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Historical Events You Should Never, Ever.... Google Image Search
While Google gives you everything you need at the click of a button, plenty of weird photos from history should stay out of your Google Image history. Disgusting historical photos, such as pictures from real-life crime scenes, still look just as horrifying as they did decades ago, and have no problem making a negative impression on your brain even centuries after the fact. Yet morbid curiosity often drives you to Google certain gross photos from history, just so you can confirm them with your own two, no longer innocent, eyes.
The creepy historical photos below come from a variety of past events, ranging from ma$s su1cides to twisted experiments to holiday celebrations that aged well not at all. When considering things to never Google, keep these items at the top of your list. Unless you never want to sleep, in which case, search away.
1
The Ed Gein Murders
The Story: Ed Gein, the horrifying serial ki1ler who inspired Psycho's Norman Bates and Silence of the Lambs's Buffalo Bill, only confessed to ki1ling two women, yet the true scope of his horror goes far beyond mere murder. When cops finally raided Gein's home, they found four severed noses, nine masks made of human skin, bowls made from human skulls, ten severed female heads, skin covering several chair seats, a severed head in a paper bag, a severed head in a sh0e box, skulls on bedposts, nine vulvas tucked away in a sh0e box, a refrigerator full of human organs, a belt made from severed nipples, a lampshade made from someone's face, and a human heart in a pot on the stove. This stuff got photographed as evidence and a healthy portion made its way into Google Images. Gross.
What You'll See If You Google: severed heads, hands and legs; a chair upholstered with human skin; and an excruciatingly messy house.
2
The Nanjing Massacre
The Story: On Dec. 13, 1937, Japanese troops took over the city of Nanjing, the then-capital of the Chinese republic. After capturing the city, the troops spent six weeks raping, murdering and torturing civilians. According to Time, some death tolls estimate a quarter of a million people were ki1led. A quick Google will send you down a horrific path of carnage, one that, in spite of its terrible brutality, managed to be photographed quite heavily. The r@pe of Nanking, as it is also known, still remains a controversial topic for both Japanese and Chinese citizens of today.
What You'll See If You Google: Dead bodies upon dead bodies piled as a high as you can see.
3
The Agent Orange Experiments
The Story: One of the most infamous parts of the Agent Orange experiments was the Holmesburg Program, an army-funded program was by Dr. Albert M. Kligman, who purposely injected inmates with high-doses of skin-blistering chemicals to study how the skin protects itself against toxic attacks. The subjects in question suffered from horrible skin growths and mutations, visuals that Kligman declared were "like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time.” As if this torturous "experiment" couldn't get any worse, data show that Kligman tended to disproportionately target black inmates over white inmates.
What You'll See If You Google: Children with severe birth deformities, toddlers without eyeballs and horrifically damaged skin.
4
Chernobyl First Responders
The Story: In 1986, when the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat suffered a catastrophic meltdown, someone needed to come fight the fire before it spread. These first responders, known as Chernobyl liquidators, dove headfirst into a radioactive nightmare in order to reduce the devastation. Unfortunately, armed with little protective material, they suffered the intense effects of radiation poisoning as skin literally melted off their limbs in the hospital. Grotesque and highly documented, this incident provides a testament to the true heroism of firefighters and military personnel. Today, many of the liquidators feel resentment toward's the Ukrainian government for failing to keep them safe or assisting with their subsequent medical problems.
What You'll See If You Google: The devastating (and gruesome) effects of radiation poisoning.
5
The Remains Of Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov
The Story: While you likely never considered Googling someone's remains, you really, really don't want to Google the remains of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Komarov was the first person to die on a space mission after the Soyuz 1 space capsule crashed upon re-entry in 1967. Prior to Komarov's death, US listening posts in Turkey picked up on him crying in rage and cursing "the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship." Basically, Komarov knew his death was certain, and he hit Earth at the full impact of a meteor falling from space. And so that mourners might see his compact and charred remains, Komarov's funeral was open casket. How thoughtful.
What You'll See If You Google: The charred remains of Vladimir Komarov, who became a human meteor.
