia’s psychiatric care standards. 

5. Werner Villinger

Werner Villinger was a German psychiatrist during the Nazi era. Despite his reluctance to join the Nazi party, he was a eugenicist and a Nazi through and through. At the Bethel Institution, he was involved in some of the most heinous war crimes—like Aktion T4, which involved gassing, asphyxiating, and poisoning disabled people—all of whom he experimented on before killing.

After the war, he was anything but repentant. In fact, he adamantly opposed compensating any of the Holocaust’s victims, because, in his professional opinion, it might give them “neurotic ailments”. Scandalously, Villinger continued to practice psychiatry in West Germany and was never tried for his crimes.

4. Walter Freeman

Neurologist Walter Freeman performed the first-ever lobotomy in America—following its invention by the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz. and Freeman was so impressed by this “surgery of the soul,” as the New York Times later called it, that he sought to make it quicker and easier. The result was his transorbital lobotomy, a savagely rudimentary procedure of hammering tools like ice picks into the brain through the bones at the back of the eye sockets. He cut costs wherever he could. For example, instead of anesthetizing patients, he electro-shocked them with a portable machine. He also promoted lobotomies (formerly a last resort for otherwise untreatable conditions) as the first-line treatment for just about everything: schizophrenia, depression, OCD, headaches, chronic pain, and indigestion.

His casualties included JFK’s sister Rosemary, who was left incontinent and unable to speak after a lobotomy at the age of 23. She was one of 3,500 patients he lobotomized, 19 of whom were kids as young as four. Arrogantly, wilfully ignoring his critics, Freeman boasted his success rate of 85%; however, given his fatality rate was 15%, “success” in his mind was apparently anything just short of murder. Hence, despite his lesser reputation as the forward-thinking founder of computational neuroscience, he’ll forever be associated with the most backward procedure in psychiatry.

3. Radovan Karadžic

The “flamboyant” Radovan Karadzic trained as a psychiatrist, in Sarajevo, Denmark, and New York, long before he became known as the genocidal “Butcher of Bosnia” for his crimes in the 1990s war.

His plan, as Bosnian Serb leader, was “to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory.” Among the worst implementations of his lunatic plan was the Srebrenica massacre, which killed more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.

After the war, he evaded capture for more than a decade by disguising himself as a New Age healer, monk, or priest. He grew a long bushy beard, dressed in robes, and wandered from monastery to monastery—protected by the local population. The disguise worked so well that he was, allegedly, able to take part in his mother’s funeral without risking capture. He also wrote a book of poems that completely sold out at the Belgrade International Book Fair. Shockingly, he even reprised his medical career. It was only in 2016 that he was finally convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

2. Donald Ewen Cameron

Scottish-American psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron was involved in MKUltra—the CIA’s mind control program. His mystifyingly unethical work in the 1930s brought him to the agency’s attention. One of his early studies, for example, forced epileptics to sit for an hour in a room heated to 40 degrees C. Another limited their water intake to 600 ml a day, ostensibly to test the effects of dehydration on seizures. There weren’t any. In fact, the only difference between the low-water group and the control group was that the low-water group, in desperation, stole food and drink, drank water out of vases, and ate snow from window sills to hydrate. They also lost weight, suffered acidosis (from increased blood urea nitrogen), and, in one case, even died. But it got him on the CIA’s radar. 

Interestingly, similar experiments were carried out at Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp, and Cameron hypocritically denounced them—even going so far as to call the German race inherently cruel (entirely missing the irony). He also distinguished between ‘weak’ (e.g. German) and ‘strong’ (e.g. American) races, saying the weak should be stopped from reproducing. Despite his batshit Nazi views, he was summoned to Nuremberg after the war to evaluate Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, who even Hitler considered insane but Cameron declared fit to stand trial.

But we digress. One of Cameron’s MK Ultra subprojects was to use drugs and hypnosis to induce ‘clinical coma’ for what he called ‘psychic driving’: forcing people to listen to a recorded statement over and over again for up to 20 hours a day, 15 days in a row. It’s still used for torture today. Another area of his research, secretly funded by the CIA (as the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology), was ‘depatterning’, reducing people’s minds to a blank slate for Cameron to rebuild from scratch. He used this technique on schizophrenics, subjecting them to electroshock “therapy” when their symptoms (inevitably) returned. Disturbingly, even if ethics were a thing back then, and even if someone tried to stop him, Cameron was basically untouchable. He was President of the American Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, the American Psychopathological Association, and, from 1961 to 1966, the World Psychiatric Association.

1. Henry Cotton

American psychiatrist Henry Cotton believed “madness” was caused by bacteria. He based this hypothesis solely on some findings from 1913 that the bacteria that causes syphilis also causes psychotic symptoms through brain lesions. Armed with this hypothesis, Cotton set out to prove it—by removing the teeth of 50 of his patients. It didn’t work. So he cut out the tonsils next. Then gallbladders, testicles, ovaries, uteruses, stomachs, and colons. By 1923, he claimed to have cured 85% of his patients’ mental health problems. As for his 30% death rate (or higher among those he took colons from), he excused this by saying they were all psychotics “in whom the infection has been [too] long-standing”.

Horrifyingly, nobody gave their consent. In fact, they made it clear what they thought of Dr Cotton. But he ignored the terrified pleas of his patients and their families, believing only the most ruthless approach would stand a chance of curing insanity. He was proud of it too, touring the world and publishing numerous papers.

In total, he removed more than 11,000 teeth—including, as a preventative measure, the teeth of his wife and children. When he feared he might be losing his own mind, he pulled out some of his own. He died of a heart attack in 1933.

We like to imagine that we learn from our tragedies—that when the worst moment comes, people change their ways and start working together to make things right.

But sometimes, even after the catastrophe is over, the tragedy continues. People get swept up in the havoc and chaos of the moment and do things that make history’s worst moments even worse. And in the aftermath, some of our darkest moments are left with details too bleak to make it into the history books.

10 Tiananmen Massacre
China Billed The Victims For The Bullets

In 1989, after the death of the controversial figure Hu Yaobang, Chinese students marched out to Tiananmen Square and tried to force real change in China. They made a list of demands and led a hunger strike, hoping to bring an end to corruption and forge the first steps toward democracy.

All that came to an end, though, when the army marched in. Soldiers and tanks advanced on Tiananmen Square, right in the heart of Beijing. At least 300 people were gunned down by their own government, with some estimates putting that number as high as 2,700.

Usually, the story ends there—but there’s an extra little detail that makes it that much worse. After the massacre, some sources reported that the government billed the victims’ families for the cost of the bullets. The families of the protesters were charged the equivalent of 27 cents for each bullet used to kill their children.

The Chinese government has never admitted to it. But we know for a fact that they charged other dissidents for the bullets that killed them. There’s a lot of reason to believe that the reports are true that the government did it here, too.

9 My Lai Massacre
Nixon Pardoned The Man Responsible

The worst incident in the Vietnam War was the My Lai Massacre. In 1968, American soldiers slaughtered more than 350 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam. They gang-raped women, mutilated children—and met absolutely no consequences.

Of everyone involved, only one soldier was actually charged: William Calley. The courts found Calley guilty of killing 22 innocent people and sentenced him to life in prison.

He never actually served the time, though. Instead, they just put him on house arrest, and he didn’t do that for very long. Calley hung around at home for three years and then got a full presidential pardon from Richard Nixon.

That doesn’t mean that everyone got off easy. One person suffered: Hugh Thompson. He was the man who reported the massacre and testified against the people who did it.

Thompson risked his life trying to save as many Vietnamese people as he could from his own men. He was rewarded for his bravery and heroism with death threats. People left mutilated animals on his porch each morning, and he suffered PTSD for the rest of his life.

8 Pompeii
A Nearby Town Got So Hot That People’s Heads Exploded

The destruction of Pompeii is one of the most infamous natural disasters in history. An entire city was leveled under a sea of volcanic ash that killed thousands.

Compared to the people in Herculaneum, though, Pompeii got off easy. After the volcano erupted in AD 79, a witness described the scene: “A fearful black cloud, bent by forked and quivering bursts of flames, . . . sank down to the earth and covered the sea.”

That black cloud hit Herculaneum and covered the whole city. It was incredibly hot—over 500 degrees Celsius (932 °F). It burned the tops of buildings off completely and then touched on the people below. At such incredible temperatures, their teeth cracked, their skin burned off, and their bones turned black. Then their heads literally exploded.

7 9/11
Fallout Led To More Cancer And Car Crashes

On September 11, 2001, when the planes flew into the twin towers in New York City, 2,996 innocent lives were brought to an end. It was a horrible moment and the worst terrorist attack on US soil. Over the next few years, though, that death toll would become even higher.

