Unsettling Truths: 45 Disturbing Facts You Need to Know

If Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got stuck on the moon, the official policy was to cut communication and let them suffocate in silence. Nixon even had a speech prepared in case this happened.

2. The Scold’s bridle was basically a torture mask that some women were made to wear that prevented them from talking. The device was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclosed the head. A bridle-bit (or curb-plate), about 2 inches long and 1 inch broad, projected into the mouth and pressed down on top of the tongue. It was used as a punishment on women who were considered troublesome, gossipy or rude in 16th and 17th century Britain.

3. In medieval times, diabetes was known as the honey sickness and to test for it a physician would have to taste your urine.

4. Actor Christopher Mintz-Plasse was only 17 when he filmed Superbad so his mother was required to be on set for his sex scene.

5. Your sweat doesn’t smell. Body odor comes from bacteria living on your body essentially excreting smelly byproducts as after they feast on your secretions.

Charles Domery was a Polish soldier of normal build who had an unusually large appetite. He once got so hungry that he surrendered to the French for food. He ate 174 cats in one year and often ate 4-5 pounds of grass a day, and after a fellow sailor’s leg was severed, he began to eat it. In prison, he was given 10x the rations, but he still ate rats, cats, and candles. In one experiment, over the course of a day, he ate 16 pounds (7.3 kg) of raw cow's udder, raw beef and tallow candles and four bottles of porter, all of which he ate and drank without defecating, urinating, or vomiting.

7. A lion's tongue is so rough that they can skin your hand with a few licks. On a related note, in medieval times a form of torture involved a goat licking the sole of your feet. Their tongue is rough enough that it can slowly lick off your skin and salt was used to encourage the goat to lick, only to make the pain worse.

8. Hawk moths vibrate their genitals to jam a bat’s sonar, thus preventing bats from locating them.

9. Thelazia is a parasitic worm that can infect the eye tissues of humans and is spread by a fly that feeds on tears.

10. Shortly before his head was placed on the guillotine, serial killer Peter Kürten turned to the psychiatrist and asked the question: “Tell me... after my head is chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.”

The USS Indianapolis was sunk 4 days after delivering the enriched uranium for “Little Boy”, the first nuclear weapon used in combat. In addition to being the largest ever loss of life for the US Navy at sea, the sinking resulted in the most shark attacks on humans in history. Over four days, hundreds of men were attacked by sharks in the middle of the Philippine Sea before miraculously, they were accidentally found by a friendly bomber plane. Of the 1,195 crewmen aboard, only 316 survived and were rescued.

12. A sea cucumber will disembowel itself when it feels threatened. It will projectile vomit its digestive system to scare off a predator. This ejecta is a delicacy in Japan known as konowata. They can regrow it back within a few days.

13. When angler fish reproduce, the male bites and latches on to the female. The male then slowly dissolves until he is eventually just a pair of testicles stuck to her side pumping her full of sperm.

14. A woodpecker's tongue wraps all the way around its skull, to provide musculoskeletal support while pecking.

15. Meerkats are adorable creatures. They even starred in a show called Meerkat Manor on Animal Planet. But they are, by far, the most murderous species of any animal, killing more of their own species with greater frequency than any other animal, with almost 20% of meerkats being killed by one of their own. The average among all mammals is just 0.3%.

Parents of Sophie Turner, who played Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, are separated. The first time her Dad ever visited her on set was the day they shot the Ramsay Bolton rape scene. The young actress had, meanwhile, been assured by the director that the scene would be “choreographed like a ballet” and would be “beautiful.”

17. Eyelash mites are parasites that live on the face and in the hair follicles of humans. Studies have shown that roughly a third of children and young adults, half of the adults, and two-thirds of elderly people were proven to be hosts of the Demodex mites. They feed on dead skin cells, but they apparently have also started taking a liking to mascara. Also, they don't have an anus. They still need to poo, so it's been said that they 'explode' with waste at the end of their lives and all the built-up waste degrades on your face.

18. There’s a type of tumor called the “Teratoma Tumor”. These kinds of tumors can literally grow human parts, including teeth, eyes, hair, organs, feet, etc. In 2017, doctors in Japan discovered a tiny brain and skull inside of a 16-year-old girl's ovarian tumor while removing it.

19. About 30% of the solid mass of feces in humans is dead bacteria.

20. To know when to mate, a male giraffe will continuously headbutt the female in the bladder until she urinates. The male then tastes the pee to determine whether the female is ovulating.

Butterflies engage in a behavior called “mud puddling” where they seek out puddles of moisture to drink for nutrients. If a puddle of blood is the closest thing, they will “puddle” in it and proceed to drink the blood for its nutrients.

22. Chimpanzees just flat out love to eat monkeys. Generally, their hunting parties consist of 10 or more male chimpanzees and they are known to go binge hunting for weeks at a time. They love it so much they’ve feasted on certain breeds to local extinction.

23. Brain Aneurysms have little to no warning (headache) and are only diagnosable by CT Scan. Roughly 1 in 50 Americans have an unruptured brain aneurysm right now that could rupture at any time.

24. Offspring of some worm-like amphibians called caecilians allow their young to eat their flesh. The mothers of Boulengerula taitanus create a nutrient-rich fatty outer layer of skin after laying their eggs. When their offspring hatch, the babies scrape this layer off with specialized teeth.

25. Cyanide tastes like almonds. Actually, it’s the other way around. Almonds taste like cyanide, to an extent at least. Almonds contain so much of it that it gives them their typical taste and aroma. But don't worry. You would have to eat 5 kilograms at once to actually have any consequences. Also, the reason we know what cyanide tastes like is because an Indian man named MP Prasad who committed suicide left a hastily scrawled note describing the taste. “Doctors, potassium cyanide. I have tasted it. It burns the tongue and tastes acrid,” he wrote, solving a long unanswered question.