There are some things you just shouldn’t do when you attend a wedding. Remember, this is someone’s big day and the attention should be on the happy couple.

There are few ways to draw attention to yourself more effectively than to propose. We get that you’d want to share a special moment, like a proposal, with your loved ones. Still, you simply shouldn’t steal the spotlight like this.

While we’re on the subject, a proposal isn’t the only thing you shouldn’t do at a wedding. Anything that pulls attention away from the event and towards you is largely frowned upon.

Aside from a proposal, one of the most surefire ways to draw attention away from the newlyweds is announcing your own big news such as pregnancy. We honestly can’t blame this couple too much either. We’d be pretty mad in their shoes, too!

The guest list can really make or break a wedding. Most people want to spend their big day with the people closest to them. Usually, though, this includes friends and family.

It seems like this groom was a little too close to one of the guests. Even worse, it seems like they were already together at the time. It’s bad enough to cheat on someone but to invite the other person to your wedding? This is beyond inappropriate.

As we’ve said, you want to spend your big day with special people. This dedicated teacher was so excited for her wedding, she invited her fourth-grade class to the ceremony.

This wouldn’t have been too embarrassing for her if things had gone according to plan. However, the harsh reality ended up with her alone at the altar, left with the entire class in attendance. This situation would feel devastating enough without gossip at school.

Most weddings have some sort of dress code. Primarily, you usually just have to wear formalwear although some weddings may have color codes or other specifications.

While some of these can get a little out of hand, one rule is generally true — never wear a wedding dress to someone else’s wedding! A lot of people think it’s a faux pas to even wear white but an entire gown definitely isn’t the way to go. What was this person thinking?

If the couple buys a cake for the wedding party and announces there’s only enough for everyone to have a single slice, it’s best to grab your slice and move on.

We can see why someone might go back at the end of the night if there was some still there. We can’t blame them for not expecting the couple to go through the CCTV footage to find the people who went over their one-slice limit. Why are they making their guest pay for a second slice? Were they planning on returning what was left of the cake to the bakery?

A wedding is usually started by a procession of the wedding party entering the area. This includes the soon-to-be-wed couple along with bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girls, and ring bearers.

Usually, this is a pretty serious procession. People might smile or have fun but it’s not great to interrupt, even if you’re in the wedding party. We have to wonder what this bridesmaid and groomsman were thinking when they decided this was the entrance to go with.

We understand why you’d want to limit waste. However, sending out cards to tell everyone you’re opting for E-vites seems unnecessary and a bit like a self-defeating concept.

That’s not even the worst part about this scenario, though. There are a few times that people want to see confetti or glitter all over their house. It seems like this couple didn’t care. Again, though, we have to wonder how they thought this saved on waste.

Weddings largely cater to the couple getting married but there’s a lot for guests, too. Usually, you can at least expect some food and favors.

These favors are often small and commemorative for the people who attended. We have to wonder what this couple had that was so tempting, though. After all, it must have been something worthwhile if someone was going to react as inappropriately as this person did. Why steal everyone else’s favors?

There are some guests who behave so inappropriately that you have to wonder how they justified their actions. This person might be at the top of the list.

Plenty of people get remarried and stay on good terms with an ex. They may even attend the wedding and answer honestly when asked how they know the groom. Since this was only the groom’s second wedding, this person’s response was beyond inappropriate. It doesn’t sound like it’d inspire the groom to start planning more weddings either.

There are some things you can control when it comes to your wedding. Oftentimes, you can even choose what the people in your wedding party wear.

Asking someone to change their hair to match the dresses seems a bit too far. Judging from this post, too, we have to wonder if the bridesmaid in question has been asked about her hair yet. They even added a cropped photo to show the hair in question!

One of the great things about weddings is that they can really bring two whole families together. As too many people know, though, this isn’t always how it works.

This person’s mother-in-law sounds like she could have used a minute to really consider what she’d just asked of the bride. For one, the bride is literally a part of the family now — that’s part of weddings and why you call them “in-laws.” Plus, who asks the bride to step out of a photo during the wedding?

When a couple gets married, it’s not uncommon to hear the story of how they met. You might even hear a shout-out if the person who introduced them is around.