People were so afraid of flying after 9/11 that airline use went down by 20 percent. As a result, a lot more people were going greater distances in cars instead—which is a lot more dangerous. In the 12 months following the attacks, an estimated 1,595 more Americans died in car accidents because they were afraid to fly on planes.

Worse, though, was the increase in cancer. The twin towers were built with 400 tons of asbestos, which spread through the city when the towers collapsed. That cloud of asbestos affected an estimated 410,000 people, and cancer in New York City has spiked because of it.

The responders suffered the worst. About 70 percent of the recovery personnel who helped on that day now suffer from lung problems. Approximately 1,400 responders died in the 10 years after the tragedy. Another 1,140 responders have developed cancer since that tragic day.

6 The Irish Potato Famine
Queen Victoria Forbade People From Donating Too Much

When the people of Ireland started to starve from the Irish Potato Famine, Abdul Medjid Khan, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, wanted to help. In 1847, he prepared ships full of food and offered to send Ireland £10,000 to help them through the crisis.

British diplomats, though, ordered him not to. British royal protocol, they explained, said that no one should contribute more than Queen Victoria herself. At their order, the sultan reduced his donation to only £1,000 instead.

The Irish were thrilled with his donation anyway. They called the donation an “act of regal munificence” and said, “For the first time, a Mohammedan sovereign, representing multitudinous Islam populations, manifests spontaneously a warm sympathy with a Christian nation.”

The sultan, though, may have revealed a little regret at the compromise when he wrote back, “I would have done all in my power to relieve their wants.”

5 Black Death
The Plague Led To A Jewish Genocide

The Black Death wiped out between 75 and 200 million people in the mid-1300s. It killed an estimated one-third of the population of Europe. It was a terrible tragedy—and like most tragedies, Europe dealt with it by blaming the Jews.

Many Europeans believed that the plague was a Jewish conspiracy. According to the story, the Jews had gone around the country poisoning wells to make good Christian people suffer. At first, it was a conspiracy theory. Then the Inquisition rounded up Jewish people and tortured them until they agreed to say they’d done it. Then it was, in the eyes of the people, a full-blown fact.

Mobs rose up and dragged people out into the streets. Jewish babies were pulled from their parents. Whole communities of people were tied to stakes and burned alive. In one case, more than 2,000 people were incinerated at once.

The Black Death, of course, was not a Jewish conspiracy. It affected Jews and Gentiles alike. That didn’t save anyone, though. In the city of Strasbourg, it became law that no Jew should enter the city for 100 years.

4 Hurricane Katrina
A Neighboring Town Turned Away Refugees At Gunpoint

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, countless people lost their homes. In a desperate bid for survival, people fled to neighboring towns for safety. The police of New Orleans helped them, pointing the way to the bridge that led to the town of Gretna.

But instead of a welcoming party, these people found a barricade on the bridge. Four police cruisers blocked the lanes, and eight officers were waiting for the refugees with shotguns. They yelled, “We don’t want another Superdome!” and chased the people off. According to some reports, the officers even stole the refugees’ food and water before chasing them away.

Arthur Lawson, the Gretna chief of police, didn’t even deny it. He confirmed that he sealed off the bridge, saying, “There was no place for them to come on our side.”

3 Wounded Knee
20 Soldiers Were Given Medals Of Honor

In 1890, US troops attacked an innocent Lakota camp. Most of the people were unarmed, but the troops ran as many down as possible, slaughtering approximately 200 innocent men, women, and children. It was an outrage, and the men who did it were murderers. And for doing it, 20 of them were given Medals of Honor.

More people were given awards for the Wounded Knee Massacre than for most real battles. The government actually wanted to give out 25, but a man named General Miles fought it, calling it “an insult to the memory of the dead.” Even with his protests, they still handed out 20.

One man, Sergeant Toy, was cited “for bravery displayed while shooting hostile Indians.” In the full report, though, it was made clear that he shot Native Americans who were running away. Another man, Lieutenant Garlington, was awarded for blocking off the escape of fleeing victims. He forced them to hide a ravine, and Lieutenant Gresham was awarded for going into that ravine to kill the victims.

At least one Medal of Honor recipient seems to have felt the guilt of what he did. Two years later, Sergeant Loyd killed himself just a few days before the anniversary of the massacre. For his part at Wounded Knee, he had been given the Medal of Honor for “bravery.”

2 The Great Fire Of London
The Town Hanged A Mentally Handicapped Man

Robert Hubert was described as “not well in the mind” by everyone who knew him. He was very likely mentally handicapped or at least mentally ill. He could barely speak a word of English, and his limbs were constricted by palsy. But despite all that, he was hanged for firebombing London in 1666.

Hubert wasn’t actually in London when the fire happened. He showed up two days later and walked around repeating the word “Yes!” In 1666, that was enough evidence to a form a lynch mob, drag him off the streets, and pull him into the police station.

There, he was interrogated until he said “Yes!” that he’d been paid a shilling by a Frenchman to burn down London. He changed his story every time he told it, but they hanged him anyway.

Fifteen years later, the captain of the ship that took Hubert to London finally stepped forward and told everyone that Hubert wasn’t even in London during the Great Fire. By then, though, it was far too late.

1 The Titanic
They Billed The Families Of The Victims

The White Star Line was nothing if not frugal. Due to a clause worked into their contracts, every employee aboard the ship was fired the second that the Titanic began to sink. The company would not, after all, pay wages for employees who were wasting their time drowning.

Afterward, the families of the dead were informed that they would have to pay the freight cost if they wanted their loved ones’ bodies. Most couldn’t afford it, of course, and so today, many of those who died have memorials instead of graves.

Things were far worse for the musicians. The band who heroically played on while the ship sank were completely abandoned. They were registered as independent contractors, which meant that White Star Line legally didn’t have to do anything for them. The other crew members’ families got survivor benefits, but the families of the band didn’t get a penny.

That doesn’t mean they got nothing, though. The families of the band were sent one memento: a bill for the cost of the uniforms.

A soldier’s life is a practical one, with gear designed to match. When we imagine warriors, whether modern or ancient, we think of gear designed for function and not form.

But throughout history, symbolism has held a powerful place in our cultures. This is reflected in armor from ages past that portrays otherworldly creatures, folklore, or exaggerated features to make the wearer an object of fear. Sometimes for show, sometimes for survival, these are 10 of the most fantastical pieces of armor ever crafted.

10 Maximilian I’s Frog-Mouth Helmet

Unusual in form and name, the frog-mouth helmet seems to be the most impractical helmet possible. Its lower front plate was curved upward and protruded, which provided its signature look.

With only a narrow slit to see out of, this helmet provided no peripheral vision. It was routinely bolted in place, so there was no ability to move it at the neck. What’s more, the wearer couldn’t see forward unless he was leaning ahead slightly.

Heavy and unwieldy, this helmet would have been a death sentence on most battlefields. But it was used almost exclusively in a different sort of combat, jousting. This was an ancient extreme sport where two mounted horsemen charged at one another with lances. The goal was to dismount the opponent while not being dismounted yourself.

In this environment, the frog-mouth helmet excelled. Its lack of peripheral vision was meaningless because knights jousted in straight charges at their opponents. Also, the helmet’s odd shape helped to repel lance blows instead of absorbing them.

The frog-mouth helmet shown above was used by Maximilian I during a jousting tournament to celebrate his wedding at Innsbruck, Austria, in 1494. A masterful example of the frog-mouth helmet, it was crafted by famous armorers Lorenz and Jorg Helmschmid.

9 Bearded Parade Helmet Of Charles V

Like his grandfather, Maximilian I, Charles V appreciated outstanding armor. From his boyhood on, Charles possessed many beautiful pieces of armor, though most were symbols of his wealth and power and not used in actual combat.

One piece, in particular, stands out: a parade helmet created by famed Italian armorer Filippo Negroli. While allowing the wearer’s head to be completely enclosed, this parade helmet featured golden curly hair and a matching beard. It ensured a good hair day for any discerning Holy Roman Emperor.

The helmet, while stunning, has not survived completely. The opening now present on the upper face of the helmet would have included an additional but now missing plate.

8 Mask Visor In The Form Of A Human Face

For about 30 years between 1510–1540, popular fashion in Germany and Austria included helmet visors sculpted to look like humans, either for frightening or humorous effect. It is hard to say which effect Kolman Helmschmid was going for when he created the helmet pictured above. Perhaps he was trying to outdo the look of his glorious rump armor.

The helmet depicts a mustached man with bug eyes and a smashing nose. Visors like these were used mostly for pre-Lenten festivals and were designed to be exchanged for more traditional visors during the everyday use of the helm.

