History is full of horrifying events, some
of which are truly more terrifying than any fictional story. Here's some true stories
from History that will chill you to the bone. 1. The Italian Renaissance was a period in
Italy's history of outstanding art and culture. This 200 year period gave birth to some of
the greatest artists and artworks humanity has ever known, such as Leonardo Da Vinci
and Michelangelo. But it also gave birth to something considerably more gruesome, a plague
of real life zombies. In 1494 was the first major outbreak of syphilis.
Before antibiotics were invented syphilis was a fatal infection something to be gravely
feared. The disease slowly ate away at the victims face, causing their flesh to fall
away resulting in the complete destruction of their face and genitals, within just a
few months, and death would follow shortly afterwards.
During this period it was not uncommon to see Frenchmen and Italians walking around
with half their face falling off and their bare skulls exposed, just like a scene from
a horrific zombie movie. Thank god for modern medicine. 2. Henry Howard Holmes, better known as H.H.
Holmes is widely known as one of America's first serial killers. His body count is thought
to be somewhere between 27 and 200. He achieved this by building a hotel in a bustling part
of Chicago in the 1890s. And designed it to be the perfect killing arena to fulfil his
sick desires. It later came to be known as "Murder Castle". H.H. Holmes meticulously
designed the hotel to be a complex maze of windowless rooms. He even hired a handful
of different builders to construct the hotel in sections so only Holmes would know the
layout. Making escape virtually impossible for his victims. Every inch of the hotel was
designed to confuse and terrify his victims. Including doors that only opened from the
outside. Doorways that opened onto brick walls. A safe big enough to put a person inside to
slowly suffocate them. And a chute that allowed Holmes to dump bodies from the upper floors
to the basement, where two massive furnaces and a large supply of flesh stripping acid
was stored. 3. The Roman city of Pompeii was once one
of the greatest civilisations on Earth, unfortunately it is most famously known for disaster that
occurred there in 79 AD. When Italy's Mount Vesuvius erupted, wiping out Pompeii and burying
it in ash for over a millennium. But even worse effected by the eruption was Pompeii's
neighbouring city Herculaneum. Just like Pompeii, Herculaneum was also spectacularly and horrifically
buried in volcanic ash. But Herculaneum suffered a fate much worse than it's more famous neighbour.
Herculaneum was also hit by a superheated pyroclastic flow which is a fast moving current
of hot gas and rock spewed out from a volcano that reaches speeds of 450 mph. But the most
deadly thing about this volcanic death cloud is that it can reach temperatures of up to
1,000 degrees Celsius. It's incredible speed meant the whole city would have been engulfed
by a 1,000 degree cloud of gas in just seconds. This caused what must have been one of the
most horrific sights in history. The human skull is full of liquids and if you heat it
up super quickly it explodes. This is exactly what happened at Herculaneum in 79 AD. The
1,000 degree volcanic cloud caused peoples skin to vaporise, their brains to boil and
their skulls to literally explode, all in under a second. Which sounds like a very good
reason not to live next to an active volcano. Although this doesn't seem to have got through
to the residents of Naples. 4. During World War II countless atrocities
happened to humans, but animals received their share of suffering too. In the 1939, during
the run-up to World War II, the British government formed the National Air Raid Precautions Animals
Committee. The purpose of the committee was to decide what people should do with their
pets once war broke out. The biggest concern is that food shortages would be made even
worse due to people feeding their pets. So to solve the problem the government sent out
pamphlets called "Advice to Animal Owners". It featured an advertisement for a specific
type of gun, which was best suited to killing animals and guidelines on how to humanely
dispose of your pet. Within a week of the campaign being launched 750,000 pets across
the British isles had been killed by their owners or taken to purpose built pet disposal
centres. It has come to be known as the Pet Holocaust. 5. One of the most horrific stories from all
of history was the Nanking Massacre. During the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 the Japanese
Imperial Army captured the Chinese city of Nanking, which was then the Chinese capital.
Over a period of six weeks an estimated 300,000 un-armed Chinese civilians were slaughtered
by the Imperial Japanese Army. But it get's worse, the horrific event is also widely known
as the Rape of Nanking. Because the Japanese forces raped and looted most of the city's
residents before killing them. The Japanese soldiers even raped infants and the elderly
as well as forcing citizens to commit incestuous acts and many other atrocities on their fellow
Chinese citizens. Ever since the massacre, in attempts to maintain their pride Japanese
officials have outright denied that the event ever happened, claiming it was a complete
fabrication and an attempt at anti-Japanese propaganda.
