Some of the most mind-blowing experiments in history weren’t, technically speaking, successful—many either failed to achieve what they intended, or achieved something far stranger than the experimenter could have ever imagined. Below are some of the weirdest, creepiest, and most bizarre experiments in recorded (and in some cases, unrecorded) history.
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The CIA Created The Unabomber
The Unabomber, also known as Ted Kaczynski, is a man currently serving a life sentence in prison for killing three people and injuring 23 others with a series of bombings. What many people don’t know is that before his attacks, Kaczynski was mainly recognized for his incredible genius
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As a child, Kaczynski skipped both sixth and 11th grade, and began studying as an undergraduate at Harvard when he was only 16. He was the subject of much bullying when he was younger due to his lack of social skills, but many of his colleagues realized his mathematical intelligence unlike anything they’d ever seen. As an undergraduate, Kaczynski took part in a psychologically damaging experiment done by the CIA as part of the behavioral engineering project MKUltra. The study was run by Dr. Henry Murray, who had each of his 22 subjects write an essay detailing their dreams and aspirations. The students were then taken to a room where electrodes were attached to them to monitor their vitals as they were subjected to extremely personal, stressful, and brutal critiques about the essays they had written.
Following the psychological attacks, the participants were forced to watch the videos of themselves being verbally and psychologically assaulted multiple times. Kaczynski is claimed to have had the worst physiological reaction to being interrogated. These experiments, paired with his lack of social skills and memories of being bullied as a child, caused Kaczynski to suffer from horrible nightmares that eventually drove him to move into isolation outside Lincoln, Montana.
In Lincoln, Kaczynski built his own cabin and began living simply, without electricity or running water. He set out to become self-sufficient and create primitive technologies by hand. He found his work was limited by the development and industry that was destroying the environment around him. After he found his favorite spot in the wilderness destroyed by industrialization, Kaczynski had reached his breaking point.
Ted began to believe that technology was evil and so were those promoting it. Many believe Kaczynski’s participation in the Harvard study is what later influenced him to send letter bombs to multiple establishments, including airports and universities, in an attempt to get the public’s attention. Kaczynski became a big target for the FBI after his 18-year reign of terror over those whom he believed were promoting anti-human technology that was destroying the world. In 1995, Kaczynski demanded that newspapers publish his 50-page manifesto called Industrial Society and Its Future. He eventually became known as the Unabomber, killing three people and causing injuries to 23 more during his 18 years of mental breakdown.
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LSD French Hysteria
The town of Pont-Saint Esprit in France isn’t known for much—aside from an odd and widespread outbreak of psychosis on August 15, 1951. Many believe this outbreak (involving over 500 people) to be the result of an experiment carried out by the CIA’s own program, MKUltra.
Supposedly, a report issued in 1949 had been found regarding the United States’ experimentation with the newly discovered drug, LSD. These mass hallucinations ranged from people believing they were being eaten by snakes to people jumping out of windows because they thought they were airplanes. At the time, the US believed it could harness the power of LSD to cause mass hallucinations in their enemies, damaging their ability to respond to attacks.
The hysteria ended with the death of five people and the suicide of at least two others, with no apparent explanation. The hallucination was deemed to be widespread ergot poison by the Sandoz Chemical Company near Pont-Saint Esprit. It is believed, however that the chemical company had been working alongside the CIA to produce mass amounts of LSD for their experimentation with it.
Regardless of the cause, the massive hallucinogenic outbreak that occurred in this little French town is mired in unanswered questions.
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Beauty And Brains
Hedy Lamarr is most known for her beauty on the silver screen as an actress during the golden age of MGM, but few know that her immense beauty was matched by her equally immense brains.
In the midst of her acting career in the 1940s, Lamarr teamed up with George Antheil with the idea to create a secret communication system. Lamarr was a talented mathematician and, with the help of Antheil, she was able to create and patent an early version of frequency hopping using piano players. She hoped her invention could be used by the military to make radio-guided torpedoes less detectable and harder to jam. Despite securing a patent and pitching the idea to the US Navy, few men of the day took Lamarr or her ingenious idea seriously because of her reputation as an actress.
The idea of frequency hopping that she had developed using a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies was finally picked up by the Navy in 1962. By then, the patent had expired along with Lamarr’s hope for getting any recognition. Today, Lamarr’s invention is widely used as a basis for things such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi—but she received little credit for her idea until 1997.
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Suicide Song
What if there was a song so depressing, it could cause you to commit suicide? According to many believers, there is: Gloomy Sunday was composed by Rezso Seress in 1933. Laszlo Javor wrote its lyrics and it was first recorded by Pal Kalmar in 1935.