7 Wings Of The Polish Hussars

The Winged Hussars of Poland were one of the most effective cavalries the world has ever seen. For nearly two centuries, they won battle after battle, often against seemingly impossible odds.

In one such case, 200 hussars successfully defended a city from a force of 30,000 in 1581. Sweden’s King Carl X Gustav said, “If I had some 10,000 of such soldiers, I would expect to easily conquer not only Turkey, but the entire world.”

One of the most fascinating facts about this elite cavalry was that they were, in fact, winged. Dyed eagle, ostrich, or crane feathers were affixed to a decorated wooden batten and then attached to the hussar’s backpack, giving him his signature wing.

There has been much debate over the function of this piece of equipment. Some suggest that it was a noisemaking device to rattle enemy horses not accustomed to the sound. Others believe that it was a protection against lassos used by Asian horsemen.

Still, the most prevailing theory is that it was simply an intimidation tactic. These seemingly invincible horsemen were clad in furs and wings, giving them the air of otherworldly attackers.

6 Face Guard Of King James II

The Royal Coat of Arms was created in 1399 during the reign of King Henry IV. It has been used by the British royal family ever since, although some have used it in more interesting ways than others.

King James II, who was crowned in 1685, had a harquebusier’s armor commissioned that included a breastplate, backplate, long gauntlet, and a pot helmet as the centerpiece of the set. The helmet displayed the Royal Coat of Arms with its standing lion and unicorn immediately in front of King James II’s face.

This set of armor was bulletproof—aside from the holes in its fascinating face guard—and was commissioned for £100.

5 Armor Garniture Of George Clifford

If we know nothing else about George Clifford, we know that he was a man who didn’t mind being noticed. He was appointed as champion for Queen Elizabeth I in 1590, and he incorporated her into his armor as much as possible.

His black suit of steel and gold armor was decorated with the Tudor rose, the fleur-de-lis, and the cipher of his queen (two E’s back to back). Though George Clifford did see battle—most famously perhaps was his capture of a Spanish fort in San Juan, Puerto Rico—this armor was designed for tournament use.

4 The Gifted Horned Helmet Of Henry VIII

This iron helmet was one part of an entire suit of armor originally gifted to King Henry VIII by Maximilian I in 1514. Today, only the helmet survives. However, its freakish horned appearance has caused much confusion over the years.

Originally, it was thought to have belonged to Henry VIII’s court jester. This makes sense as the helmet depicts the fool, a popular character in court pageants, complete with wrinkles, dripping nose, and stubble. Scholarly debate over the nature of this gift still rages, and we’re all left to wonder what the rest of the set may have looked like.

3 Lion’s-Head Sallet

We don’t know who made this helmet or who wore it, but we do know what inspired it. The Nemean lion’s demise was the first of Hercules’s recorded exploits. Though no weapon could penetrate the lion’s hide, Hercules strangled the legendary animal to death and then wore the beast’s skin as a mantle.

Naturally, anyone would be keen to channel this story, which was often seen in Renaissance art as a symbol of strength, courage, and perseverance. So this helmet was crafted to imitate the mythological hero’s victory. The underlying helmet was plain. But the top layer is a gold-and-copper lion, sure to inspire friends and frighten enemies in equal measure.

2 The Many Kawari Kabutos

A kawari kabuto (“strange helmet”) was a popular style of helmet used by high-ranking samurai between 1467–1603. These personalized helmets frequently depicted demons or fierce animals and were used to distinguish generals from their lower-ranking inferiors.

Though a staple of the ancient Japanese warrior for centuries, the kabutos have outlived their military usefulness. Now they survive in traditional Japanese wisdom and everyday sayings.

One such saying is: “Tighten your kabuto after winning.” This warns not to rest too soon after a victory. “Take off the kabuto” is a saying that means to surrender or suffer defeat.

1 Bamen

If a samurai would cover himself in terrifying representations of folklore and nature, he would naturally want the same for his horse. The bamen (“horse mask”) and bagai (“horse armor”) were used by samurai after the 17th century.

The armor was crafted from many small tiles of leather and gold that were sewn into cloth. The mask was made from boiled leather that was then shaped into the likeness of a horse or dragons, complete with horns, scales, and fiery red nostrils. The entire battle-ready horse and rider conveyed the owner’s prestige and power.

There’s a difference between the person we show to the world and the person we show to the people who love us. There’s a whole other side of a person that comes out in love letters. In letters to those who care for us, the real self comes through because we know we’re writing words that will only be seen by the one person who truly understands us.

Unless, of course, you’re famous. Because if you get famous and die, you can pretty much count on some hack writer somewhere gathering up every private word you’ve ever written and getting everyone in the world to make fun of you by publishing them in a book.

Or, sometimes, in a top 10 list.

10 Mozart’s Weird Poop Letters To His Cousin

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart left behind more than just music. He also left behind a whole series of flirtatious love letters written to his younger cousin, Maria Anna Thekla. But it’s not flirting with his cousin that’s weird—it’s his weird obsession with poop.

“I now wish you goodnight,” Mozart signed one of his letters to his cousin. It would be a normal enough way to end a letter if he’d stopped there. But he didn’t. “Shit in your bed with all your might,” he added, “sleep with peace on your mind and try to kiss your own behind.”

“Oh my ass burns like fire!” Mozart wrote in another letter. “What on Earth is the meaning of this! Maybe muck wants to come out? Yes, yes, muck.”

Even the flirtation involved poop. Mozart, apparently, was convinced that talking poop was what drove women wild. When he wrote his cousin begging her to visit, he worded it, “Come for a bit or else I’ll shit.” Then he promised to “kiss your hands, my dear, shoot off a gun in the rear.”

Strangest of all, Mozart didn’t just start doing this on his own—he seems to have picked it up from his mother. Her letters are pretty much the same as her son’s. In one letter to her husband, Mozart’s mother wrote, “Keep well, my love. Into your mouth your arse you’ll shove. I wish you goodnight, my dear, but first shit in your bed and make it burst.”

9 Warren G. Harding’s Letters About His Penis

Just before he became president, Warren G. Harding carried on a torrid love affair with a woman named Carrie Fulton Phillips. Each wrote some absolutely scandalous letters—but Harding was a senator, vying for the presidency. They couldn’t afford to get caught. So to keep things confidential, Harding nicknamed his penis, “Jerry.”

“Wish I could take you to Mount Jerry,” the 29th president of the United States of America wrote. “Wonderful spot.” It wasn’t the only time he wrote her about his Jerry. In another letter, he told her, “Jerry came and will not go.” Then he warned her, “I fear you would find a fierce enthusiast today.”

He didn’t just have a nickname for his own genitals—he called Carrie’s, “Mrs. Pouterson.” In one letter, he reproached her for not being more affectionate: “When I saw Mrs. Pouterson a month ago, she persuaded me you still loved. I had a really happy day with her.”

8 Albert Einstein’s Letters About His Mistresses

Albert Einstein wasn’t really one for monogamy. He had dozens of mistresses behind his wives’ backs, and his letters make it pretty clear that he didn’t feel the slightest bit bad about it.

When his affairs split apart him and his first wife, Mileva Maric, Einstein wrote her a letter offering his suggestion on how to keep their marriage together. He would stay with her, he promised, as long as she would “make sure that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order.” Apparently, Mileva wasn’t wooed.

Remarrying didn’t change him. When his second wife got mad, Einstein wrote a letter to his stepdaughter, Margot, asking her to pass the message on. His wife, he explained, was too crazy to talk to directly.

“It is true that M. followed me and her chasing after me is getting out of control,” he told Margot about one of his mistresses. “But, first of all, there was nothing I could do to prevent it.”

Still, he had some concern about his wife’s feelings. “For mother,” he told Margot, he would try to make sure that “not every Tom, Dick, and Harry gossip about it.”

For her sake, he was going to try to only sleep with women who could keep their mouths shut. “Out of all the dames,” Einstein promised his stepdaughter, “I am in fact attached only to Mrs. L., who is absolutely harmless and decent.”

7 Jimmy Savile’s Love Letter To Margaret Thatcher

Jimmy Savile wanted to be remembered as a great radio DJ. But when you sexually assault hundreds of children, it tends to eclipse whatever you did at work. Today, he’s remembered as one of the world’s worst pedophiles—and that makes a love letter he wrote to the prime minister of the United Kingdom deeply unnerving.

Savile thanked Margaret Thatcher for their lunch date and then told her, “My girl patients pretended to be madly jealous + wanted to know what you wore + what you ate.” Those “girl patients” were sick girls at a hospital whom Jimmy Savile was sexually assaulting. Some of them were as young as eight. In Saville’s mind, these girls were jealous of his affections for Margaret Thatcher.

“They all love you,” Savile told Thatcher. “Me, too!!”

