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History class never told us the whole story. Join us as we count down the most disturbing historical facts that schools deliberately left out of the curriculum, from forgotten tragedies to shocking cover-ups that changed the world forever!
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00:00A 2016 exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art was created to understand those years.
00:06Thumbprints tell the story of the impact repatriation had on the nation.
00:10Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:12And today we're exploring the most disturbing historical facts that the school and education systems often skip over
00:18due to the information being too dark and terrible.
00:21The regime dramatically upended daily life in agriculture, causing widespread starvation and disease.
00:28Henry Rathbone After President Lincoln's Assassination
00:31Most students, even those outside the U.S., will be familiar with John Wilkes Booth assassinating President Abraham Lincoln in
00:381865.
00:39Yet one of the forgotten aspects is what happened to Henry Rathbone.
00:43He was sitting next to Lincoln on that fateful night, resulting in Rathbone being severely injured when attempting to stop
00:48Booth.
00:52The bullet enters the back of Lincoln's head.
00:55While the Brevet colonel survived, his mental health collapsed.
00:59Eventually, Rathbone moved to Germany with his family.
01:01In 1883, Rathbone tried to attack his children.
01:05When his wife Clara Harris tried to protect them, he took her life before turning a knife on himself.
01:10While he recovered, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he remained until he died in 1911.
01:16The Attack of the Dead Men
01:24With a battle named as this, it immediately gives images of B-films featuring zombie soldiers.
01:30In reality, it's not too far from the truth.
01:32In 1915, during World War I, Germany, after multiple attempts, attacked the Soviet's fortress in Poland, which housed Russian soldiers.
01:41To make victory certain, Germany deployed chemical gas weapons against Russia, which didn't have good protection against the toxic clouds.
01:49The majority of around 900 Russian soldiers succumbed to the attack.
01:52Yet some, despite suffering terrible injuries, refused to let Germany take the fortress.
01:57Clearly showing their wounds, the Russians attacked the Germans, who were horrified by what they saw, causing them to withdraw.
02:11Russia had to destroy the fortress days later to stop it from falling into enemy hands.
02:17Only 10 years later, chemical weapons were forbidden by the Geneva Convention.
02:21Bayer's Contamination Scandal
02:23Today, Bayer is one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
02:28Yet, it's lucky to still be around after the scandals it's been involved with.
02:31One of the biggest took place in the 1980s.
02:34Cutter Biological, a division of Bayer, had developed the blood clotting agents Factor VIII and IX.
02:40However, the plasma which was used to create the proteins had been contaminated with HIV.
02:45When it became known that the agents were spreading a then-fatal disease, Bayer slowly moved to stop its sale,
02:51at least in Europe and the U.S., until the products were treated.
02:54They took the product off the market in the U.S., and then they dumped it in France, Europe, Asia,
02:59and Latin America.
03:00With a surplus stock of the contaminated medicine, the German company continued to sell untreated Factor VIII and IX to
03:06countries in Asia and Latin America.
03:08They had to figure out a way, Joe, to make a profit on a product that they could not sell
03:13in America.
03:14The Radium Girls
03:15Nowadays, glow-in-the-dark items are made with safe chemicals.
03:19But over a hundred years ago, it was a very different tale.
03:22Starting in 1917, multiple watch factories in the U.S. employed women to paint the dials on watches.
03:29However, rather than normal paint, it was laced with the radioactive radium to make it illuminate.
03:34The women were told by the company, the United States Radium Corporation, that it was safe.
03:39So they were encouraged to put the brushes in their mouths to make the tip finer for their detailed work.
03:44Because I was telling my mother, and my mother said, well, what do you know what you put in your
03:48mouth?
03:49And I said, well, it's the stuff they put on the clocks, you know, that illuminize it.
03:54Dentists and doctors soon connected the radium to the women having damaged mouths and jaws, often leading to death.
04:00The workers sued the USRC, earning money and changing employment standards in the country.
04:05They had all the young high school girls working there, and Ottawa has never been the same since.
04:11The Great Pox. There have been many outbreaks of disease in history, yet one that's often not spoken about is
04:17the Great Pox.
04:18Taking place in 1495, a group of French soldiers attacking Italy was coming down with postules and tumors across their
04:25bodies,
04:26which caused decay and brought them similarities to the walking dead.
04:30A disease which is so cruel, so distressing, so appalling, that until now nothing so horrifying,
04:36nothing more terrible or disgusting has ever been known on this earth.
04:41The Pox quickly spread across Europe with estimates that millions lost their lives.
04:45It's believed that the illness was caused by syphilis.
04:48As for the cause, there's speculation that the crew who traveled with Christopher Columbus had picked up the disease when
04:54in the New World.
04:55His discovery of the New World proved to be a major event in the history of human disease.
04:59When they returned to Europe, around the same time the pox was registered, the lack of natural resistance to syphilis
05:06caused devastating effects within the continent's population.
05:09So, altogether, it sounded like a fairly sort of disgusting condition which rapidly killed people.
05:16The U.S. Radiation Experiments.