This couple did just that but it was a little misleading. Many weddings happen years after a couple meets one another through a mutual friend. In this case, the person wasn’t quite a mutual friend. In reality, it seems like things started on pretty rocky terms for this now-married couple.

Bridal gowns are gorgeous but they can be quite cumbersome. As such, many brides opt to change into a reception dress that’s easier to celebrate and dance in after the ceremony.

If something goes wrong with this dress, of course, it’s stressful. It seems like this stressful moment could have been avoided as well. Trying on the dress is bad enough. Stealing both the dress and the wedding limo seems like enough to ruin your relationship with the couple permanently.

Being in a wedding party isn’t always cheap. It’s not uncommon for bridesmaids to spend a fair amount on the dress the bride wants them in.

Plus, a wedding is a big time commitment that people schedule for. If you’re changing your plans, you have to communicate that to everyone. Otherwise, you may end up with some bitter friends posting sales posts like these on social media. We can’t really blame them for being angry either.

Learning that a partner has been unfaithful is hard no matter when you learn about it. Your wedding day might be one of the worst options, though.

After all, your wedding day is supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life. You’re celebrating your love with another person and the focus should be on the two of you. The last thing you want to hear in your wedding attire is that your soon-to-be life partner hasn’t been faithful.

There are some moments in a wedding everyone expects. When the wedding cake comes out, it’s usually a pretty big moment as the couple cuts into it together.

Not at this wedding. Well, the groom was there at least. Instead of the bride, though, the groom cut the cake with his own mother. As if this wasn’t bad enough, it seems clear the decision was made without the bride and she didn’t even learn about it until after the deed was done!

We can only say that we’re glad this person didn’t try to show up in a wedding dress. The alternative they landed on isn’t much better either.

Dressing in the same dress as the bridesmaids already isn’t a good look. Stopping there would have been bad enough. Trying to sneak into a wedding party is just too much. Did she think no one would notice? Even if she was wearing the same dress, doesn’t it make sense that they would stop her?

There are plenty of themes you can choose for your wedding. With so many options, it’s a great chance to express yourselves as a couple. This choice is rather tasteless, though.

After all, these were real people victimized by the people on your table decorations. Some of them were rather recent, too! If you want a Halloween wedding with a spooky theme, there are plenty of options that don’t center on real human suffering.

There are some things that are just unacceptable. Who would want to sabotage a bride on her wedding day? It seems like this guest would.

We have to wonder, are you even close enough friends if you’d pull a stunt like this? We’d hope not. It’s obvious the goal here was to ruin the dress, given the choice of red. That’s an expensive and sentimental target and it’s especially horrendous that they added verbal attacks on top of it.

You don’t have to wait until the wedding day to cause a problem at the wedding as it turns out. You can cause quite an issue before the day of the ceremony.

If you promise to make someone’s wedding dress, that’s a huge undertaking. If you can’t do it, you should be honest about that. Otherwise, you might put the bride in an unfortunate position as this mother did. It’s even worse that it seems like she never even got started, meaning she could have given the bride a lot more notice.

Usually, you have to worry about the guests or the wedding party when something goes wrong at a wedding. However, there are a lot of moving parts to a wedding.

This can include the outfits, venue, food, reception, and any professionals you hire. It’s hard to move forward with a wedding when the person who’s officiating the whole thing isn’t there. You can’t get married without someone to marry you. Even after they arrived, they didn’t seem quite on task.

Usually, when you go to a wedding, you bring a gift. This is something to congratulate the happy couple on their union and some send a gift if they can’t physically make it to the wedding.

It’s not even uncommon for a couple to have something like an Amazon registry to give people ideas. Asking everyone to spend a minimum on a gift is a bit entitled and we can’t believe this couple came up with a sum so high. We can’t blame this person for skipping out.

When someone sets a wedding date, it isn’t decided on a whim. They take into account a lot of aspects of scheduling including their own, guests, and what the venue allows.

Once a date is set, the guests don’t have much room to ask for the couple to change it — just RSVP whether you can come or not. You definitely can’t ask the couple to change the date just two weeks before the wedding. It’s rude and often impossible!