It wasn’t their last date. A little after, Thatcher and Savile met for lunch again. Thatcher’s secretary, going over her papers, wrote Thatcher a deeply worried letter.

“Can you kindly let me know if you made any promises to Jimmy Savile when he lunched with you yesterday?” she asked the prime minister. “Did you offer him any money?” Thatcher may have been wooed. The only record of Thatcher’s reply just reads, “Will tell you in detail. MT.”

6 Herman Melville’s Love Letters To Nathaniel Hawthorne

Two of America’s most celebrated authors just might have been in love. Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick, left behind some letters he wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter. According to some scholars, they’re more than just friendly.

“Your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours,” Melville wrote to Hawthorne. “Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips—lo, they are yours and not mine.”

It might have just been a declaration of friendship, but it’s hard not to read a little sexuality into some of Melville’s word choices. In a letter to a friend in which Melville gushes about Hawthorne, Melville wrote, “Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and further and further, shoots his strong New England roots in the hot soil of my Southern soul.”

According to some scholars, the letters reveal a story of unrequited love. “Through the remaining 40 years of Melville’s life,” a scholar named Arlin Turner wrote, “he thought he had been rebuffed by Hawthorne.”

5 Peter Abelard’s Rapey Letters To Heloise

Peter Abelard was a medieval philosopher who talked about Christian ethics, but he’s probably best known for his secret affair with Heloise d’Argenteuil. There’s a little irony in a Christian philosopher being remembered for having an affair, but it gets a lot worse. Based on the letters he sent her, it doesn’t seem like Heloise was a willing participant.

“Even when you were unwilling, resisted as much as you could, and tried to dissuade me,” he wrote to her, “since your nature was weaker, I often forced you to consent with threats and blows.”

It might explain a lot. When their secret relationship came out, Heloise denied that she’d even been with him. In revenge, Abelard had her sent to a nunnery. He didn’t quite get away with it, though. Furious, Heloise’s uncle had a gang of men break into Abelard’s home and forcibly castrate him.

Even Abelard accepted that he had it coming. He wrote, “It was wholly just and merciful, although by means of the supreme treachery of your uncle, for me to be diminished in that part of my body where the power of lust resided.”

4 Benjamin Franklin’s Call For Free Love

Benjamin Franklin, apparently, was too much man for just one woman. After his wife died, he started playing the field. At age 73, he wrote a letter to one of his mistresses to let her know that she had to deal with an open relationship.

“You find innumerable faults with me, whereas I see only one fault in you,” Franklin told her. That fault, he said, was her attempts to “seek monopoly on all my affection and not allow me any for the agreeable ladies of your country.”

He wasn’t being totally honest, though, when he said that he only found one fault in her. He wasn’t just upset that she wouldn’t let him sleep around—she also didn’t put out.

“You renounce and totally exclude all that might be of the flesh in our affection, allowing me only some kisses,” Franklin complained. “What am I receiving that is so special as to prevent me from giving the same to others, without taking from what belongs to you?”

3 Marlon Brando’s Letter To A Stewardess He Didn’t Know

Marlon Brando was a sex symbol. Any woman would have been thrilled to get a love letter from him—but it would have counted for a bit more if he learned your name first.

After taking a flight in 1966, Brando left a love letter to one of the stewardesses on the plane. He doesn’t seem to have actually spoken to her because he addresses it to “Dear Lady.” But he’d worked out a fantasy about her life just by staring at her.

“There is something not quite definable in your face,” Brando wrote. “You have something graceful and tender and feminine. You seem to be a woman who has been loved in her childhood, or else somehow by the mystery of genetic phenomena, you have been visited by the gifts of refinement, dignity, and poise.”

It starts off nice enough, but Brando threw a few caveats in there to make sure she didn’t get too big of a head. He made sure to let her know that she was “not pretty in a conventionally thought of way” before telling her that she left an impression “irrespective of your gothic aspects.”

2 Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Letter

As strange as Franz Kafka was, you still might expect him to write normal love letters. But he didn’t. As his private letters make clear, Kafka was exactly the man his writing makes him appear to be.

A love letter from Kafka to a woman named Milena could have been sold as a short story. It starts off deceptively normal: “Last night, I dreamed about you.” Kafka, though, isn’t being cute. He really had a dream, and he was going to tell her every crazy detail.

“We kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me,” Kafka wrote. It seems kind of sweet, but then it takes a turn. “Finally, you somehow caught fire.”

In his dream, Kafka started to beat this woman with his coat. Then he realized that he was on fire and he was beating himself with a coat. But it wasn’t doing any good. “In the meantime, however, the fire brigade arrived and somehow you were saved,” Kafka wrote. “But you were different from before, spectral, as though drawn with chalk against the dark.”

Kafka, it seems, wasn’t too comfortable with being romantic. Their letters reveal that he wasn’t too anxious to share a bed with her. In the end, he called their relationship off by telling her, “I can only love what I can place so high above me that I cannot reach it.”

1 Sigmund Freud’s Cocaine-Fueled Love Note

When Sigmund Freud was a young man, he got engaged to Martha Bernays. His fiancee was still a virgin, but Freud was pretty sure he knew how to fix that. He wrote her a letter encouraging her to take some cocaine.

Freud was at the height of his cocaine enthusiasm. That year, he published a paper called “About Cocaine” that recommended using cocaine for sexual arousal, for fighting headaches, and for pretty much everything else. He also wrote a series of letters arguing with people who said cocaine was habit-forming.

“Woe to you, my Princess, when I come,” Freud wrote his fiancee. “I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward, you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.”

Military history is filled with tales of deceptions, feints, surprise attacks, envelopments, double-crosses, and other brilliant maneuvers by brilliant generals. But it’s also filled with stories of overconfident commanders biting off way more than they can chew with foolish invasions, attacks on superior enemies, and ignoring all sorts of red flags that might have spared countless lives. Let’s take a look at some of the most infamous military blunders in history. 

10. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia

Like every successful conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte eventually became too ambitious for his own good. His attempts to force Spain and Russia to cut off trade with Britain both became military disasters for him. But of the two, the invasion of Russia was far worse. 

Napoleon’s Grande Armee marched into Russia with a force of between 650,000-700,000 men, unprecedented in world history at the time. But the Russians wisely opted to retreat rather than face him, employing scorched earth tactics along the way and thus forcing Napoleon’s army to rely on an increasingly shaky supply line. He did win the bloody Battle of Borodino and took empty, burning Moscow shortly afterwards, but the expected Russian surrender never materialized. With winter setting in, Napoleon had no choice but to take his remaining men on a torturous retreat. En route, his already mauled army took further losses from disease, starvation, freezing temperatures, and cossack raids. Well under 100,000 French troops made it out alive. It was a humiliating, mutilating defeat from which Napoleon never fully recovered. It shattered the myth of his invincibility and set the stage for his first abdication in 1814. 

9. Germany declares war on the US 

Nazi Germany was at the peak of its power in 1941. France had been overrun in a stunning six week campaign the year before. Britain was thrown into the sea in the same attack and now unable to challenge the Wehrmacht in continental Europe. And in Russia, the Soviets had taken titanic losses, and German legions were at the doorstep of Moscow. 

Just then, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, dragging the US into the war. Hitler could have laid low. Who knows? Maybe America’s preoccupation with Japan would’ve led to them reducing the desperately needed Lend-Lease supplies keeping Britain and the USSR afloat, to funnel into their own war effort. 

Instead, an overconfident Hitler, fully convinced he would be able to finish off Britain and Russia before America was done with Japan and able to send armies to Europe, decided to declare war on the US. It was a symbolic show of solidarity with Germany’s Axis partner Japan. But it would be a disastrous decision. The “Germany first” policy of the Allies took him by surprise, and German defeats in Russia soon paved the way to the thing Hitler dreaded most: an unwinnable two-front war. 

8. Lee blows it at Gettysburg 

The Confederates at least appeared to be winning the American Civil War in 1863, thanks to victories in Virginia. But in reality, the Emancipation Proclamation slamming the door on the possibility of international recognition for the South, combined with a Union blockade and the impending fall of vital Vicksburg on the Mississippi, had the rebels in desperate straits by that summer. Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee decided to take his smaller but highly confident army on its second invasion of the north that June, hoping to win a major victory on Union soil that would scare a war-weary north out of the war. 

This led to the Battle of Gettysburg in early July. Union troops were defeated on the first day, but able to seize and successfully defend high ground on July 2. Knowing he would likely never get another shot at a major northern victory, Lee launched a massive infantry assault called Pickett’s Charge on July 3. It was doomed from the start, and the devastated Southern army never fully recovered. Lee never won a major victory again. Less than two years later, he surrendered his tiny army at Appomattox, all but ending the war. 

