I enjoy learning useless trivia and more substantial facts.
Like many people, I'm a true crime addict. I also enjoy watching mysteries of history documentaries about unsolved crimes or unexplained phenomena from the past.
I'm also a disaster documentary or drama addict. I blame my Mother for taking me to see films like Earthquake and Towering Inferno and Poseiden Adventure—we watched this one on the Queen Mary!—as a child.
But have you ever found out a fact and wished you hadn't?
For me, one thing I wish I didn't know was the fate of all the pets in Припʼять (Pripyat), Україна (Ukraine) after the explosion and fire at Чорнобиль (Chernobyl Power Complex) in 1986. People were told they'd be going home in a day or two and their pets couldn't go with them.
The Soviet Red Army then conscripted or assigned soldiers to hunt and shoot all the pets of the 49,360 people who lived in the workers' city at the time of the disaster. Knowing that broke my heart.
Reddit user No_Camera29 asked:
"What's a creepy fact you wish you never learned?"
C-sections
"I had to have a C-section when our daughter was born and heard one doctor say to the other doctor: 'Pass me the uterus, I’m gonna clean it'."
~ derkleinewompatz
"My former spouse had our baby via c-section, and I watched."
"One of the more disturbing parts of it was her uterus laying on her chest, while two interns picked pieces of placenta off of it as they were discussing where they were going to go get lunch."
~ gogozrx
Salad Days
"Learning that some plants can actually communicate with each other."
"Suddenly, my herb garden feels a lot more like a gossip column."
~ No-Possession-9334
- YouTubeyoutube.com
War Crimes
"You’ve probably heard a fact about how 70% of the human body is water."
"We basically know this because of Japanese General Shirō Ishii (commander of Unit 731—a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1936–1945 that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing) who roasted people in an oven as an experiment."
~ yepitsdad
Sight For Sore Eyes
"Loa loa, the African Eye Worm, can invade the human eye."
"Adults are between 1 and 2.5 inches long."
~ Prestigious-Wall5616
The Last To Go
"According to a 2020 study published in Scientific Reports, hearing is often the last sense to go during the dying process."
"Yeah, a nurse friend of mine said this is true."
"She said that if you tell someone to close their eyes just after they die (after flatline, but before total brain death which takes a few minutes), they’ll usually do it, which is creepy as f*ck."
~ Apprehensive_Bug_826
Timber!
"The chainsaw was invented by two Scottish doctors, John Aitken and James Jeffray, to assist in childbirth."
"Sawing through pelvic/ossified bone gives a mother and the baby some chance of survival if the baby is too big."
~ AnitaEkberg30
No Warning
"Some people are born with a malformed mass of veins in their brain called an AVM (arteriovenous malformation) and they have no idea unless it's seen on a CT or MRI."
"Then one day it can burst without warning and that happy healthy person can die, suffer brain damage, paralysis, etc... No warning."
~ Euryheli
Nowhere‽‽
"That there is literally NOWHERE in your house that you can store your toothbrush without it getting fecal matter on it - thanks Mythbusters."
~ hylandadley
Stuck
"Sometimes when you have a sharp pain in your chest like a lung area when breathing in, it could be there’s not enough fluid around the lung and it got stuck to a rib."
"Or your diaphragm isn’t in the correct place."
~ AbbreviationsIll6722
En Garde
"When flatworms mate, two 'males' use their bifurcated (split) penises to fence one another."
"The winner, or the flatworm who stabs the other with its penis dagger, remains a male while the loser becomes female and will be impregnated."
~ Extremely_unlikeable
Prions Suck
"That one misfolded protein (prions) can wind up rendering a brain about as useful as rotting cheese. And there’s no treatment, no cure."
~ EverSeekingContext
Turtle Power
"The inside of a sea turtle's mouth/throat looks like something straight out of a horror movie monster. Absolutely covered in spines."
"They swallow a lot of sea water when eating food, which they then vomit back out. The spines keep the food in, but let the water out."
~ MyNameIsRay
legdndre007/Threads
Just Expelling Air
"Dead bodies moan and grunt when you move them
"I was a paramedic and firefighter for 21 years—I was around a lot of dead people."
~ EFD1358
Porcine Or Piranha?
"A non-zero number (it's greater than 1) of farmers go missing yearly because of pigs."
"They will eat just about anything."
"That scene from Wizard of Oz where everyone freaks out when Dorothy falls in the pig pen? She was about to be lunch."
~ NotAmazingGrace
Target
"My father's elementary school did a guided tour through the woods, searching and learning about local herbs."
"A few years later, while my father was still a child, police showed up and asked him if he recognized the man in a picture that they showed him. My father explained that he was the herbalist tour guide."
"Apparently, the guy had murdered several boys and had my father's name and address in his car."
"The police had caught the guy by this point."
~ anything_but
What's a creepy fact you wish you never learned?
@joehas/X