This person didn’t propose at the wedding ceremony or at a reception. Still, the newly-engaged couple didn’t avoid one of the rudest choices you can make at weddings. However, the circumstances around this one really blow us away.

Namely, the couple wasn’t even actually newly-engaged. The couple had already had their big moment months ago. They only decided it was time for a traditional, show-stealing proposal when they were supposed to be celebrating another couple.

Look, if you have feelings for someone, there are mature ways to go about it. Accepting that they’re with someone else and moving on is a good way to start.

If you’re feeling particularly destructive, though, crashing weddings to do this is a surefire way to ruin relationships with everyone there. First, we can’t believe we have to say once again, don’t wear wedding dresses to weddings if you aren’t the bride. Plus, don’t try to step in with the groom!

Weddings can get expensive. So, if a friend offers to cover a service like photography as a wedding gift, it can really help out!

That’s what this person promised and they did take the photos. They just didn’t give them back either. Photos are often the biggest moments from weddings, so we can’t blame this couple for being upset after six months of silence. Even worse, they said Maddie was active on social media the whole time, making it clear their messages were simply ignored.

It’s really not uncommon for couples to have children before their wedding or have their wedding while they’re expecting. Still, that’s up to the couple to share.

This best man forgot this or simply didn’t care. The result? He managed to spill the bride’s big news for her — before she was ready — with her whole family. Given the circumstances set out here, it doesn’t seem like the speech went over well.

When you’re at a wedding, it’s best to attend as much of it as possible and step out quietly if you need to leave. Usually, this is in cases of another engagement or maybe leaving a reception early.

It isn’t usually a measure to go crash other weddings at the venue. We have to give this terrible guest points for maximizing his efforts, we guess. It’s not often you hear about someone crashing two parties at once.

Some weddings are more casual than others. Yet, most people still at least expect chairs to sit in when they head to a wedding.

That wasn’t quite the plan this couple had in mind. These guests would have blankets to sit on the grass. There are a lot of things wrong with this idea and a commenter just pointed out a simple one. The person who posted the question simply wasn’t having it, though.

A wedding is supposed to be a night of happiness. However, it’s inevitable that some couples wouldn’t have a smooth night.

An argument between the bride and groom at a wedding is awkward to witness. Seeing the bride burn their marriage license within hours of the wedding would stop the entire room. Not to mention, it’s not a great sign for the marriage either.

To start, the dog eating this person’s shoes was unfortunate. It’s not the dog’s fault this happened but it’s definitely frustrating. After this, you’d think the mother-in-law would apologize.

Rather, she demanded to stay in their house on their wedding night. What’s usually a night for couples to enjoy each other’s company quickly became an uncomfortable and unfair mess. We’d feel rather bitter after this interaction, too!

There are some things that you read and you just can’t believe. The wedding considerations here are so cold we can only hope this isn’t real.

The bride in question is worried about her grandmother’s heart but not in the way you might think. What really stands out is her concern isn’t that her grandmother might be uncomfortable at a long event due to her health. The decision solely comes from the fact that a heart attack would take attention from the wedding.

When the officiant of the wedding asks if anyone objects, the crowd is typically silent. If it isn’t, some drama is sure to ensue. When the mother of the bride objects, you’d think it’d be in her daughter’s favor.

In this case, that ship had definitely sailed. It seems like at this point, they could have at least told the bride privately rather than drag this all out in the middle of the doomed vows.

When it comes to a reception, one of the basic things you’ll need is music. This is where a DJ comes in handy for most people.

Of course, you can’t guarantee that the DJ’s setlist will make everyone happy. It’s not uncommon for a guest to have a request the DJ can’t comply with. In this case, the best choice is to accept you won’t hear a song. Don’t bite the DJ!

As your wedding gets closer, it makes sense that you’d start counting down the days. Most people can’t wait to marry the love of their life! That’s not exactly what this bride was counting down for.

As a matter of fact, they were willing to get downright passive-aggressive about the matter. Wouldn’t you be more focused on everyone celebrating your union rather than how much money they’ve spent on your gift at this point?