7. Custer gets slaughtered at Little Big Horn

George Armstrong Custer was a respected Union cavalry commander during the American Civil War, but he’s not remembered for beating J.E.B. Stuart at Gettysburg. He’s remembered for his ill-fated, and last, performance, at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Custer, a flamboyant and ambitious cavalry officer, underestimated the strength of the Native American forces he faced and made a series of critical errors that led to a devastating defeat for the US Army.

Custer’s first mistake was a lack of proper reconnaissance. Overconfident and desperate for glory, he divided his forces into three separate battalions without adequate information about the size and positioning of the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes he intended to engage. On June 25-26, 1876, Custer’s 7th Cavalry encountered overwhelming resistance. Instead of waiting for reinforcements or adopting a more defensive stance, Custer pressed forward into a situation where his troops were outnumbered, outgunned, and, ultimately, surrounded and destroyed. 

“Custer’s Last Stand” has become one of the biggest cautionary tales in military history. 

6. Rome gets annihilated at Cannae

The story of the 216 BCE’s Battle of Cannae is usually told from the perspective of Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca’s brilliant double envelopment and slaughter of tens of thousands of Roman soldiers, during his Second Punic War invasion of Italy. But it’s worth examining the degree to which the Romans brought the disaster on their own head, too. 

In a nutshell, the Romans got their cavalry wiped out and then, overconfident in their heavy infantry, shrugged it off and marched straight into the Carthaginian lines. Hannibal wanted this – he feigned weakness and ordered his men to slowly withdraw, keeping the Romans preoccupied with splitting his line in half. By the time they realized it was a trap, it was too late. The Carthaginians stopped retreating, snapped their flanks in, and used their cavalry to seal the last remaining escape route. Surrounded, the Romans lost some 70,000 men in one day, an unimaginable death toll. Given Rome’s population at the time, that would be the equivalent of America losing tens of millions of men in one day. 

Watch your flanks, people. And don’t underestimate any enemy, especially those who had already beaten you multiple times before. 

5. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

Japan’s brutal invasion of China didn’t lead to a swift victory. What it did lead to was their army getting bogged down there and their supplies of oil, steel, and rubber being cut off by an American embargo. 

Japan realized it could get its own sources by seizing resource-rich territory throughout Southeast Asia. But that would lead to inevitable war with Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States, who owned that land. But they rolled the dice and invaded all that land anyway. As part of this offensive, they decided to preemptively remove their greatest naval competitor in the Pacific, with a sneak attack on the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 

They knew America had overwhelming industrial might, but hoped that by the time America recovered, they would’ve already conquered China and would be so entrenched throughout the Pacific that America would sue for peace, realizing the cost of removing Japan was too high. It was a ludicrous gamble. The Americans were enraged but far from crushed in the attack. They turned the tide at Midway mere months later, and then slapped aside every Japanese attempt to stop them as they smashed their way to the home islands. Oops! 

4. The Battle of Fredericksburg

By December 1862, the American Civil War had raged for a year and a half – far longer than either side had anticipated. And it was only getting bloodier by the day. Part of the overall Union plan was, in addition to seizing the Mississippi River and blockading Southern ports, to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. The Union Army of the Potomac had failed repeatedly at this task, but was determined to get it right. 

Under extreme pressure from president Lincoln, new commander Ambrose Burnside (after whom sideburns were named) decided to cross the Rappohanock River at Fredericksburg, Virginia, and then march south to Richmond. But pontoon boats were slow in arriving, giving General Robert E. Lee a chance to guess his opponent’s intentions and swiftly fortify his positions. His subordinate Stonewall Jackson had some difficulty in his sector, but James Longstreet held the line masterfully at Marye’s Heights, inflicting appalling losses on Union brigades that walked straight into the teeth of a rebel stone wall. It was one of the worst Union defeats of the war, and no major attempts were made to march on Richmond for nearly a year and a half afterwards. 

3. Charge of the Light Brigade 

It’s been immortalized and glorified by Lord Alfred Tennyson’s famous poem of the same name, but the real charge of the light brigade, which took place during 1854’s Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War, was far from glorious. The charge occurred when a miscommunication led the Light Brigade, a British cavalry unit, to charge directly into a well-defended position. 

The confusion that led to the Charge of the Light Brigade began when an order was given by British commanders. Due to unclear communication and misinterpretation, the Light Brigade, under the command of Lord Cardigan, advanced into the “Valley of Death” against a heavily fortified Russian artillery position. The brigade faced fire from both sides as they galloped headlong into a devastating crossfire. It was old school military glory versus the harsh reality of modern military killing machines. The resulting carnage foreshadowed the carnage of the First World War.

2. Gallipoli campaign

Combat in World War I heavily favored the defender, leading to static front lines and lots of dead men who tried to breach them. Seeking a way to break the stalemate, Entente (Allied) leadership sought to attack one of Germany’s perceived weaker partners, the Ottoman Empire. 

Future WW2-era British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, then a high-ranking Naval strategist, concocted a plan to devastate the Ottomans and make contact with their Russian allies by forcing the Dardanelles straits near Istanbul. They would charge into the bay with older wooden warships as the vanguard, hoping these less valuable vessels would do as much damage as they could while absorbing Ottoman fire and nautical mines. After the Ottomans were tired and running low on ammo, newer metal warships would cruise in, finish off the defenders, and deposit infantry to capture the area. 

Unfortunately, it all fell apart. Commanders overly attached to their beloved wooden boats protected them from fire, exposing the rest of the fleet. And the infantry got bogged down on Gallipoli with no way forward for months, facing murderous Ottoman fire until they were evacuated in 1916, having achieved nothing of strategic value. 

1. Invasion of Canada

We could go on and on about how dumb the War of 1812 was. But the invasion of Canada by US forces was arguably the silliest and stupidest chapter in it. In the early stages of the war, the United States sought to annex British-held territory (a longterm policy goal for many Americans politicians) initiated a three-pronged invasion plan targeting Upper Canada (present-day Ontario), Lower Canada (present-day Quebec), and the maritime provinces. 

The Americans faced initial success with victories at Detroit and the capture of Fort Mackinac. But the campaign ultimately faltered as underprepared American forces, stuck with horrible intelligence and worse leadership, encountered logistical challenges, harsh weather conditions, and strong resistance. The Battle of Queenston Heights in October 1812 proved a significant setback for the Americans, as their attempts to invade Upper Canada were repelled.

In 1813, both sides engaged in a series of offensives and counter-offensives before the Americans finally called it a day and returned home, solidifying much of the US-Canada border we still have today. Canadians still cheer about it, and it’s hard to blame them. Meanwhile, Americans would rather change the subject.

The universe has a morbid sense of humor. We’ve known this ever since apes were allowed to have consciousness. However, the universe sometimes feels the need to remind us of this fact.

At times, it does this by giving absolute power to the least deserving or by sending off a human being in a manner that sounds like something approved by ACME Corporation. So, let’s take a look at some people who have lived and died in a way that only Wile E. Coyote could.

10 Demonstrating A Suicide

On June 17, 1871, Representative Clement Vallandigham of Ohio died in the name of justice—accidentally. Retiring to his law practice after a life of treason, Vallandigham was attempting to prove a client innocent of murder by arguing that the victim shot himself.

Prior to the trial, Vallandigham headed to open land to determine the level of residue left by a point-blank shot and then left the field with three live rounds in his pistol. Arriving back at his hotel, he was handed a parcel with the unloaded gun used by the victim. He laid that gun beside his own pistol. Leaving his suite, he pocketed the deadlier of the two choices of weaponry.

Confident in his case, he entertained a hotel visitor with a live demonstration of his argument. It’s fair to say that it was very convincing. While Vallandigham wasn’t present for the occasion, his client was ultimately cleared. And though the novelty had worn off, another man met his death in the same fashion while trying to demonstrate how Vallandigham killed himself.^[1]

9 Killer Robot

In 1981, Kenji Urada jumped over a fence labeled “Off Limits” to check on a malfunctioning machine at a Kawasaki Heavy Industries plant. In doing so, he accidentally hit the “on” switch, prompting a robot arm to crush him against a machine for processing automobile gears.^[2]

His coworkers didn’t know how to stop the machine, hence Urada became the second man in human history to be killed by a robot. Thankfully, the company introduced safety measures after his death to isolate industrial robots within their plants.

8 Too Much Food

By all accounts, the 18th century’s King Adolf Frederick of Sweden was a sweet and gentle man who cared for his servants and made snuffboxes as a hobby. Evidently, such a personality wasn’t fit for the rabid power grab that characterized the monarchy. Both his wife and his court exploited his disposition for their own gain throughout his rule.

