The history of bananas. -u/aus_in_usa

Got some time to kill? If so, there is nothing quite like researching some weird stuff. But what if you want some really insane things that you can spend an entire week researching? Here are just a few of our favorites!

Sleep paralysis audio / visual hallucinations across cultures throughout history. It’s disturbing. -u/Trek1973

Cryptozoology. Its interesting to say the least but there are so many things that make you question what is out there in the world that we haven’t discovered yet. When I first got into it I thought cryptids were more like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster but there are hundreds or even thousands of other weird and unusual sightings of creatures many haven’t even heard of. -u/odagled86

Caving and Cave Diving accidents. Accidentally watched one in YouTube, then went down the rabbit hole. This led to some more parallel topics of horrible fates, bad deaths etc. After few days, started getting disturbed sleep as this became my routine of watching before the sleep time. With self restraint, finally I got out of it. -u/insomniac_observer

This should give you an hour or two. List of unusual deaths.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths -u/Krabbi

When I worked at a call Centre we often had quiet times and the internet blocked most things unusual wiki articles kept me entertained for quite some time though, it’s full of random strange things. -u/slimjoel14

Fire disasters. And then never feel safe in an indoor crowded space ever again.There's actually video on YouTube of the Great White disaster and it's utterly horrifying how incredibly quickly it happens and seeing the people literally stuck in the doorway unable to get out as they burn to death. As someone who still goes to a lot of shows at small packed music venues exactly like that one (and other totally packed bars and clubs), I'm always constantly looking for exits to find the nearest escape path and it always freaks me out anytime there's any fire in any indoor space (candles/sparklers/pyrotechnics/etc). -u/SquareVehicle

Feral children.-u/PreviousTea9210

Mass hysteria. There are different kinds that have affected different cultures in different ways. Multiple times throughout history, groups of people have uncontrollably danced themselves to deaths. In other parts of the world, men can become stricken with the belief that their penis is receding into their bodies; it was often believed the only way to prevent this from happening overnight was for family members to hold their members, etc. -u/tullyinturtleterror

Money laundering and how laundered money flows around the world. Most info is public from gov agencies like the CIA and State Department. -u/TyHuffman

The times where we have gotten close to extinction. There was a false report from a Russian radar thingy and they thought that nukes were coming to them from America, if it wasn’t for one person Nuclear Armageddon would’ve happened because of a software glitch (Another good one is how some horrible stuff like cannibalism is legal in certain scenarios). -u/Bagel_RR

Mt. Everest is a pretty f*cked up subject. -u/purplepuddlenut

Post-WWII industries. Take fertilizer, lawn care, and home gardening for example.A very specific push to get chemical fertilizers in every home, monoculture lawns that require a lot more input, and a “clean” lawn that has left us where we are now.Very silly that we strayed away from what we had previously… -u/CheeseChickenTable

Prion diseases. Every single one is weird and dark. It includes cannibalism and family curses. And deers walking on two legs. And industrial farming + forced cow cannibalism. -u/gnostic-sicko

The wiki for the timeline for far future events. If you want to feel insignificant and learn some sh*t, check this out.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future -u/Sylvair

The town of Skidmore, Missouri in the US.It's sort of a small topic, but it leads in so many different directions. It's most famous for the murder of the town bully (that's a mild name for him; he was horrible) in the middle of the day, on the main street, with a bunch of witnesses, but no one has ever been arrested. But there's also the later case of a woman who was murdered and her unborn baby stolen and even later a teenager (who was related to the murdered woman) just disappeared and is thought to have been taken by a serial killer.All this in a town of fewer than 200 people. I'm not superstitious, but I also wouldn't move there.There is a documentary on Sundance about the bully, but the best introduction is a book called In Broad Daylight. From there, you just get farther and farther down tangential paths, trying to figure out wtf happened. Less info on the two later cases, but still an internet black hole you can fall into for days. -u/secondhandbanshee

The history of lobotomies and cannibalism. I have spent more time researching these topics than the time taken to write a 90-page essay. Super fascinating if you don't get grossed out. -u/Sure_Pangolin_9421

The domino effect that led up to World War One and then later World War Two. It’s interesting to learn about but it’s just a clusterf*ck of easily preventable situations. -u/Jazzlike-Dog-2999

Shipwrecks. Been absolutely obsessed with them the past few days, there’s so much to discover and learn about and so much corruption as well as just interesting circumstances that these huge machines go down in.And adding to that, technical diving accidents. Especially in shipwrecks. You can dive down to the sunken Andrea Doria (that wrecked because another enormous ship collided sideways into it!) ship and collect first-class dinnerware as plunder, but people have died, seemingly becoming lost in the complete darkness of the halls inside, or user error in ANY capacity, such as not having the correct oxygen tank levels leading to hallucinations and false confidence that makes you drown. -u/uglysquire

Rabies. You don't quite realize how horrifying it is. -u/Arthillidan

Binge-watching "Mayday" (the series about plane crashes) and looking up each incident on Google/Wiki afterward. -u/buckyhermit

Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade balloon accidents. -u/ashrainbowdash

People who go missing. This one I'm particularly fascinated with for some reason. Maybe it's because I like this YouTuber and how he formats his videos, but I've watched this video about a missing Canadian girl three times:https://youtu.be/AzLqFYyY0bMPersonally, I think she was groomed by a dude she met online and that guy kidnapped her and is holding her captive, like the Josef guy from Austria years back. -u/Karnezar

Art forgery and fakes. I’ve been watching a BBC series called Fake or Fortune where people try to get their art validated as being by an old master (They’ve had Renoir, Monet, etc). The program goes into how both modern-day and historic forgers use techniques to make a picture or sculpture look original.It sometimes also shows how corrupt the art validation world can be, with one episode showing overwhelming evidence that a picture was genuine, but the organization responsible for cataloging the original works of the artist refuses to acknowledge it.Interestingly the head of that institute is now under investigation in France for hoarding €1bn worth of “missing” artworks. -u/mbfos

Ask A Mortician on Youtube.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi5iiEyLwSLvlqnMi02u5gQCaitlin Doughty tells fascinating stories of unusual deaths, cannibalism, historic shipwrecks/accidents, botched cremations, etc. She also has three books out on death questions and the funeral business that I've read more than once.-u/WitchInYourGarden