There are some things you don’t expect to see at a wedding. For instance, you probably aren’t expecting to see a fistfight among the vows and congratulations.

This person has even that beat. Not only was there a fight, there were four. We’re not sure how you even find the time for four separate fistfights during a single wedding and reception. Even the bride got involved in the festivities, so to speak.

It’s an honor to get asked to be in someone’s wedding. However, it’s not like an ongoing job and the couple can only control so much. This guest didn’t even unexpectedly change their hair for the wedding.

The bride asked them to change their hair drastically for the wedding. “Demoting” them doesn’t seem like a reasonable response. Like this person, we’d have to wonder if we wanted to go to the wedding at all at this point.

When you go to a wedding, it’s important to remember you’re at a formal event. You can’t do things the way you might at home.

We’re sure not everyone at this wedding was hoping for a slice of cake in this fashion. It’s bad enough that this relative was using their finger to move each slice. It’s even worse that she took the time to lick it clean between slices. We’d skip out on cake, too!

There are parts of a wedding that tend to happen. You can skip them but you might want to make sure you and your spouse are on the same page first. Even as a child, this person knew that this wasn’t what was supposed to happen.

When prompted to kiss the bride, the groom didn’t want to. While they could have skipped this if they discussed it before, it seemed like a decision on the spot. The awkward moment after was definitely noticeable.

Wedding dates sometimes change due to factors the couple can’t control. This couple was clearly going through a lot when they decided to postpone things. You would think the guests would be more forgiving under these circumstances.

It seems like sympathy was in short supply when they started demanding reimbursements from the couple. Maybe they can help these guests save money but not ask them to attend at all when they get to the new date.

One problem at a wedding is enough to stress out the people planning it. Several is enough to make you wonder what exactly is going on. Starting with forgetting the veil is already a large pill to swallow.

The bouquet is understandable but frustrating. The earthquake is unavoidable but still a lot to take on at this point. Losing the staff and the horrible guests really put this day into perspective. It seems this person regretted the whole thing.

Someone missing a wedding is sad. Most people only want to have one wedding and it’s a big milestone in their life, making it a big one to miss.

Things happen, though. We have to wonder exactly what happened here for everyone to just disappear. Even worse, the guests that did show up only stayed long enough to enjoy some cake and go. It’d be hard not to let this put a damper on things.

This photographer was ready to go when a bride-to-be hired them for their engagement photos, engagement parties, bachelorette parties, boudoir shoots, and the wedding itself.

Obviously, this level of work doesn’t come cheap. So, the photographer thought it was too good to be true when their client switched photographers. Still, it was their decision and they respected that. There’s no reason for the client to come back and blame the photographer for their decision.

A lot of people love a joke. If a couple is a fan of comedy and they love to joke around with one another, we can even see why they’d work some fun into their ceremony.

This bride may have chosen the absolute worst time to make a joke, though. When prompted to say “I do,” she opted to crack a joke in the opposite direction. No matter how brief it was, though, it halted the wedding for the day and for the next 10 weeks afterward.

Sometimes, the most fascinating parts of history happen to be the creepiest, too. These facts will give you something to think about in the dead of night when you can’t sleep any better than we can.

It’s a well-known fact that young children thrive in fresh air. It’s why there are so many playgrounds and parks in cities — and a drive to make sure kids get out to play. However, in crowded cities with closet-like living spaces and busy parents, people had to make do with the fresh air they had.

For example, in 1930s London, some families utilized what essentially amounts to a cage attached to a window to give their youngsters some air and sunshine. The photos from this era are truly shocking.

Genghis Khan was a prolific warrior who reshaped the world he knew in many different and surprising ways. He was a bloodthirsty conqueror whose armies ended up killing tens of millions of people. By taking so many souls off the map, he actually reduced the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

The loss of so many farmers also happened to restore forests and natural habitats for wildlife. We’re not saying what he did was good. But those consequences to his actions are awfully surprising.

This one is a real doozy. For some reason, a woman in the 1700s decided that she wanted to become famous. The way she picked to go about this was to convince everyone that she was giving birth to rabbits. That’s right — you read that correctly, though we certainly couldn’t blame you for going back and reading it again to try to make sense of it.

