6 Harmless Things With Insanely Disturbing Origin Stories

Back in the Edo Period, families found themselves in a bit of a pickle whenever they birthed a child they could not take care of. The solution was often a form of belated family planning which involved killing or selling the babies. Parents then carved kokeshi to represent those children. They put the dolls in shrines in the home, to serve as memorials or grim reminders of what they'd done.

Today, kokeshi are sold as souvenirs, and the meaning of the word is generally forgotten. In fact, "kokeshi" is now more often used as a slang term for vibrator. And now that you know their history, that really is the nicest thing we can say about Miis.

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It all started in 1948, when a retired schoolteacher named Eleanor Abbott contracted the disease and ended up stuck in a polio ward in San Diego. Soon the novelty of watching partly incapacitated children cry all day wore off, and Abbott got bored. So to pass the time and distract the children from their loneliness and pain, she grabbed some crayons and sketched out a straightforward board game she called Candy Land. (Please Let Me Sleep, Come On, I've Got Polio Too was already taken.)

The game became popular among the polio-ridden youngsters, which is always a sure sign that you've got a big hit on your hands. Emboldened by this feedback, Abbott later pitched the game to Milton Bradley, who in a keen business move omitted the "It's for children with polio!" part from the marketing materials.

Candy Land remains a favorite to this day. They might even make a movie out of it, possibly starring every child's favorite actor, Adam Sandler! So if there's an upside to the current anti-vaccination movement, it's that we might get some more classic children's entertainment out of it.

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At first it was cheap entertainment. Dancers would be provided with food, shelter, and medical care as long as they kept dancing, with the most durable couple taking a cash price -- a deal that became very enticing to a lot of people when almost a quarter of America found itself without a job. Suddenly the marathons got intense. People would dance for days, weeks, or even months, sleeping in 15-minute breaks here and there, often eating or bathing while shaking their booties.

As a marathon advanced, contestants began dropping like flies ... sometimes for good. One lady tried to kill herself when she ranked fifth in an event after 19 days of dancing. Another time, a man named Homer Morehouse died from a heart attack after he and his partner danced for 87 hours straight. Sadly, death was against rules, so they were disqualified.

Eventually, cities like Seattle began seeing danceathons as public health hazards and outlawing them. These illegal, deadly events are a far cry from the church basement dance marathons of today. You'd be lucky to die at one of those.

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The first non-European Olympics were supposed to take place in Chicago, but then St. Louis threw a hissy fit, arguing that the event might upstage the upcoming World's Fair. So the location was changed to St. Louis ... but most European players were like "Saint who?" and decided to skip the games. This left the event with a troubling lack of athletes / rock-hard butts. Enter William McGee, the Fair's chair of anthropology and a racist prick who ran a "human zoo" featuring Native Americans and people from places like Congo or the Philippines. His solution: getting these "savages" to compete in a sort of pseudo-Olympics alongside the real games ... and taking the opportunity to conduct a little anthropological experiment.

Of course, by "experiment," he actually meant "messing with people." With significant language and cultural barriers and little time/effort put into the event, the "savages" couldn't learn the rules on time. For instance, many didn't understand the purpose of the gunshots during the quarter-mile race -- which, to be fair, is a weird practice. Others stopped near the end of the race to wait for friends, not grasping the whole "race" part.

The event was a disaster. Very few people attended, and McGee didn't get the data he needed. So he repeated the experiment a few years later, this time obtaining the numbers he wanted, and surprise! It was a flawed, racist conclusion. McGee determined that whites were clearly superior compared to the other races in physicality. Welp, you heard the expert. Please return all those medals, Mr. Bolt.

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The word "cootie" was used by British soldiers to refer to battlefield lice, which ravaged men in the trenches of the Western Front. The lice would suck blood and spread diseases such as trench fever, which causes severe headaches and can lead to heart failure. Because WWI didn't suck enough on its own.

So when did the term start to make the leap from "nightmarish infestation" to "wholesome childhood fun"? It may have been thanks to a series of children's board games of the same name. Still, it didn't really take off in America until servicemen returned from the Pacific after WWII, where they likely picked it up from the Commonwealth soldiers they fought with (the term, not the bugs).

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When the Eiffel Tower made its debut in 1881, America got a bit of tower envy and started looking for something even more impressive to debut at the Chicago World Fair. Ferris accepted the challenge and proposed building a 264-feet, 71-ton rotating wheel that could carry over 2,000 passengers. The Fair's board laughed off the idea as ridiculous, because, well, it was. Still, they generously allowed Ferris to go ahead with his monstrous contraption, as long as he financed the whole thing himself and shouldered the entire responsibility. He took this sweet deal.

The wheel was a huge success, in that no one died while riding it and it raked in a crapload of money. Unfortunately, most of that money went to the Fair, and Ferris' small cut soon evaporated as people sued him for ripping off his own wheel. Turns out he never patented the idea, so others tried to scoop it up for themselves. He ended up bankrupt, was abandoned by his wife, turned into a drunk, and contracted typhoid fever. He died only three years after his invention's debut, at age 37, although his body stayed at the morgue for an extra 15 months as his brother scrounged up enough funds to pay for the funeral debt. Even in death, the dude still couldn't catch a break.

Ferris' ghost got the last laugh on the cursed invention that ruined his life when the original wheel was dynamited into scrap a decade later. If you ever feel strange while riding in one of those things, that's probably him flipping you off from the other side.

Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for bits cut from this article and other stuff no one should see.

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