20 Morbid Facts You Won't Soon Forget

1.

In 2016, a 26-year-man from the U.K. named Ben Innes was on an EgyptAir flight to Cairo, when it was hijacked by a man in an explosive vest named Seif Eldin Mustafa. Mustafa demanded the pilot land the plane in Cyprus instead of Egypt, to which the pilot obliged. Upon arriving in Cyprus, Seif Eldin released 52 of the 55 passengers, but kept three in addition to four of the plane's crew. Ben Innes was among the remaining Seven. Innes then decided to walk up to Mustafa and ask for a selfie, which the bewildered hijacker allowed. Thankfully, the bomb turned out to be fake, and Seif Eldin was arrested.

2.

When questioned why he took the photo, Innes explained that he was attempting to remain optimistic, and that if the bomb were real there was nothing to lose anyway.

3.

In July 2015, 16-year-old Prakash Bilhore lost his life in a motorcycle accident after hitting a pothole. To cope with his grief, Prakash's heartbroken father, Dadarao, decided to take action regarding Mumbai's notoriously poor roads. Using sand and gravel collected from building sites, Dadarao filled in almost 600 potholes across Mumbai in the years following his son’s passing. When asked why he does this, Dadarao said, “Prakash’s sudden departure left a huge void in our lives. I do this work to remember and honor him.”

4.

In 2008, Brazilian catholic priest Adelir Antônio de Carli tied himself to thousands of helium-balloons in order to raise money. Unfortunately, he never made it back down.

5.

In 2015, the mummified remains of a monk were found inside a nearly 1,000-year old Chinese statue of a Buddha. The mummy inside the gold-painted papier-mâché statue is believed to be that of Liuquan, a Buddhist master of the Chinese Meditation School who died around the year 1100, researchers said.

6.

In 2017, Daryll Rowe was convicted of deliberately infecting five men with HIV. He was eventually sentenced to life, with a minimum of 12 years.

7.

An advertisement sign for the drug Atabrine, an anti-malaria drug, In Papua New Guinea, 1942.

8.

Photo of Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, taken right before the race where he would perish in a fiery crash in Italy, 1994.

9.

1997 photo of 14-month old Thai infant, Chanayuth Nim-anong, being rescued from the crash site of Vietnam Airlines Flight 815 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on September 3rd. Of the 66 people onboard the aircraft, the infant was the only survivor.

10.

In January 2012, a man named Dante Autullo accidentally shot a 3.5-inch nail directly into his brain while working in his garage, unaware that he had just done so. The nail wasn't surgically removed until 36 hours later when an X-ray scan of his head stunned about a dozen extremely surprised doctors.

11.

During the aftermath of 9/11, search and rescue dogs found so few survivors that it caused them great stress because they believed they had failed. Handlers and rescue workers had to regularly hide in the rubble in order to give the rescue dogs a successful find, and keep their spirits up.

12.

In 2003, Juan Catalan spent nearly 6 months in jail for a homicide he didn’t commit, until his lawyer found unused footage from HBO's TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm. The footage proved that Catalan had been at a Dodger's game with his 6-year-old daughter at the time of the crime. The show just happened to be filming in his section that same day.

13.

In 2019, 35-year-old Mikhail Prokhorov leaped from an Mi-8 helicopter during a routine training jump. However both of his parachutes failed to open, and he plunged 2,600 feet to his demise.

14.

On April 29, 2013, National Airlines Cargo Flight 102 made a refueling stop at Bagram airfield in Afghanistan. Tragically, shortly after takeoff the plane crashed, resulting in the loss of all seven occupants.

15.

In 2017, this Rohingya Muslim man carried his immobile parents for nearly 100 miles to escape Burma's death squads. It took him seven days but he eventually reached Bangladesh.

16.

In July 2022, a 24-year-old woman was admitted to the Van Training and Research Hospital in Van province, Turkey, with a severe stomach ache. After undergoing an x-ray doctors were blown away when they saw a vast array of non-edible objects in her stomach. She was rushed into surgery, where doctors found a large metal needle, along with 158 other metal objects. The extracted items included a pocket knife, tweezers, screws, nails, a fruit knife, and even more needles. It became apparent that the young woman had a history of psychological issues including pica disorder, which led her to compulsively ingest foreign objects. Thankfully, the woman didn’t suffer any life threatening injuries, and survived.

17.

Anne Frank, photographed with her sister Margot at the beach in Zandvoort, Netherlands, in 1940. Anne was in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by February or March of 1945. Had she made it a few more weeks, she likely would have been saved by British troops who liberated the camp on 15 April 1945.

18.

Photo of starving children lined up for food during the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961. The consensus is that around 30 million people didn’t make it through the famine. The famine was caused by communist policies during the failed Great Leap Forward economic campaign and natural disasters.

19.

The Kavre District in Central Nepal is infamously known as a 'kidney valley,’ because of the sheer number of people who have sold a kidney. Over the last two decades, dozens of men from villages there have either voluntarily gone to India to sell their kidneys, or were forced into it.

20.

In 2007, archaeologists unearthed the Lovers of Valdaro, a pair of 6,000-year-old skeletons found in a lover’s embrace, face to face with their limbs entwined. Discovered in a Neolithic tomb near Mantua, Italy, there were no signs of injury.