Once thought to be a fake, Bigfoot-esque phenomenon, scientific proof of these gross things — rats bound together by their tails with sticky substances like blood or feces — have

been reported since the 16th century, mostly in Germany.

In 1922, a farm near Munich was the setting for a brutal sextuple homicide. The killer was never caught, and it remains one of Germany's most famous unsolved

crimes.

In 1888, pieces of a woman were found in three locations around London in an unsolved case that's since become known as the Whitehall Mystery. (Jack the Ripper wasn't officially

connected to this crime, but it sure seems like his MO.)

Made with real human hair, dissectible into seven layers (one of which included a fake fetus), and positioned in sensual, oft-erotic poses, the "Anatomical Venus" of 14th-century Florence aimed

to make human dissection obsolete. 

Meant to ease pain, a special eagle dung "poultice" was applied during childbirth. I'll just take an epidural, thanks.

Unsurprisingly, Edison's creepy-ass talking dolls were a commercial failure.

After seances became trendy in the 1800s and early 1900s, people capitalized on the interest by claiming to be able to  communicate with the dead through series of knocks and

taps, a practice known as "spirit rapping." (Spoiler alert: They were lying.)

Locks of the deceased's hair were inlaid in broaches and necklaces or fashioned into rings and bracelets. The practice still exists today, thought it's definitely not

as popular as it was a couple hundred years ago.

Devised by German historian Heribert Illig in the 1980s and 90s, the Phantom Time Hypothesis states that the years 614 through 911 A.D never happened — meaning we're all still living

in the 18th century. Illig's logic? Citing a lack of archaeological evidence and maybe-purposefully misdated documents (among other things), he believes that Pope Sylvester II and the Holy Roman Emperor Otto

III made up Charlemagne's reign and most of the early Middle Ages *just* so they could say that they ruled during 1000 A.D.

Syphilis is relatively easily treated nowadays, but the highly contagious STD was no laughing matter back in the late 15th century. During one particularly bad European outbreak, people suffering

from the disease walked around with their faces essentially rotting and falling off.

Henry Rathbone, a U.S. military officer and diplomat, witnessed Lincoln's 1865 assassination and tried (but failed) to catch gunman John Wilkes Booth. His mental declined in the years

following Lincoln's death, and in December 1883, he killed his wife, attempted to murder his kids, and stabbed himself in the chest five times in an attempt to commit suicide.

He was eventually declared insane by doctors and spent the rest of his life in an asylum. 

The British government encouraged the public to "kindly" kill all domestic animals just before the war broke out in 1939, as it was putting all of its resources toward keeping its

human citizens safe and could no longer extend any to pets. Thus, as many as 750,000 British pets were killed in a week's time.

The first recorded serial killer was a woman named Locusta of of Gaul. She preferred to poison her victims, earning her the nickname "Locusta the Poisoner)," and was supposedly commissioned

to carry out several assassinations. 

In Herculaneum, a city closer than Pompeii to Vesuvius' A.D. 79 eruption, residents' skulls reportedly became so overheated amid the flow of molten lava that they exploded. 

Gilles de Rais, a nobleman who fought for the French alongside Joan of Arc, was regarded as a hero until he was accused of kidnapping, torturing, sexually assaulting,

and killing dozens of children.

The Romans made their toothpaste out of a variety of gross ingredients, the MOST disturbing among them being urine and mouse brains. 

DNA tests proved that the famous pharaoh's parents were brother and sister, which explains why he suffered from a bone disorder and a weakened immune system.

Victims were forced to strip naked and straddle the device's triangular wooden frame with weights attached to their feet. Ouch.

Known as "the incorrupt," some saints' bodies have supposedly undergone little to no decomposition since their deaths. 

Tsar Nicholas II's adviser reportedly survived being stabbed and poisoned. Eventually, he was shot multiple times and tossed (supposedly dead at this point) into a river.

Prior to age 10, girls' feet would be broken and "bound" with special shoes so that their mobility was limited. Practiced up until the early 1900s, such bound

feet (or "lotus feet") were considered a show of status and beauty.

