TRUTH REVEALED: You Were Never Meant To Know These Disturbing Historical Facts

The witch trials of Europe go back even further than the 1600s. In the medieval period alone, over 600,000 people were executed for witchcraft. It's amazing that number isn't higher.

In the 19th century, the wealthy would pay for "safety coffins" in the event they were buried alive. One incarnation featured a bell, coining the phrase "saved by the bell." Other incarnations had an amplifier type system to call for help.

Unfortunately, the Disney movie had it all wrong. John Smith and Pocahontas never fell in love. When the two met, he was in his 40s and she was 10.

In the middle ages, Pope Gregory IX declared cats as associates of the devil. The subsequent mass extermination of them led to an increase in the rat population. At that time, rats carried the bubonic plague, which ultimately killed a third of Europe.

King Tut was inbred. Egyptian royalty, like the Hapsburgs, engaged in incest to keep bloodlines pure. Unfortunately, this turned out as you'd expect. King Tut was actually rather sickly and deformed.

The Lincoln assassination was a tragedy on many levels. Major Henry Rathbone almost caught John Wilkes Booth just after the assassination. The fact Booth got away caused him to later go mad with guilt and murder his wife.

The roman emperor Caligula needed a way to gain superiority over the roman senate. So he humiliated them by making one of his horses a full-fledged roman senator. Yes, this is historical fact.

The practices of the past can sometimes seem barbaric and strange by our standards. In the Victorian Era, it was common for people to take photos of their close relatives' fresh corpses. They did to it to remember them as keepsakes.

Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini, were all nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Sometimes, it's hard to see how things will turn out. Especially in the past when so much was able to be hidden.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi lived in Hiroshima when the first atom bomb was dropped. He survived the blast and traveled to Nagasaki. It was the day before the second bomb was dropped. However, he survived again and lived until he was 93 years of age.

Pre-Columbian America had a native population of 12 million in 1500. But European contact and conquest severely lowered that number. By 1900, that number was just 237,000.

In Los Angeles County 1942, a false alarm caused the U.S. Army to fire over 1400 anti-air rounds. The Army thought it was a Japanese Air Raid. Five people died.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, a new fad gripped European nobility, which posited that human parts could cure certain ailments. Nobles would pay exorbitant prices for pieces of corpses to use in tonics.

Dentures give victims and the elderly the ability to properly chew their food. But, before the late 18th century, dentures were made using the teeth of dead soldiers. No thanks.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a book in 1838 called "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." It told of a shipwrecked crew of four men who cannibalize a cabin boy named Richard Parker. Jus 46 years later, a shipwrecked crew of four in the pacific cannibalize a cabin boy named Richard Parker.

In 19th century New England, there was an actual vampire panic. Tuberculosis, what was then called consumption, was going through New England. Many thought that the plague was caused by none other than vampires.

The Aztec culture of modern day Mexico practiced ritual human sacrifice at their height. It was eventually conquered by the Spanish. It's said at least 20,000 people were killed at just Tenochtitlan.

Rasputin was a Russian spiritualist and favorite of the last Tsarina. He reportedly survived multiple assassination attempts in the same night. He was poisoned, stabbed, shot, and then finally drowned.

The vampire Dracula was based off of the Wallachian monarch Vlad Dracula, or Vlad The Impaler. According to the histories he was not only known for his impaling people. He also dined on the blood of his enemies.

Joan of Arc is famous for helping defeat the English at the Siege Of Orleans. But her service in the Hundred Years War wasn't enough to keep her from being executed. She was accused of witchcraft.

In 1930s China, the Japanese Army committed crimes against humanity. It's now called the Rape Of Nanking. Up to 300,000 civilians were slaughtered in six weeks.

From 1932 to 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted an unethical experiment on African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama. They told the men they were being treated for syphilis. They never actually treated them. They were just documenting the stages of the disease.

Sometimes the conspiracies in real life are scarier than fiction. In the mid-20th century, the CIA conducted real research into mind control in a project called MK-Ultra. It sometimes involved dosing civilians with LSD.

In 1948, the SS Ourang Medan reportedly sent multiple messages in morse code. "All officers, including captain, are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead." The next message said, "I die." When found, everyone was dead, frozen with contorted faces looking upward.

The power of absolute monarchs were scary. Sultan Ibrahim I of the Ottoman Empire drowned 280 of his concubines. This was after just one of them slept with another man.

In the Fourth Crusade, the army didn't even make it to the Holy Land. Instead, Crusader soldiers just sacked Constantinople, the most important christian city in the world at the time.

At one point, people weren't the only things put on trial. In the middle ages, animals like horses, donkeys, even a tomato plant, were put on trial in court. And sentenced to death.

During the 1960s and 70s, the US Government forcibly sterilized Native American women. This was a eugenics policy carried out through the Indian Health Service. It severely reduced the population capacity of Native Americans.

Joseph Stalin, dictator of the USSR is thought to have killed up to 60 million of his own people through forced industrialization and mass starvation. Many of his horrors didn't get released until his dead in 1953.

Sarah Winchester was the heiress to the famed gun manufacturer. She built an exceedingly strange house with stairs leading nowhere and doors opening to 10 foot drops. It's said she build it in order to appease the spirits of the dead who were killed by Winchester guns.

According to the histories, Roman Emperor Commodus rounded up all the dwarfs and little people he could find and had them fight to the death in the Colosseum. When you're emperor, you can do what you want. Commodus did what he wanted.

In colonial America pregnant women didn't receive painkillers when delivering the baby. The colonists thought the pain was considered God's punishment for Eve eating from the Tree Of Knowledge.

In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan reached its height. It had complete political control over many states in the south. It carried out organized lynches and spread white supremacism.

Many of the founding fathers were slave owners, but we don't always think about the implication of that. Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Declaration Of Independence. He is historically known to have routinely raped his slaves.

During World War II, the U.S. was experimenting with any weapon that could give it the edge in battle. It even tried to create toxic gas that would only effect certain races. Yes, racist gas. 60,000 personnel were involved.

During the Crusades, a child-preacher named Stephen had visions. He claimed to see that he could lead an army of children could take Jerusalem without incident. They never made it, most were killed or sold into slavery.

The Soviet Union holds the honor of creating the biggest nuclear weapon ever made. It was called the "Tsar Bomba." It caused damage as far as 1,000km away.

The later stages of syphilis are incredibly gruesome. So much so that it can look oddly familiar to us now. During the Italian renaissance, one outbreak became so bad that it looked like zombies took over 15th century Florence.

Ancient Rome is known for its strong legal system and its incredible infrastructure. But it also had some questionable beliefs. One of which included the idea that if you drank the fresh blood of a fallen gladiator, you would absorb their power.