Great Hanoi Rat Massacre

During the French occupation of Vietnam, the city of Hanoi had a huge rat problem. The colonial French government wanted the rats exterminated from the sewer system, so they set a bounty for each dead rat tail. So began the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902. Thousands of tails were submitted per day by the rat catchers, but the rat problem only grew worse. Investigation found that the hunters were breeding, not hunting, rats for their tails.