While enjoying our life we often forget what a crazy, scary and sometimes downright horrifying world we are living in. There are good things happening every day all over the world, yet we cannot dismiss the fact that the bad ones are not too behind. It’s difficult to keep track of every single thing so we have brought forward some really strange and horrifying facts you never knew and would probably never wish to know about.

1 At any time one of the proteins in our brain can misfold and cause prion disease, silently spreading across a person’s brain for years without causing any symptoms. Prions are transmissible and so difficult to destroy that after autopsy all equipment must be destroyed to avoid transmitted to someone else.

Our brain contains a protein called “PrP”. Prion disease is caused when the PrP protein folds up in the wrong way becoming a prion. Then it causes the other PrP molecules to do the same and initiates a chain reaction. Prion’s Disease can be acquired from another infected person or animal or it can be genetic. In most cases, however, it is spontaneous. A PrP molecule may suddenly misfold by chance. It will then keep spreading all over the brain for years. Prion Disease affects the nervous system in humans and animals causing changes in memory, personality, behavior, dementia, and abnormal movements.

The most horrible quality of Prion Disease is that it is extremely difficult to destroy. That’s because Prion Disease is resistant to disinfectants, ionizing radiation, ultraviolet radiation, and formalin. However, it can be destroyed through incineration providing the incinerator can maintain a temperature of 900-degrees F for four hours.(1,2,3)

2 Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in Sudan and is the official death penalty for armed robbery. 

Under Sharia Law, capital punishment is legal in Sudan.

Article 27 of the Sudanese Criminal Act of 1991 states, “…execution is either by hanging or stoning, or in the same manner as the commitment of murder by the perpetrator, and may be prescribed as a hudud punishment, or in retribution or approximation, and may be with crucifixion.”

Crucifixion is the death punishment for armed robbery and is intended to draw attention to the crime and its punishment.(1,2)

3 Male sea Otters often rape and drown baby seals, sometimes even guarding and copulating with the corpse for up to a week.

The cute and adorable sea otters have a dark, sinister side too. Male sea otters sometimes kidnap juvenile harbor seals and then rape them. While raping they hold the head of the baby seal underwater for as long as an hour. Being held underwater for a long time ultimately kills the pups. When the pup dies, the otter usually lets it go, but sometimes they may hang on to the dead pup and rape the dead corpse for up to a week.(1, 2)

4  The word “excruciating” literally means “out of the cross” and was invented because in those times there was no word in the English language which could describe the intense pain caused during a crucifixion.

The word “crucifixion” is based on the Latin verb “cruciere” which means “to crucify”, and the strongest adjective for pain, “excruciating”, means “out of the cross”. It was invented to describe the slow, agonizing torture and extreme pain suffered by the crucified person. Crucifixion is one of the cruelest forms of execution. The crucified individual not only dies from tremendous blood loss, but also from extreme agony due to crushed nerves, dislocated elbows and shoulders, exhaustion, and asphyxiation.(1,2)

5 During the French revolution, some of the guillotined prisoners were skinned and their skin used as a bookbinding. This process is known as “anthropodermic bibliopegy”, and it had been a technique practiced for a long time. Today there exists eighteen books which are surviving example of this macabre practice.

Binding books in human or animal skin is a process that is as old as human history. The human skin used to bind books are usually of defeated enemies or prisoners such as the skin of the people guillotined in the French Revolution. One of the oldest books bound in human skin is Relation des Mouvemens de la Ville de Messine, printed in 1676. It is in the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA. It contains a note which warns, “The binding is human skin.” The book is from the library of Armand Jerome Bignon (1711-1772), librarian of Louis XV’. As of September 2016, there are eighteen such books whose bindings have been proved to be of human skin.(1,2)