She was eventually found out after the experts of the age moved her to a bigger city to study her. There, they caught a servant trying to sneak a rabbit to the woman, and the jig was up.

We have to admit that part of us is creeped out thoroughly by this historic fact while the other part is impressed by the wonders of the human body. Archaeologists discovered a woman from the 600s who had been buried. However, the strange part about her grave was that a smaller set of bones emerged from her body.

When this woman had been buried, she had been pregnant — most likely with a baby who died in the womb. However, after death, the gases in the body pushed the baby out, resulting in a strange piece of life after death.

When is the last time you went out dancing? Even if song after song came on that you loved, we’re sure you had to take a break at some point to rest, relax, and rehydrate. That’s why a dancing plague from 1518 in Europe is so creepy and terrifying. When one woman was the first sufferer, others eventually fell ill.

They simply couldn’t stop dancing. Doctors of the time thought they would dance themselves out and even arranged for music. But many people died of overexertion.

At the beginning of the 1900s, massive habitat loss in India made one tiger do whatever she had to do to survive. Of course, that meant that more than 400 people had to die for her to continue to live. This tiger caused terror in the region, which was in the middle of being developed for farmland and processed for timber.

With the loss of her home and her usual prey, the tiger started selecting sustenance from the villages. She was eventually killed — but only after 10 years.

The fear of being buried alive these days is little more than an outdated phobia. But if you were alive during the 1700s, it was a real possibility. It was difficult to tell if someone was really deceased because of a lack of accurate medical tools and professionals available.

Just going by breathing or pulse wasn’t enough. People started going to great lengths to ensure their loved ones were actually dead before burying them. It reached such a fever point that some bodies were kept in a special facility to really make sure it was over.

To this day, there’s only one woman in the entire history of New Zealand who has ever been given the death penalty. Who deserved such a fate? Minnie Dean. This woman took in unwanted babies during the 1800s as a way to make money while relieving the pressure from the parents.

However, these babies started disappearing under mysterious circumstances — or gradually got sick and died. Authorities concluded that she was killing the children.

Have you heard of the Hinterkaifeck Murders? This creepy case was never solved — though clues abound as to what probably happened. An entire family was murdered — along with their maid — in 1922, and the killer has never been found. A single set of footprints emerging from the woods led to the house, but there were no other footprints leading away.

And another maid thought the attic was haunted because of the sounds she heard. It was much more likely that the murderer was lying in wait up there.

We didn’t always have access to the kinds of dental advancements we enjoy today. In fact, false teeth and dentures used to be made out of the teeth of soldiers who had fallen on the battlefield.

What makes this creepy fact somehow even worse is that it was the upper class who were most often in need of dentures because of their sugary diets and vanity. They were looking for brighter smiles, and the whitening they undertook damaged their enamel.

Thank you, modern science. If it wasn’t for you, we’d still be adhering to strange treatment and taking ill-advised medications that had very little founding in truth. But it’s still pretty creepy to consider that up until the 1900s, human remains were a common ingredient in medication.

That wasn’t too terribly long ago. People believe that by taking a ground-up substance made from the part of the body of their ailment, they would get better.

Early photography was pricey — so expensive, in fact, that people would often only get photographed a few times in their life. Unfortunately, one of those times might be after they died. Particularly in Victorian times, photos of the dead were taken and kept as mementos to preserve their memories.

While this was widely practiced during this time, today, it’s downright creepy. We’re also troubled by the practice of painting on eyes after the photo was developed to make it look more real.

Most of the world has seen director James Cameron’s epic retelling of the disaster of the Titanic — the biggest ship in the world during its time. But did you know that there was a story before the movie that featured Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet? A story even before the actual ship sunk?

Nearly 15 years before the real disaster, a book was published with striking similarities to what would happen in the future. One of the strangest coincidences was that both the fictional ship and the real Titanic suffered from a lack of lifeboats. Oh, yes — there’s the name, too. The book was called Titan.

Dennis Rader — perhaps better known as the BTK Killer — behaved just like an opportunistic predator might. He waited in his victims’ homes, staking out the place until he determined when they would be at their most vulnerable. Then, he would attack.

