this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023

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116

What are the most unsettling Wikipedia articles you know? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

NSFW 72 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Murder cases, freak accidents or articles triggering just good old existential crisis. Give me your worst.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naegleria_fowleri

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths ranges from creepy to absurd

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_murders good rabbit hole

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Keyes

Reddit had a sub called creepywikipedia for this kind of thing. It shut down for the protest and stayed shut down. Might be worth recreating by someone more inclined than myself, who is very lazy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

After watching the "Kung Fu Kapers" episode of The Goodies, Alex Mitchell, of King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, laughed continuously for 25 minutes and then fell dead on his sofa from heart failure due to what doctors discovered years later, via his granddaughter, was a genetic condition called Long QT syndrome.

Yikesssssssss

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes

I‘m from the EU, but it unsettles me to know about how willing the US government and other interest groups there are to do violence to the workers to keep them in line. Whenever anyone from here brings up "why don‘t they strike for healthcare" etc, I think of this. We got a government and companies which are less willing to straight up shoot us to force the rest back to work. That helped I imagine.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Europe had similar battles in Glasgow, the boat attack in Sweden, etc.

The failure of fascism and threat of communism helped a lot. I.e. in Sweden many aristocrats lost investments in Germany, and there was a bigger push for compromise after the war. Meanwhile the Marshall Plan poured a lot of money into Europe (in return for ousting Communists from government in Italy and France).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Sweden also had Ådalen In short 5 people got killed by the military during a protest, and afterwards we shaped up the country big time, to ensure it never happened again.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dos_Erres_massacre

The details are horrific.

All supported by the USA too.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Guess who trained those Guatemalan commandos? It was a program run by the CIA out of Border Patrol facilities, largely staffed Border Patrol staff since they could speak Spanish.

So now you have refugees fleeing Guatemala's history of intense violence, being abused at the border and turned away by the very same agency that destabilized their country to begin with.

The US has so much fucking blood on its hands and owes so many reparations to the rest of the world for the damage it's done.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Government mind control programs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I always found these Wikipedia articles underwhelming, but listening to the CBC podcast and behind the bastards episodes on the specific victims of the program and how the scientists at McGill intentionally destroyed their brains purely through psychological torture is incredibly heart wrenching.

Also interesting that there's evidence that the Unabomber was a victim of some of the mkultra program.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I agree, the Wikipedia articles on MKUltra definitely have a somewhat conservative (not politically) take.

The Unabomber connection is also interesting. Have you read the book CHAOS by Tom O'Neill? It makes a very good case that Charles Manson and the Family may have also been involved (as subjects) with MKUltra and COINTELPRO.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I came to post exactly that. The proven and acknowledged aspects of MKUltra are frightening, without even getting into the conspiratorial accusations.

The page on the Church Committee is a great starting point for learning more about similar covert projects.

COINTELPRO in particular is very frightening.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Obligatory relevant xkcd

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That second incident is pure Dudes Rock territory - absolutely insane.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Torture and murder of Junki Furuta https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Junko_Furuta

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum_decay

It’s about a hypothetical event in quantum field theory that potentially can erase the entire universe as we know it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Do we know for sure if the fine structure constant is actually constant now? That could stop atoms from existing. iirc

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is always the one I go to to really freak people out. The idea that there's no way you can influence it so you shouldn't actually worry about it takes a while to set it.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin

explosive decompression in 1983 that killed four divers and one dive tender, as well as badly injured another dive tender.

excerpt:
Investigation by forensic pathologists determined that Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the crescent-shaped opening measuring 60 centimetres (24 in) long created by the jammed interior trunk door.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you're even remotely claustrofobic you should probably stay out of this one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutty_Putty_Cave

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The internet historian has a great video on Nutty Putty Cave.

https://youtu.be/nnI_oZKxzl0

[–] kartoffelsaft 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That video is actually about sand cave, not nutty putty. Still worth a watch though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Damn you're totally right, I guess I confused it with the other cave that demands human sacrifice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Jesus that was horrifying...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's definitely one of his better videos!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

And the article couldnt help but squeeze in some anecdotes about some helpful cultish Mormons.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Maybe not unsettling, and not a particular article but an interesting, possibly existential crisis thing is if you click the first link in any wiki artical that is:

not in itallics
Not in parenthesis
And is in the article itself.

And you keep doing that as it takes you through articles it will almost always end up at the philosophy article.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ok, I might need a minute to scroll through my bookmarks

Edit, ok, here we go (this is just from my bookmarks and what feels most "unsettling" to me. I could sit here and link for hours to more things I have "saved" in my head, but I'll leave it at this for now):

List of people who disappeared mysteriously: pre-1910
List of people who disappeared mysteriously: 1910–1990
List of people who disappeared mysteriously: 1990–present
Bonus addition in edit: List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea
Feral child
I have quite a few pages on serial killers, but this is probably more efficient than listing individuals: List of serial killers by number of victims
A handful of individual cases though:
Murder of Junko Furuta
Murder of Sylvia Likens
Murder of James Bulger
Murder of Shanda Sharer
Hart family murders
On the larger scale:
List of genocides
List of massacres
Blackbirding
Zong massacre
Home Children
starlight tours
On the existential front:
List of impact craters on Earth
Observable universe and Cosmological horizon which make you realise that the endless and abundant expanse of space we see is only a tiny little portion of the actual universe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The people who dissapeared between 1910 and 1970 however arent very interesting

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, I just noticed that too, not really sure what happened there lol
Looking at it now the post 1970 one isn't right at all, will edit op

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Effects of climate change

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Stomach turning and NSFL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Parker_Ray

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The entry for the Daytlov Pass Incident comes to mind.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Evening, Nexpo!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Imagine all of exitence ceases to exist and humans decide to refer to it as the "Big Slurp"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Shadow_Etched_in_Stone
Human Shadow Etched in Stone (人影の石, hitokage no ishi)[2] is an exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It is thought to be the residue of a person who was sitting at the entrance of Hiroshima Branch of Sumitomo Bank when the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima. It is also known as Human Shadow of Death[1] or simply the Blast Shadow.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident

I know this isn't the most disturbing Wiki article out there, but this is the creepiest one I know of that I can stomach. Also, it's an interesting case, despite its morbid and eerie nature.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was an avalanche. Oddly enough, they figured that out based on how the snow was generated in Frozen.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

CreepyWikipedia specialized in collating unsettling Wiki entries, but they are one of the few indefinite participants in the blackout.

I made a Lemmy alternate over here: [email protected].

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected].

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Human experimentation with Syphilis without their knowledge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study?wprov=sfti1

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy

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