In Ancient Rome, the punishment for killing one’s father was the death penalty, consisting of being sewn up in a sack along with a viper, a dog, and a cock.
The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1556 in China, killing an estimated 830,000 people.
During WW2, Allied forces sunk 3 ships carrying concentration camp survivors by accident, killing almost 10,000 survivors.
The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 in Texas was the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the U.S., killing between 6,000 and 12,000 people.
Anders Breivik, a Norweigan man convicted of killing 69 children, threatened to go on a hunger strike if his prison cell’s PlayStation 2 wasn’t upgraded to PS3.
The phrase ‘crocodile tears’ refers to a medieval belief that crocodiles shed tears of sadness when killing and consuming their prey.
Tupac Shakur’s godmother was convicted of killing a police officer, escaped prison, and fled to Cuba where she has been living since 1979.
An Egyptian pilot deliberately crashed his plane in 1999 as an act of revenge, killing 217 people on board.
RadiThor, an energy drink sold in the 1920s, claimed it provided energy and cured a host of ailments, including impotence. It was simply radium dissolved in water, slowly killing its customers.
Saddam Hussein told guards he once burned hundreds of his son Uday’s luxury cars as punishment for killing several people at a nightclub.
Years after the death of 15-year-old Nicole van den Hurk in Eindhoven, her stepbrother falsely confessed to killing her to get her body exhumed for DNA testing, thus leading to the arrest and prosecution of her attacker.
Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t arrested for killing JFK. He was actually arrested for fatally shooting a police officer 45 minutes after the death of Kennedy.
In 1986, a Soviet pilot made a bet with his co-pilot that he could land the aeroplane with an instrument-only approach, with no visual contact with the ground. He crashed the plane, killing 70 of the 94 passengers and crew on board.