He also gave himself the name he’s known best by — a strange flex that we somehow all let happen. After committing his horrors, he would often take a souvenir from the home.

There’s nothing we curious humans find stranger or more compelling than crimes that haven’t been solved. In this particular case from the 1920s, a business owner was murdered in his shop — shot three times by an unknown assailant. The catch?

The doors were all locked from the inside, and the only entrance was a window that only a child could fit through. The authorities were puzzled by this case — and the killer was never found.

Hanging was a common final punishment for the most heinous crimes over the course of history. However, there was an adjacent practice that was even more gruesome called gibbeting. In the Middle Ages, a particularly terrible criminal could be gibbeted to remind others not to repeat his sins.

This practice included leaving the body hanging for a long time — sometimes even for years — for all to see. We think we’d try our best to behave if we had to see that day after day!

Speaking of appetites, the Frenchman Tarrare is another example of someone we’d never want to join at a dinner party or restaurant. This individual had a strange disorder that made him hungry for everything in sight. That included as much of a quarter of an entire cow every single day.

The longer he went on like that, the hungrier he got — and his menu of choice became even worse. He ate things like cats and dogs. When he was hospitalized, he took advantage of newer and more exotic items — ones that turn our stomachs.

Some of the creepiest facts we’re finding are compelling enough to spawn a flurry of fictional retellings in both print and screen. Nowhere is that more true than Dracula. If you didn’t already know, the vampiric character was inspired in part by Vlad Tepes, a real leader in Transylvania living in the 1400s.

Vlad was called “The Impaler” because of the inhumane way he liked to dispatch his enemies. His bloody tastes have delivered a wealth of horror entertainment over the next centuries.

Don’t lose your head over this one. A Colorado farmer was processing chickens. If you’ve ever spent time on a farm, you’ll understand that cutting the head off of a bird doesn’t necessarily mean everything is done. In one chicken’s case, life went on nearly as normal for an entire year-and-a-half.

When the farmer realized that this chicken wasn’t giving up, he and his family tried to care for it by feeding it. Soon, the chicken became a traveling sideshow. Was it better than becoming fried drumsticks? We’re not so sure about that.

We’ve come a long way in how we treat our dead. For example, there are many instances of chapels and churches in Europe that decided to decorate with the bones of the deceased. This was a practice alongside the use of ossuaries.

An ossuary was used to conserve limited space in graveyards. It was essentially a waiting room for the dead. Once the bones were clean, they were incorporated in designs to make room for more corpses.

Serial killer Ted Bundy had an odd choice of employment back when he was in college. He worked for a suicide hotline, literally talking people down off the edge from hurting themselves. It seems odd for him to have done such a thing — especially with the horrors that he would eventually cause.

But to one psychologist, it makes sense. As a psychopath, Bundy was simply trying to understand people so he could fit in better.

Today, we’re lucky enough to have access to an entire host of different teeth whitening products. They fill the shelves at grocery stores. You can even get your teeth brighter and whiter in the dentist’s chair, or at a kiosk in the mall.

Back in ancient Rome, people still wanted whiter teeth. But the choices were much bleaker. Romans utilized ammonia in human urine to whiten their smiles — and rid their clothes of stains.

When you think of the name Madame Tussaud, you likely recall the ubiquitous wax museums in many major cities. Tourists of all ages visit them to catch glimpses of celebrities and historical figures. But what you may not know was that Madame Tussaud was a real person — and one whose legacy is much more sinister than today’s museums full of selfie opportunities.

During the French Revolution, she was thrown in jail because of her relationship with the royal family. She wasn’t released until she agreed to make death masks for the former rulers — her friends.

Pringles are the delicious snack chips that come stacked in a tube for easy eating. And as the slogan goes, the hardest part about enjoying Pringles is knowing when to stop. It’s nearly impossible to eat just one. Now, however, we don’t know if we’ll ever eat them again.

Fredric Baur, the inventor of the chips, was so proud of his innovation that he asked his loved ones to store his cremated remains in a Pringles tube after his death.