Frederick reached the ripe age of 60 with a voracious appetite for food, perhaps to stuff down his feelings after a lifetime of being undermined. After eating a sizable helping of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, kippers, and champagne and then finishing it off with 14 servings of his favorite dessert, Frederick died of severe digestive troubles.^[3]

7 Tripped By A Beard

Hans Steininger, a 16th-century town mayor, is best known in Braunau am Inn for his 1.4-meter-long (4.5 ft) beard. In his life, he was very popular with the townsfolk and served multiple terms, but his untimely end serves as the most memorable aspect of his legacy.

In 1567, a large fire sent the town into panic. Steininger, who usually rolled up his beard in a pouch that he carried with him, unfortunately had his beard hanging free amid the chaos. At some point during the ruckus, his foot caught on his beard and he tumbled down a flight of stairs, ultimately breaking his neck.

Today, the town features a full-body illustration of the man carved in rock that is displayed on the side of St. Stephan’s Church. His beard is engraved in its entire length as it is a celebrity in the town’s cultural memory.^[4]

6 Scarf Caught In The Wheel Of A Car

Isadora Duncan, considered the mother of modern dance, had received a beautiful scarf from a friend. It was crimson red and twice her size. Flaunting it in front of a crowd of French admirers in Nice, she was set for a drive in her convertible on September 14, 1927. Little did she know that her scarf was tangled in the rear right tire and the start of her drive would dislocate her spine, resulting in her immediate death.

Strangely enough, automobile accidents followed Duncan throughout her life. In 1913, her two children were drowned in a runaway automobile that plunged into a river. Later that year, Duncan was injured in an automobile accident. Then, in 1924, she was knocked unconscious in a car collision.^[5]

5 Molasses

By 1919, the families of Commercial Street in Boston’s North End were used to the groaning and rumbling of a 15-meter-tall (50 ft) holding tank that had been built in the area four years earlier. The tank held molasses for United States Industrial Alcohol, which used the contents to produce alcohol for liquor and munitions manufacturing. The tank often leaked onto the street, owing to structural instability that followed from a rushed and hazardous construction process.

On January 15, 1919, a calm afternoon on Commercial Street was interrupted by an awful grating. Before anybody understood what was happening, 8.7 million liters (2.3 million gal) of molasses poured onto the street, resulting in a 5-meter (15 ft) tidal wave traveling at 56 kilometers per hour (35 mph).

The wave destroyed every person, horse, building, and electrical pole in its path. The Engine 31 firehouse was obliterated as the sludge caused the second story to collapse onto the first.

The train resting on Atlantic Avenue was nearly lifted off its tracks. A resident down the street woke up covered in molasses, only to find two of his family members killed in the wave. A 0.8-kilometer (0.5 mi) stretch of the street was left in shambles as the flood died down.^[6]

The death toll of the incident amounted to 21 bodies, with 150 injured. United States Industrial Alcohol was faced with 119 lawsuits in the aftermath. The company shifted the blame to apparent terrorist activities in the area.

4 Exactly As Advertised

Working at Toronto’s TD Centre, Garry Hoy had a habit of bodychecking windows to demonstrate their tensile strength in front of impressionable youths. Hoy, a partner at Holden Day Wilson LLP, worked on the 24th floor of the building. He was clearly impressed by the skyscraper’s workmanship. However, his habit of slamming into windows as a testament to the structure was never approved by any known building code in the world.^[7]

On July 9, 1993, he was entertaining a group of articling students with his old tricks on the 24th floor. While the window in question held through one run of Hoy battering against it, the glass popped out of the frame on the second run, sending Hoy into free fall. He died of his injuries soon after.

3 Hit To The Groin

In 1984, the United States Tennis Association was sued for $2.25 million by the family of Richard Wertheim, a tennis umpire. The lawsuit followed Wertheim’s death at a junior final. It claimed that the association had been negligent in providing adequate safety precautions for umpires.

In the previous year, Wertheim had met his demise after a ball to the groin caused him to topple over in his chair and strike his head on the ground. Unconscious, he was carried from the court and soon died of his injuries.^[8]

2 Irony

The Terracotta Warriors of Xi’an are arguably the most famous legacy of Qin Shihuang. As the first emperor of the Qin dynasty and China itself, he united the seven warring regions of China into one unified state.

Under his rule, the nation’s currency, weights, and measures were standardized. He oversaw the development of transportation channels and linked individual fortresses to create the Great Wall of China. However, all the while he was accomplishing these feats, he was obsessed with finding an elixir that would grant him eternal life.^[9]

The emperor had issued an executive order demanding that his subjects aid his quest of finding an immortality elixir. While the regional governments replied to the demand with hesitant news of their failure, Qin Shihuang did come upon what he believed to be immortality pills in Eastern China. The mercury pills took his life instead.

1 After Pompeii

An adult man over age 30 appeared to have survived the first stages of the volcanic eruption that decimated Pompeii, only to have been struck by a boulder (carried by the pyroclastic cloud) that crushed his chest and head. Signs of infection in his lower leg indicated that the man had escaped the initial eruption with a leg injury. Hence, his dramatic getaway would have likely been very painful and felt like an improbable stroke of luck.

His remains were found with the top half at a lower elevation than the rest of his skeleton, presumably because the boulder had pushed it deep within the rubble and made the whole thing a comical sight. Worst of all, centuries after his death, he was featured in a list of history’s most cartoonish deaths.

We have since learned that the man’s skull was excavated intact and undamaged. It had not been crushed by an errant boulder, which probably came from a doorjamb. In fact, the poor guy is now believed to have died of asphyxiation from volcanic ash and dust. Not the boulder.^[10]

But if you’re unlucky enough to have your remains found under a boulder in a Wile E. Coyote–type pose—and someone publishes a picture of it—you’re going to earn the No. 1 spot on this list.

Micah is an unemployed graduate trying to trap.

Being pretty isn’t easy. The most beautiful women in history weren’t just born that way. They put hard work into it—and, sometimes, a few crushed bug guts, stewed birds, or dung.

It’s the dirty little secret behind glamour: No matter how fantastic someone looks, it never comes naturally. Behind every great beauty in history, there’s a dirty secret about all the work that went into looking that good.

10 Empress Elisabeth: A Face Mask Lined With Raw Veal

The most beautiful woman on earth, in the 19th century, was Empress Elisabeth of Austria. She was famous across Europe for her impeccable skin and the thick, chestnut hair that fell all the way down to her feet.

None of which came easy. To keep her skin beautiful, she would crush strawberries over her hands, face, and neck, bathe in warm olive oil, and sleep in what has only been described as a “mask lined inside with raw veal.”^[1]

It was the closest she came to eating food. Her favorite dish was pressed extract of chicken, partridge, venison, and beef—which isn’t so much a “food” as something you’d find in a spice cabinet. And even then, she’d wrap herself in a corset so tight that her waist only measured 49.5 centimeters (19.5 in) around.

She spent three hours each day getting her hair down, mainly because it was so long that it would get tied up in knots. And when it was put up in ribbons, her hair would get so heavy that it would give her headaches.

It meant that, more often than not, she was stuck indoors, too afraid to let the wind ruin her hair. But if you want to be beautiful, sometimes you have to give up on little luxuries, like ever leaving your house.

9 Cleopatra: Bathing In Donkey Milk

Queen Cleopatra won the hearts of the most powerful men alive. Maybe it was her grace. Maybe it was her charm. Or maybe it was that sweet aroma of dung and insect guts.

Cleopatra, after all, almost certainly followed the usual beauty conventions of her time—and that meant wearing a lipstick made out of mashed-up beetle guts and putting powdered crocodile dung under her eyes.

But Cleopatra didn’t limit herself to a peasant’s beauty regimen. She was a queen, and that meant that she could afford the most luxurious treatment of all: bathing in sour donkey milk. Her servants would milk 700 donkeys each day so that they could fill a tub with their milk. Then, once it had gone bad, Cleopatra would bathe inside.

The theory was that it would reduce wrinkles—and it may actually have worked. Soured lactose turns into lactic acid, which can make the surface layer of skin on a woman’s body peel off, revealing the smoother, blemish-free skin underneath.^[2]

That was the real secret to her beauty: burning her flesh off.

8 Nefertiti: Wearing Enough Makeup To Kill You

The Egyptian queen Nefertiti’s name meant “the beautiful one has come”—and she lived up to it. She was so beautiful that, in the early 20th century, a statue of her face caused an international sensation. More than 3,000 years after she died, her looks were still front-page news.

And no wonder. She put no small amount of work into looking good.

The queens of Nefertiti’s time would be buried with their makeup,^[3] and so, while they didn’t write many of their beauty secrets down, we’ve been able to find their methods left behind in their tombs. While her tomb has never been found, the tombs of her contemporaries give us a pretty good idea of how she did it.