In 1947 or '48, the S.S. Ourang Medan is said to have sent SOS messages to multiple ships in the Straits of Malacca. When it was eventually discovered by two

nearby American ships, its entire crew was discovered to be dead, their faces contorted in terror. The situation couldn't be further investigated, as the ship later exploded and sank.

Danish explorer Peter Freuchen was reportedly stuck under an avalanche sans his tools on an expedition in the early 1910s, so he fashioned a knife out of his own feces

and dug himself out. When he suffered from frostbite on the way back to camp, he amputated and ate some of his own leg.

The assistant with this unfortunate job was known as the Groom of Stool. 

Vestal Virgins — priestesses responsible for maintaining a sacred fire — took a 30-year vow of celibacy between the ages of 6 and 10. If they broke that vow, they

were sentenced to death via immurement, a practice in which the victim is locked in a small space and starved to death.

Frank Hayes died of a heart attack while riding a horse named Sweet Kiss in New York's Belmont Park in 1923. His corpse managed to stay in the saddle

and wound up crossing the finish line first.

A Russian biologist named Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov attempted to breed a "humanzee" via artificial insemination in the 1920s (without success). 

Prior to the late 19th century, doctors gave women "pelvis massages" treat them for "hysteria" — a task that was apparently boring and tedious. An English doctor named J.

Mortimer Granville invented the vibrator in the 1880s so that doctors would no longer have to induce "hysterical paroxysm" by hand.

After her husband died, Olga of Kiev wanted to remain regent ruler of Kievan Rus (a federation of East Slavic tribes) until her young son came of age. The nearby Drevlian tribe,

responsible for Olga's husband's death, sent her twenty suitors in an attempt to persuade her to marry its prince so that he could assume control. She had all 20 men 

href="https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/medieval-renaissance/olga-of-kiev-one-saint-you-do-not-want-to-mess-with/" target="_blank" style="font-size: 1em; background-color: rgb(247, 246, 244);">buried alive.  

After trampling a man to death, Topsy the elephant was fed poison, electrocuted, and strangled in front of a crowd of reporters and guests at Coney Island's Sea Lion

Park. (Sound grim? It could've been worse: The park's owners were initially planning on publicly hanging Topsy until the ASPCA intervened.)

Dr. Josef Mengele experimented on young twins and people with physical disabilities while working at Auschwitz. He is said to have injected one twin with diseases and transfused their

blood with the other twin's; conducted amputations in order to study gangrene; and injected his victims' eyes with dye before removing them and sending them elsewhere to be studied.

He is also rumored to have sewn a pair of twins together in an attempt to "conjoin" them. 

Yup. Each slave (or "helot") was also reportedly assigned a certain amount of beatings a year, regardless of what they did or didn't do, in order to make

sure they never forgot their low class status.

I'm not kidding.

Victims would be placed between two boats or hollowed-out tree trunks, with only their head, legs, and feet exposed; placed in a swamp and/or in

the sun; and continuously force-fed a mixture of milk and honey. The sticky substance — combined with the victim's resulting diarrhea, which would accumulate between the boats/tree trunks — would

attract pests, who would then eat the victim's flesh. They would die after several days of suffering.

They would light said liquified fat on fire and then catapult it at their enemies. 

Their hearts were then held up to the Sun, and their bodies were thrown down the temple's steps. 

And some were raped beforehand.

And the ones who weren't weren't totally blinded were left with a single eye.

Columbus reportedly forced girls from indigenous groups in the Caribbean and South America — some of them as young as nine years old — to be sex slaves for

the Spanish.

The coffins were equipped with bells, ladders, and escape hatches in case someone was prematurely buried — which happened more often than you'd expect, as cholera occasionally put its (still

living) victims into a "deathlike" state.

A piglet stillborn in February 1642 apparently looked very similar to its mother's previous owner's servant. After the man was found guilty of beastiality, he and the mother

pig were executed.