We’re glad that science has advanced to the point of the highly effective medical solutions now available to us. And we recognize that sometimes, science advances too slowly to serve everyone. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the trend of lobotomies. While scientists believed that it cured many ailments, more often than not, it left people as shells of their former selves.

Perhaps one of the most well-known cases of this practice was Rosemary Kennedy, a sister of former President John F. Kennedy. She completely lost her independence and was hidden away for the rest of her life.

If we’ve learned about it once, we’re sure we’ll learn about it again. Science and the advancements in the field had extremely dubious beginnings. We count this particular experiment among them. A pair of researchers were studying auditory nerves and the perception of sound when they decided to bring a cat into it.

While the cat was under sedation, the two scientists were able to communicate via the cat’s ear and a telephone receiver thanks to its auditory nerves. The experiment didn’t work once the feline was dead, however.

In this strange but true historical fact, there was a small town in northern England that was so isolated as of the early 1800s that no one had ever seen anybody from France before. So when a French ship washed up on their shores with only a monkey aboard, the people leaped to the conclusion that France was full of monkeys instead of people.

They went so far as to put the poor monkey on trial for such an affront to humanity, subsequently hanging it.

Here’s another example of our understanding of science taking a while to catch up to where it needs to be. Scientists trying to understand the inner workings of the human brain sometimes designed experiments that, by today’s standards, could be seen as unethical and immoral. One well-known example of this was the Stanford Prison Experiment.

This experiment had to be called off because the students assigned to act like guards began viciously abusing the students assigned to act like prisoners. It showed that people will do anything to follow orders.

Standing on the highest peak of planet Earth has long driven people to want to take on the challenge of climbing Mt. Everest. However, as the peak becomes more and more popular, it hasn’t gotten any less dangerous. What’s even worse is that more inexperienced climbers are tempting fate. When people die on the trek upward, it is often too dangerous to retrieve the bodies.

A particularly grim portion has been nicknamed Rainbow Valley for all the coats of the souls lost. It serves as a landmark for those continuing the climb.

You’d have to be living under a rock to not know about the People’s Temple Agricultural Project — better known as the Jonestown cult. The leader of the commune encouraged and then forced its members to drink Kool-Aid mixed with a variety of deadly poisons.

It’s where the saying “don’t drink the Kool-Aid” comes from. The resulting carnage saw more than 900 people dead — a large portion of them children.

Shihuangdi, the first emperor of China, decided that he liked the gig so much he wanted to keep it … for all eternity. He tasked his doctors to find the right formula that would let him retain his life for all time. And their punishment for failure?

Death, of course. Luckily for the doctors, they found something they thought would work. Unluckily for the emperor, it was liquid mercury. He eventually died of poisoning.

Think twice before you crack open that next bottle of Jameson whiskey. One of the distiller’s heirs, James Jameson, has a dark past that he never even tried to deny — in spite of his family’s attempts to keep everything as secret as possible. While on a trading trip in Congo, Jameson wanted to see cannibals up close.

A translator who was there said that the heir purchased a child to give to the cannibals — and sketched while everything happened. That makes us lose our appetite.

Maybe you didn’t like being assigned reading dozens of pages for homework. We’re certain you’d like it even less if your textbook was like one of these creepy books. There were certain times in the 1700s and 1800s that were actually bound in human skin.

Is it such a stretch to consider that as a medium considering that there are plenty of leather-bound volumes in circulation today? Of course it is! There are less than 10 of these kinds of books that we know about today.

The most disturbing part about this particular creepy fact of history was that it was relatively recently disproved — in the 1980s! Up until then, doctors believed that babies couldn’t feel pain. Therefore, they wouldn’t anesthetize them during medical procedures.

The babies were given medication to keep them still, but they were awake and aware during the entire operation. We are so glad that doctors have finally figured out that even the youngest among us can feel pain — and are treated as such.

In the 1920s, the element radium was commonly used in paints and watches since it glowed in the dark. However, it took a very long time for people to realize just how dangerous it was to deal with radium on a daily basis.

Since the work was very detailed, the women who worked painting watch faces at a highly coveted job used their mouths to get their brushes as fine as possible. By ingesting so much radium and being around it for so long, they suffered devastating consequences.