Nefertiti was completely hairless. Her entire body was shaved from head to toe with a razor, including the hair on the top of her head. Instead, she topped her head with a wig and painted her eyes black with something called kohl.

Ancient Egyptian kohl, incidentally, was made out of the dark lead ore galena—which means that Nefertiti was slowly killing herself with lead poisoning every time she put on makeup.

But it’s highly unlikely that the lead killed her. There’s simply no way it could have finished her off before her lipstick. Her lipstick, after all, contained bromine mannite, another toxic substance that it’s generally believed would have poisoned her long before the lead she dabbed around her eyes.

7 Queen Elizabeth I: Coating Your Skin In Lead

Poisoning yourself with lead is no passing fad. It’s been a great look for thousands of years. While Nefertiti may have dabbed a little lead around her eyes, it was nothing compared to Queen Elizabeth I.

During the Elizabethan era, the most popular skin product was something called “Venetian ceruse”—which, quite simply, was a mixture of lead and vinegar that women would put all over their skin to make them look porcelain white.^[4]

Nobody used more of it than Queen Elizabeth herself. When she was 29, Elizabeth contracted smallpox and was left with scars all over her skin. She was too humiliated to show her scars in public—and so, instead, she covered every inch of her flesh with the toxic white paint.

Queen Elizabeth used so much of it that she was completely unrecognizable without it. When one man, the Earl of Essex, accidentally peeked a sight of her without her makeup on, he went around joking that she’d hidden a “crooked carcass” underneath that thick veneer of Venetian ceruse.

6 Marie Antoinette: Stewed Pigeon Water

The French queen Marie Antoinette didn’t exactly let herself eat cake. She had a reputation as a world-class beauty, and she was determined to keep it up.

Like Empress Elisabeth, she would go to bed with a face mask, but Antoinette’s—made of cognac, eggs, powdered milk, and lemon—sounds a little bit less like a beauty treatment and a little bit more like the catering menu at a birthday party.

She’d start the morning by washing her face with a facial cleanser made out of pigeons. In those days, that was a selling point: the product came proudly labeled with the mean “Eau Cosmetique de Pigeon” and a little ad promising every bottle had been made with “eight pigeons stewed.”^[5]

Then she would get dressed—for the first of three times each day. As queen of France, Marie Antoinette was expected to never wear the same thing twice. And so, each year, she would 120,000 livres on clothes, the equivalent to about $4 million today.

She may even have indulged in the popular French fashion of tracing her veins with a blue pencil. At the time, the women of France wanted to be so thin that they were translucent—so they’d draw the inner workings of their bodies, trying to convince the men that they had transparent skin.

5 Mary, Queen Of Scots: Bathing In Wine

Mary, Queen of Scots, wasn’t a natural beauty. She was born with a nose a little large and a chin a little too sharp—but she was a queen, and she was determined to be beautiful.

To keep her skin as striking as possible, she had her servants fill a bathtub with a white wine.^[6] She would wade in it, convinced that the wine was improving her complexion.

It sounds decadent, but it’s actually something people still do today. Today, it’s called vinotherapy, and there are places all around the world where you can experience the Mary, Queen of Scots, treatment for yourself.

It’s hard to say exactly what the queen used, but the modern vinotherapists don’t actually pour drinkable, alcoholic wine. Instead, they use the leftover compost from the winemaking process; the “pips and pulps” of grapes that get left behind. So, no—you can’t get drunk off of it.

4 Empress Zoe Porphyrogenita: Starting Your Own Cosmetics Lab

Empress Zoe Porphyrogenita was one of the most beautiful women in the Byzantine Empire. She didn’t just look good when she was young, though. Even when she was well into her sixties, it’s said, she still looked like a 20-year-old.^[7]

She certainly worked hard enough for it. After becoming the empress, Zoe Porphyrogenita had an entire laboratory dedicated to making her cosmetics built inside of the imperial palace. It was a real cosmetic factory, every bit as huge and expensive as the ones that supply whole countries. At this one, though, Zoe was the only customer.

It was expensive—but for the empress, blowing a small fortune was just all in a day’s work. It’s said that she was “the sort of woman who could exhaust a sea teaming with gold-dust in one day.”

But it’s also said that “like a well-baked chicken, every part of her was firm and in good condition.” This is definitive proof that it worked, because, clearly, Zoe looked so good that the men who saw her were so smitten that they couldn’t even form a sentence that didn’t make your skin crawl.

3 Lucrezia Borgia: Spending Multiple Days Washing Your Hair

The poet Lord Byron once said that Lucrezia Borgia’s hair was “the prettiest and fairest imaginable.” He wasn’t just trying out a line for a new poem—he was in love, so much so, in fact, that he stole a strand of her hair and kept it by his bed.

It sounds one of those touching love stories that usually end with someone filing a restraining order. Lucrezia, though, probably appreciated it. She deserved a little recognition for the amount of work she put into that hair—because she would spend days washing it.^[8]

Lucrezia’s hair was bright and blonde, but that wasn’t nature. Everyone else in her family had dark hair. Lucrezia, though, made sure hers shined like the Sun by rinsing it in lye and lemon juice for hours, then drying it out in the sunlight for the better part of a day.

It took so much time that she repeatedly canceled trips to wash her hair. Multiple letters from Lucrezia’s attendants have survived to to this day. In them, she politely apologizes to people and explains that she will be a few days late because she has to “put her clothes in order and wash her head.”

2 Helen Of Troy: Bathing In Vinegar

Helen of Troy had the face that launched 1,000 ships. She was a woman so beautiful that thousands of men died for her honor.

Well, either that, or else she was just a figment of an old Greek guy’s imagination. If Homer really did make her up, though, he had a remarkable understanding of women’s cosmetic care. Because packed deep in her legend is a beauty regimen that really works.

Helen of Troy, according to the Iliad, would bathe in vinegar.^[9] Every day, her attendants would prepare what, technically speaking, was a bathtub full of acid, and she would just dive right in.

Today, people tend to assume that she used apple cider vinegar or that she diluted it in water, simply because, otherwise, it sounds pretty horrible. After all, that’s something people still do today—bathe in a mixture of apple cider vinegar and water. And it actually works. The vinegar balances the body’s pH levels, which can have a cleansing effect.

But there’s nothing saying Helen of Troy ever added water. She may just have dived right into a bathtub filled to the brim with white vinegar. It would’ve hurt, and she would’ve smelled—but that’s what it takes to look good enough to start a war.

1 Simonetta Vespucci: Arsenic, Leeches, And Human Urine

Even if you don’t know her name, you’ve seen Simonetta Vespucci’s face. She was the muse for some of the greatest painters of the Renaissance.^[10] She was even chosen to model for the goddess of love herself at the center of the painting The Birth of Venus.

In the Renaissance, everyone wanted to look like her. And so they copied her beauty regimen—leeches, poisons, and all.

To keep their skin pale, white, and beautiful, the women in Vespucci’s time would attach leeches to their ears. The leeches would drain the blood out of their faces, leaving them deathly pale.

Those who didn’t want to go that far, though, could always use a face mask. Renaissance women would mix bread crumbs and egg whites with vinegar and then apply it liberally on their faces—a beauty secret that, conveniently, doubles as a great recipe for fried chicken.

Eyebrow hair, at the time, had to be plucked, or, ideally, burned straight off. Women would remove their hairs with arsenic and rock alum and then sand it all down with gold.

But that was nothing compared to what they’d do to get that long, flowing, golden mane of hair on her head. For Vespucci, it just came naturally, but the poorer women who wanted to copy her found their own way. They bleached their hair in human urine.

Sure, it sounds gross—but every beautiful woman has to do a few things that just aren’t pretty.

The entire span of human history has been an arms race of survival adaptations against diseases which seem to be out to completely destroy us, both as individual organisms and as a collective species. Every time we come up with a new technique to combat various communicable diseases, the pathogens responsible change and mutate, becoming better-adapted to our weapons against them. Such is the way of all of life. Theorists are even now drawing comparisons to this dynamic to describe crime, wherein criminals adopt new methods of lawbreaking, only to again be outdone by advances in law enforcement.^[1]

Life is constantly striving to outdo and overcome itself. With this in mind, there have been some pretty brutal plagues which have threatened entire civilizations on many occasions. The term “plague” is used generally here to mean any sort of pathogen which devastated a large portion of a human population, though many of the following entries, in fact, involve the plague you’re thinking of. Here are ten of the most atrocious plagues in human history, what they were, and what happened.

10 Prehistoric Plague

A great plague was believed to have happened around 100,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic period, and is thought to have reduced the numbers of humans drastically, specifically killing the very young. It’s believed that this epidemic dropped the human population Africa to less than 10,000 people, which, in a short, brutal, prehistoric world, isn’t very many.

