4 Scary Moments In History That Were Worse Than You Realized

First the test subjects were tasked with writing an essay that would reveal their personal beliefs -- the values and tenets they held most dear. Students were then supposed to debate their beliefs with a fellow undergraduate. But the "debate" consisted of being covered in electrodes, then sitting in a bright room facing a one-way mirror, while a law student who had been specifically prepped to verbally abuse the subjects tore their ideas and values apart. Then, after the participants had been ridiculed and humiliated to the verge of extreme anger, they were called back to watch the recordings of the procedures. They had their very world torn apart, then had to sit down and watch how stupid they really were on TV. It'd be like signing up for a charity run, then finding out you'd been pressed onto Jersey Shore.

The experiments were conducted between 1959 and 1962, and headed by Professor Henry A. Murray, who was already somewhat (in)famous for his work with the OSS and the CIA. They took place in a mansion/laboratory known as the Annex, because clearly, no one here was even remotely interested in pretending they weren't supervillains. Our first piece of evidence: The researchers gave all their subjects bizarre code names. Ted's was, ironically, "Lawful."

The fact that Kaczynski first displayed his signature hostility toward technology in 1962, right when the Murray study ended, is clearly a coincidence. Also coincidence: The "un" part in "Unabomber" is because he preferred targets associated with universities.

Dubbed "Project 100,000," McNamara's plan was sold to the public as a way for impoverished youth to gain education and work their way out of poverty. In reality, they threw all previous fitness and mental regulations to the wind and started targeting people who had previously been rejected as unfit to serve. The recruiters targeted Southern backwoods and urban ghettos (a whopping 41 percent of the recruits were black, as opposed to the 12 percent of the troops as a whole), and brought in at least one kid with an IQ of 62.

Unsurprisingly, these recruits weren't exactly Captain America material. "The Moron Corps," as Project 100,000 troops were charmingly nicknamed, were hauled off to enter combat in disproportionate numbers. The exact number of their dead is hard to come by, but we're hazarding a guess that when compared to the rest of the troops, the word "disproportionate" is a good fit there, too.

Even more damning is that McNamara created the program a few months after he privately admitted that the war was unwinnable. But hey, at least "Project 100,000" is something of a misnomer. In reality, the U.S. didn't send anywhere close to a hundred thousand woefully unfit soldiers to serve as cannon fodder in Vietnam ...

... They actually sent 354,000.

But that's because it was a different time, right? Not so much. The victims of the 2011 Fukushima disaster may lack the keloid scars that many A-bomb survivors bear, and officially, they're treated fine -- maybe even as heroes. But scratch the surface, and everything indicates that they get the same hibakusha treatment as their WWII counterparts in day-to-day life.

So the lesson here is, uh ... don't ... don't have bad things happen to you?

Try to do that.

Carolyn has a Twitter and just started Instagram, but honestly isn't trying very hard.

It's still probably worth studying what the Unabomber was talking about -- here's a helpful book on the subject.

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more check out 6 Disasters With Details So Awful, History Left Them Out and The Most Awful Things You Know About History (Are WAY Worse).

Also follow us on Facebook. You deserve the very best.