6
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study
The Story: Googling photos of syphilis gets bad enough, but Googling photos of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis probably qualifies as a form of self-harm. This infamous, 40-year study, took place from 1932 to 1972. It exploited hundreds of poor African-American men, all of who suffered from syphilis without realizing it. These men, most of whom never went to a licensed doctor, were told they had "bad blood" and given placebos. Though the study began before a treatment for syphilis existed, it continued long after penicillin came about in the 1940s. To properly track the progression of the disease, none of the men received effective care, leading many to go insane, blind, and die.
What You'll See If You Google: What happens when you don't treat syphilis.
Photos of syphilis already reveal a menacing and debilitating disease if left untreated; photos of the Tuskegee Study show this disease being used as a means to dehumanize and harm black men. By the time the study came to public knowledge in 1972, 28 perished from syphilis, another 100 ki1led by complications, and the disease spread to 40 spouses and 19 children.
7
Radium Girls
The Story: Before humans knew radium to be toxic, it was used to paint clock faces on luminous watches during the First World War. Between 1917 and 1926, the U.S. Radium Corporation hired around 70 women to paint these glow-in-the-dark watches – no one thinking that the radioactive paint caused any harm. As the success of the watches took off in the early '20s, an estimated 4,000 workers painted watch faces at various locations across the country. Though these women never realized it, their bones were literally being eaten from the inside out. Not only did they expose themselves to radium, they also ingested it. To perfect their craft, women spun the paint brushes in their mouths between strokes in order to get a sharp, precise line. Each time, they consumed a tiny amount of radium paint, which their employers told them was completely harmless. On average, each woman painted 250 dials a day.
By the 1920s, the initial group of women hired started experiencing symptoms of radiation poisoning. Their jaws swelled, and teeth starting falling out, along with pieces of jawbone. By the time their case against the U.S. Radium Corporation went to trial, most of the girls couldn’t even lift their arms to make the oath. More than 50 out of the 70 original girls died by 1927. Today, their grotesque symptoms remain documented all over the Internet, and their corpses still basically glow in their coffins.
What You'll See If You Google: Women with untreated radiation poisoning including gigantic mouth tumors.
8
Chinese Foot-Binding
The Story: The first evidence of Chinese Foot-binding came from the tomb of Lady Huang Sheng, who died in 1243. This ancient practice, which resulted in misshaped, disfigured feet, persisted for nearly a millennium in China, seen as a status of wealth and dignity. In fact, the most desirable brides bound their feet so tightly they expanded just three-inches in length, into what people called "golden lilies." Brides with feet five inches or longer actually lost marriage prospects because suitors viewed them as less valuable.
This process started when a girl was five or six-years-old. To get such small feet, their toes would be broken and bound flat against the sole of sh0e making a triangle shape (as if you folded a foot in half). Puss and blood threatened to infect the foot if wrappings weren't changed every two days, and sometimes skin was cut away if it was deemed "excess." This took two years to complete, and foot-binders forced girls to walk long-distances to further the process along. Basically, the photos are not for the easily queasy.
What You'll See If You Google: Painful foot deformities.
9
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
The Story: When a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory on March 25, 1911, 145 of the 600 workers tragically died, some by fire, some by jumping. Needless to say, this isn't something you should want to Google if you don't want to get upset.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire remains one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history and women's working rights. Most of the victims, largely non-English-speaking teenage girls, died because their employees locked the doors to prevent workers from leaving. Plenty of others found their ends at the hands of outdated safety features, such as a rusted fire hose which failed to put out the initial blaze, which began in a waste basket.
What You'll See If You Google: The charred remains of workers and wreckage from the massive fire.
10
The Exploding Whale
The Story: The exploding whale refers to an incident in 1970 when the Oregon Highway Division blew up a blue whale corpse they thought too large to cut up or incinerate. Officials turned to a highway engineer named Paul Thornton to come up with a solution.
Preferring to go big, Thornton decided to detonate the whale's corpse. In his mind, the bits of blubber would float out to sea and the rest would be scavenged by birds and other animals. This isn't exactly what happened as pieces of dead whale fell upon nearby cars and bystanders. Oh, and the whole thing appears on camera.
What You'll See If You Google: A river of whale guts so big that it's hard to believe.
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