It is not possible to know the history of civilization fully. We have always come to know the extracted parts of it. We have compiled a list of dark events that are bizarre and unbelievable. Here are some of the dark historical events not known by many people.

1 Situated during the 1800s in Laem Sing Beach, Thailand, “Khuk Khi Kai,” the prison to punish the rebels of Chanthaburi, made the lives of the prisoners miserable as it had a “porous roof.”  The five-by-five-meter cell consisted of prisoners who used to get a shower of chicken poop for 24 hours a day.

To name the dark events in history “Khuk Khi Kai” surfaces to be one of the most notorious episodes. There is a prison in Thailand named “Khuk Khi Kai,” which means “bird-drop prison.” It is notorious for the kind of never-seen-before punishment the authorities used.

The open roof of the prison was covered with a net on which there was a chicken farm. The prisoners had to undergo an incessant shower of bird poop before they got released.

It is said that a bird pooping on a person or their belongings is a sign of good luck. But the prisoners of Khuk Khi Kai would strongly disagree with this idea. The reason being the notorious prison name can be literally translated to “porous roof.”

Situated in Laem Sing Beach, Thailand, it was built to keep out the rebels of Chanthaburi, who opposed the French occupation. Inside the solid walls, the only window was a netted roof home to hundreds of chickens.

The constant smell of chickens and the never-ending poop-monsoon made that small five-by-five-meter prison a real hell on earth. (source)

2 Kalavryta, a small town in Greek, faced the rage of the Nazi party as the rebels from the city captured 78 soldiers. As a consequence, during WWII on 13th December 1943, the whole town was set on fire by the 117th Jäger Division killing 438 men, thus labeling it as one of the darkest events in history.

The massacre of Kalavryta, one of the dark events in history, is an example of the barbaric holocaust led by Hitler and his Nazi party. Kalavryta was a small Greek rebel town that came under the rage of the German army.

And for that, they were nearly made extinct. Almost all of the men and most of the women were killed. The devastating holocaust that killed millions of people throughout Europe didn’t spare a small town of Greece. The cruelty of the Nazis, their barbarism, can only be imagined from incidents such as this.

It was 1943 when Greek rebels had captured 78 Nazi soldiers triggering the rage of the 117th Jäger Division of the German Army. General Karl von Le Suire ordered the severest revenge on the rebels as those soldiers were executed.

The German army entered Kalavryta on 9 December, and on the 13th, they set the whole town ablaze and killed all the 438 men. The fire killed a large number of women and children as well, leaving the town on the verge of extinction.

Only 13 men survived by getting buried under the dead bodies, and a few children and women survived when one Austrian soldier helped them flee the place. (source)

3 A gas leak in the local school basement triggered by mismanagement in New London in 1937 caused a huge explosion killing 300 children and teachers. Adolf Hitler expressed his grief over this situation by telegram.

The 1937 New London School explosion in Texas is still the third most terrible disaster in Texas history. More than 300 people lost their lives that day with hundreds of injured marking the incident as one of the darkest events in history. Due to the mismanagement of a huge amount of natural gas, the tragedy only reflects the carelessness of the authorities.

Ironically, Adolf Hitler sent his sympathies to the people of New London. The New London School of Texas was the place of a ghastly blast that took place in 1937. Although most of the states were highly affected by the Great Depression, Texas was able to stay afloat due to its recent discovery of oil wells. This was a bliss that soon turned out to be a curse because the oil comes with a huge amount of natural gas.

Ignoring the safety procedures, the area preferred saving money and using less than ideal precautions. Even the school building was built ignoring the original architectural plan.

In such conditions, at a time when more than 500 hundred students and teachers were inside the school premises, a presumed spark from a switchboard caused the massive explosion.

It is said that the roof flew out of the structure and fell back in crushing the walls. It was impossible to determine the exact number of deaths, but the number is not below 300. (source)

4 Two-hundred thirty-five individuals with a majority of school students faced sudden death on 12 January 1888 when an unprecedented Arctic storm hit Montana, North Dakota, and Texas and reduced the temperature about 40 degrees below freezing all of a sudden. Children returning from home and adults working on farms were the majority of the victims.

Almost 235 individuals, including school children, lost their lives to an unprecedented snowstorm that hit the northwestern plains of the United States. It was the winter morning of 12 January 1888,  and the temperature was unusually warm right before the nightmarish blizzard took over.

The Arctic air of the storm brought with it extremely heavy wind and snow and shattered the plains of Montana, North Dakota, and Texas. The temperature abruptly fell about 40 degrees below the freezing point. The sudden fall led to several frostbite cases, severe injuries, and deaths. Most of the victims were reportedly children coming home after school and some adults working on farms.

Seymour Dopp who was part of the school faculty in the Pawnee City of Nebraska managed to save 17 school-goers and kept them warm for the night by burning stocked piles of wood. On the other hand, another school faculty member, Loie Royce, couldn’t help the kids survive. They got lost and were spotted dead the following day. Loie, too, lost her legs to frostbite. (1, 2)

5The Japanese Unit 731 took human experimentation to a new level during World War II where they would cut open a living human prisoner without anesthesia to understand better ways of treating injuries. Other experimentations to be named are rape, forced pregnancy, weapon testing, pressure chamber, etc.

Unit 731 (1935-1945) led by Commander Shiro Ishii was the brainchild of the Japanese Army during World War II. It was a biological and chemical research unit that conducted horrific experiments on war prisoners to create weapons.

The camp base was situated in China with around 3,000 prisoners. Most of these prisoners were Chinese, with some from the Soviets and Mongolia. One of many horrific experiments was the frostbite experiment since cold was a major concern for the soldiers during the war.

At Unit 731, they wanted to understand how much cold they could endure and still survive. Some data suggest that humans were taken outside in extreme temperatures to understand their limitations so the doctors could find the best way to treat frostbites.

Another horrific experiment was vivisection so they could learn to treat injuries and diseases effectively.

Here, a person is deliberately pushed towards disease and then the doctors would open up the body without any anesthesia so they could find the effects of the disease on the body before it starts to decompose. Other horrific experiments were rape, forced pregnancy, weapon testing, and pressure chambers. (1, 2)

6 On 6 December 1917, the SS Imo collided with SS Mont-Blanc and left the latter destroyed after a huge explosion caused due to loaded inflammable substances in the ship. It created a firestorm that incinerated everything within a few miles including 1,782 people and caused more than 9,000 people to be injured.

The Halifax explosion is one of the worst explosions in recorded human history. On 6 December 1917, a Norwegian vessel, SS Imo, collided with the French cargo ship SS Mont-Blanc which was carrying high explosives. The incident took place on the narrows connecting the Bedford Basin near Halifax, Canada. The explosion took the lives of nearly 1,782 people and leftover 9,000 people injured.

The SS Mont-Blanc was loaded with 2,300 tons of wet and dry picric acid, 2,000 tons of TNT, 10 tons of guncotton, and 2,000 tons of benzol. The Mont-Blanc arrived late on 5 December from New York to join a slow convoy gathering at Bedford Basin and then depart for Europe. The SS Imo arrived on 3 December en route from the Netherlands to New York to take relief supplies for Belgium.

On the day of the incident, SS Imo met an oncoming ship on the wrong, western side of the channel while leaving Bedford Basin and entering the narrows. SS Imo took the right corner while SS Mont-Blanc kept sailing on the correct lane. Nearly 20 minutes after the collision, Mont-Blanc exploded creating a huge wave of a firestorm destroying everything within a few miles. (source)