05:18The U.S. wants us to believe that human experimentation is something other countries have done.
05:23Yet, when it comes to radiation, they conducted thousands of tests, often without participants knowing.
05:28One of the authors told us he didn't know about the lack of consent, but the radiation levels were low,
05:34and the experiment had been worthwhile.
05:36In 1927, several children in Indiana were irradiated after being misled into believing that it was a treatment for ringworm.
05:44One of the kids, Virtus Hardiman, survived but suffered lifelong injuries.
05:48In 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project, multiple terminal patients, including Albert Stevens, who'd been misdiagnosed, were unknowingly injected
05:58with plutonium.
05:59In 1945, Ebb Cade, who was constructing the building where the Manhattan Project was developed, was hurt in a car
06:05accident.
06:06They held off treating his injuries for several days, to instead inject Cade with plutonium without his consent.
06:13He seemed in terrible shape.
06:15He looked to me like he was not going to make it for a few days.
06:19The Mexican Repatriation.
06:21To paraphrase philosopher George Santayana, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
06:27In 1929, with the U.S. experiencing the Great Depression, the government, led by President Herbert Hoover, shifted blame onto
06:35immigrants.
06:36With the idea to save jobs for quote-unquote real Americans, they began forcing the deportation of Mexicans.
06:42Interrogations, threats of deportation, and just plain threats, forced more people to Mexico.
06:48This also included Americans with Mexican heritage.
06:51It's estimated that over 60% of all deportees were U.S. citizens.
06:55President Hoover deported one million Mexicans, 60% of whom were citizens.
07:01While most of the repatriation took place from 1929 to 1933, the practice didn't fully cease until 1939.
07:08During that time, it's estimated that up to 2 million people were deported from the U.S.
07:14Unfortunately, this has brought a resemblance in the modern era, with tens of thousands being deported under President Donald Trump.
07:20But it wasn't just the Mexicans, because I remember speaking to my grandfather, and he would tell me that there
07:26was Japanese and Chinese in the boxcarts as well.
07:29The Donner Party
07:30Of Sarah Fosdick, who had to watch her husband die, then see his heart roasting on a stick.
07:36In 1846, a group of nearly 90 pioneers, known as the Donner Party, departed the Midwest with plans to arrive
07:44in California.
07:45However, after reaching Sierra Nevada in the winter, heavy snow and blizzards trapped the group, causing their supplies to dwindle
07:52rapidly as starvation set in.
07:54When help eventually arrived in February 1847, around 40 people hadn't survived.
07:59They did seem to be doomed. Everything went wrong for them, and they had started so blithely with such big
08:06expectations and such loads of possessions.
08:09Rumors soon emerged that the survivors only made it by eating the people who had passed away.
08:14Luis and Salvador were Native American guides who refused to partake in the practice and escaped.
08:20However, they were later shot and fed to the Donner Party.
08:23How William Foster, insane, shot each of the men through the head, and how the starving survivors used the murdered
08:32men for food.
08:33The group also had many children, some of whom didn't survive the journey.
08:36Oh, it's got everything. It's a Greek tragedy. It's a great test of human character.
08:42Laika the Space Dog.
08:44With the space race between the U.S. and the USSR in full effect, the latter took a step towards
08:49dominating the stars in 1957.
08:51The little street dog could never have known the importance of what she was about to do.
08:56That year, the country sent Laika into space aboard Sputnik 2, becoming the first animal to orbit the Earth.
09:03This was done to test the effects of space travel on a living creature, and it was always known it
09:08would be a one-way trip for her.
09:10A week after launch, the USSR stated that the former stray dog-turned cosmonaut, Laika, had passed away, giving various
09:17causes over the years.
09:18However, in 2002, the truth was sadly discovered.
09:22Laika's body endured massive stress from the launch.
09:25This, on top of Sputnik 2 overheating, caused her demise around five hours into the journey.
09:31But Laika's martyrdom hasn't been forgotten, her sacrifice paving the way for manned spaceflight.
09:36King Leopold II's Congo Rule.
09:39While the British Empire is rightfully heavily criticized for its colonial history, there is little talk about Belgium's role under
09:46Leopold II in the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo.
09:50After taking control of the region, Leopold created the Congo Free State in 1885.
09:55Leopold II wanted to acquire what he called a slice of this magnificent African cake.
10:01With a focus on exporting rubber, he installed slavery, often taking their family members hostage.
10:07To keep people in check, the slaves were subjected to public beatings and had limbs removed, only to be sent
10:13back to work.
10:14Leopold's army responded to resistance or failure to meet quotas with unflinching torture and execution.
10:20Even children weren't immune to their methods.
10:23Leopold also did little to stop famine and disease from spreading through the region.
10:27Until the Congo Free State ended in 1908, it's estimated that the Congo population fell by up to 10 million.
10:34Chief Luntulu laid 110 twigs in front of a foreign commission.
10:39Every twig represented a person in his village who died because of King Leopold's horrific regime in the Congo.
10:46Are there any other disturbing history facts that schools skipped that we missed from our list?
10:51Let us know below.
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