Researchers reached this conclusion by isolating two specific genes which make apes less susceptible to some pretty brutal illnesses. In humans, one gene is gone, and the other is now nonfunctional.^[2] After the end of the pandemic, Homo sapiens thrived and spread rapidly, and this genetic change may have helped by lowering their susceptibility to certain diseases.

9 Sweden

Extremely recent studies of mass grave sites in caves in Sweden have uncovered many bodies but have also unearthed something quite terrifying: the oldest-known strain of the plague—as in the actual Black Plague, Yersinia pestis, the bacteria which wiped out much of medieval Europe in several waves. It is thought to have struck long before the historical plagues we know of, and finding it on 5,000-year-old bodies in Sweden gives that idea some serious credibility.

While the first known massive Y. pestis outbreak was the Justinian Plague, which brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees in AD 541 and continued to strike relentlessly for 200 more years, killing over 25 million people, we know it was around disrupting human societies long, long before that. Around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, we know that human populations took a sharp decline for some reason.^[3] Researchers are now beginning to think they have the culprit—the very first Black Plague.

The bacteria is still around today—so why isn’t it anywhere near as deadly as the one that practically wiped out the remainder of the Roman Empire, or the 14th-century plague that killed as much as 60 percent of the population of Europe? Adaptation. Humans have adapted ways to fight it off since. Right now, the discovery in Sweden is the oldest strain of Y. pestis we’ve found; there might be more out there, resting in the earth.

8 Athens

Athens was struck hard by a mysterious pathogen between the years of 430 and 427 BC. Known as the Plague of Athens, the epidemic greatly disrupted their efforts in the Peloponnesian War.^[4] This plague is detailed in the famous work, the History of the Peloponnesian War, which tells of the disease wiping out more than one third of the Athenian population at the time. Thucydides, the author, described the symptoms of this brutal plague in great detail, with violent coughing, retching, and convulsions being some of the items on the list.

Researchers still aren’t exactly sure what the Plague of Athens was, but scholars in the various sciences have speculated it was possibly measles, smallpox, or a few other diseases. While we may not know the exact strain of pathogen that struck, we definitely know it did a considerable, horrifying amount of damage to the Athenian population. Though it’s surrounded in ambiguity, whatever this mean bug was is thought to have contributed greatly to the downfall of classical Greece.

7 The Antonine Plague

Starting in AD 165, the Roman Empire was rocked by a viciously brutal plague that was a dark, ominous cloud, foreshadowing things to come. Many scholars believe this outbreak to have been a case of smallpox. Whatever it was, it definitely rocked the sturdy empire at its foundations and ultimately altered the course of history. The Antonine Plague was so bad that at its height, it was killing up to 2,000 people per day in the ancient empire, and anywhere from seven to ten percent of the Roman population did not survive.

The outstretched Roman army, who lived in close quarters as they marched across Europe, was hit particularly hard, affecting Rome’s military might and ultimately contributing to a later scaling back of the empire. This also altered the tightness of the people, as they grew distant and apart, much like later plagues would also cause in various societies, especially medieval Europe. This epidemic paved the way for the Germanic cultures to take a foothold and ultimately would lead to the inevitable decline of the Roman Empire. In failing physical and economic health, Rome was in serious trouble, all thanks to a plague that ravaged its population.^[5]

6 The Byzantine Empire

Remember that first surfacing of the bubonic plague we mentioned earlier that brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees? It was brutal. It was very brutal. The Byzantine Empire is actually just really another name for the Eastern Roman Empire at the time period, and the Byzantines, while they spoke Greek and were based out of Constantinople, were still very much the Roman Empire and referred to themselves as such.

Often referred to as the Plague of Justinian for its taking place during the reign of Emperor Justinian I, this plague hit Constantinople, the heart of the empire, in 541 and then spread outward over the course of the next year to reach the full outskirts of the Roman Empire.^[5] At this time, Justinian was really starting to rebuild the Roman Empire and was making headway in military campaigns in the West in attempts to reclaim the glory of Rome. This plague stopped those efforts dead in their tracks.

In an ominous foreshadowing of what was to hit Europe centuries later, this plague, too, was brought through trade, mainly being carried and transmitted by fleas on rats. But it didn’t stop there and wasn’t limited to only the Eastern Roman Empire. The plague soon spread further to the various feudal states which had taken a foothold in Europe after the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire. This plague ravaged Europe entirely and killed at least 25 million people. That’s a powerful pathogen.

One thing was for certain at this point of human history: Expanding trade routes and greater transportation technologies had their downfalls and brought with them millions upon millions of deaths. They would bring many more.

5 Medieval Europe

Then came the Black Death, the Great Plague. This plague began in China in 1334, and like the Plague of Justinian, it spread to Europe through trade routes. This plague was out for death, and no one could stop it. The ravaging bubonic death toll would reach peak heights in 1348 in Europe, after having traveled yet again through the Byzantine Empire, up the trade routes, and into the bloodstreams of Europe. This plague was so brutal and unrelenting that it would go on to wipe out up to 60 percent of all of Europe at the time.^[7]

This changed the European outlook greatly. Fewer and fewer people relied on prayer and began opening their minds to other things. The culture greatly adapted, and much of our great art came from the period which followed.

4 America

Then came the disease epidemics of the Americas. Smallpox first arrived in the colonies of Florida, Carolina, and Virginia in 1519 and devastated the native population after being brought by the colonizing Europeans.^[8] It reached Massachusetts in 1633. Due to the fact that the so-called New and Old Worlds were so far removed, the Native Americans had little, if any, immune resistance to the viruses of Europe, like measles, plague, and especially smallpox.

Smallpox was particularly brutal and spread to Central and South America as well, greatly infecting the Aztec Empire. In just 100 years, half the time of the Plague of Justinian, it wiped out 90 percent of the Aztec population, a drop from 17 million people to only 1.3 million. These diseases killed so many that only an estimated 530,000 Native Americans were left alive by 1900. This makes the American plagues some of the worst of recorded human history.

3 The Modern Plague

The so-called Modern Plague occurred in China, beginning in or around 1860, and was yet again another brutal epidemic that you don’t hear about much in history books. It hit Hong Kong in 1894. This plague would strike for still another 20 years, killing around ten million people.^[9] This brutal outbreak would spread to India as well.

During this latest plague, however, science isolated the cause, namely the fleas that traveled on rats, usually from ships or trade, which would bite and transfer the bacteria. It became possible to treat the disease and even prevent future outbreaks.

2 Polio

Polio hit, and polio hit hard, and there are still people alive today who remember the epidemic. Poliomyelitis is caused by the poliovirus, which aggressively attacks the human nervous system, causing all sorts of horrifying results, and has killed a lot of people, especially striking children under the age of five years old.

The epidemic hit its worst in the United States in 1952, as doctors sought every and any method to treat and cure the disease.^[10] In 1933, there were 5,000 known cases of paralytic polio in the United States, and by 1952, that number had jumped to 59,000, well over tenfold. Polio was finally stopped by the development of two vaccines against it.

1 HIV

HIV is seemingly the last massive epidemic to strike planet Earth, or it is for now, anyway. It hit hard and became widespread by the mid-1980s. As early as 1981, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States began publishing pieces and keeping an eye on a spreading virus that was taking lives.^[11] This infection was opportunistic and struck the gay community particularly hard. By June 16, 1981, the stage was set as the first man with AIDS, a 35-year-old gay Caucasian, stepped into a doctor’s office for help and ended up being admitted to the Clinical Center at the National Institute of Health. This 35-year-old man would be dead by October 28. From here, the disease would spread, and by 1986, the CDC would declare that more people in 1985 were diagnosed with AIDS than all previous years combined. This was a rapidly spreading epidemic, in a digital age with radio and television as well as computers. The disease continued to ravage the world through the 1990s and 2000s.

But humanity fought back against this worldwide bane and developed antiretroviral drugs and other treatments which at least managed to somewhat contain the virus, initially. Now, we have drugs that can do miraculous things. Two HIV-positive people can have an HIV-negative baby, and a positive partner can sleep with a negative partner and, through the help of drugs, not give the virus to the negative partner. Cures and vaccines are in the works, with diligent people working hard and creating medicine to combat this global epidemic on a daily basis. Billions of dollars have been donated to the cause. This gives us hope in our modern medicine, our ability to respond to an epidemic of this magnitude, spreading at this incredible rate, so uniformly and quickly, as we slowly trudge down the path to victory. It shows promise for the future of fighting pathogens which seek to take us out . . . but there will always be another one coming.

I like to write about dark stuff, history, and weird things.