While it was being written, the United States was in the grip of the Great Depression with a fascist government coming to power in Seress’ native country of Hungary. His lyrics reflect his loss of faith in man and the injustices that were being committed. The song is an unusually sad prayer to God to have mercy on the bad people in the world, which is why Seress had a difficult time finding someone willing to publish it. Laszlo Javor, who had just broken up with his fiancée, later published the song with music and lyrics. Nineteen suicides in Hungary and the United States have been linked to this song in some way or another, including Seress’ own failed attempt to throw himself out a window (though he later succeeded in choking himself with a wire in the hospital).
The creepily melancholy song had been banned from Hungarian (and American) radio stations for worsening the wartime morale. The links between the deaths include suicides right after listening to the song, references to it in suicide notes, corpses holding the sheet music, or having it played on their gramophones.
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Haber’s Rule
Most know Fritz Haber for his Nobel Prize-winning development of synthesized ammonia for fertilizers and explosives, but few know about his evil work for Germany during World War I. Many scientists of the day saw World War I as not only a war between countries, but between the chemists that represented them when it came to developing new and deadly techniques for chemical warfare. Also known as the “father of chemical warfare,” Haber played a major role in developing chemical weapons. Haber was able to develop uses for deadly chlorine gas that, because of its density, would settle in the enemies’ trenches, choking and burning them to death. He also discovered that long exposure to low concentrations of deadly gases had the same effects as short periods with high exposure. He was able to calculate the relationship between exposure and time, calling the equation “The Haber Rule.”
Haber was proud to serve for Germany and was even promoted to captain by the Kaiser for his work in chemical warfare. Haber believed gas warfare was humane, claiming that death is death regardless of the means by which it was caused. But his wife, Clara Immerwahr (the first female chemist to ever achieve a PhD at the University of Breslau), strongly opposed his involvement in gas warfare. She eventually committed suicide after witnessing the horrid effects the chlorine gas had at the Battle of Ypres.
As World War II began, the Nazis approached Haber, a Jew, offering him funding to continue his chemical weaponry research. Haber declined and fled to Cambridge, England with his assistant. While he was there, it was said that Ernest Rutherford refused to shake Haber’s hand for what he had done in the field of chemical warfare. During the 1920s, researchers at Haber’s institutes continued developing several forms of deadly chemical warfare including the cyanide formula Zyklon A, which was later developed into Zyklon B for gas chambers at Nazi concentration camps.
Re: Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history
In this case…there isn’t a direct link to the experiment being the cause…as there were 22 subjects…
Did they all turn out this way ? No .
The experiment might have been the beginning , but over the course of years , many other factors might have aggravated the situation.
Thanks for sharing.
It was an interesting read.
Re: Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history
In some cases , humans are worse than animals.
Did the people know they were being experimented on ?
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This one isn’t bizarre .
Chemists are developing such chemicals all over the world.
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I’m curious now.
I wanna listen to it :hmmm:
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I don't thing the song was the reason.Those people must have contemplated suicide due to whatever they were going through in life.
Anything could trigger the final step , in their case , it became the song.
The lyrics of the suicide song :
[QUOTE]
Songwriters: SERESS, REZSO/JAVOR, LASZLO/LEWIS, SAMUEL M.
Sunday is gloomy,
My hours are slumberless
Dearest the shadows
I live with are numberless
Little white flowers
Will never awaken you
Not where the black coach of
Sorrow has taken you
Angels have no thought
Of ever returning you
Would they be angry
If I thought of joining you?
Gloomy Sunday
Gloomy is Sunday,
With shadows I spend it all
My heart and I
Have decided to end it all
Soon there'll be candles
And prayers that are said I know
Let them not weep
Let them know that I'm glad to go
Death is no dream
For in death I'm caressin' you
With the last breath of my soul
I'll be blessin' you
Gloomy Sunday
Dreaming, I was only dreaming
I wake and I find you asleep
In the deep of my heart, dear
Darling I hope
That my dream never haunted you
My heart is tellin' you
How much I wanted you
Gloomy Sunday
[/QUOTE]
Re: Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history
Read this too Project MKUltra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Re: Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history
In some cases , humans are worse than animals. Did the people know they were being experimented on ?
I think so they knew
Re: Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history
I don't thing the song was the reason.Those people must have contemplated suicide due to whatever they were going through in life. Anything could trigger the final step , in their case , it became the song.
The lyrics of the suicide song :
yes I read the song also , no one knows I think wht made them commit suicide but I read this k song was blamed
Re: Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history
nice thread :k:
kafi technical stuff hai, tabhi LP tashreef lai hai:hmmm:
Re: Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history
This one isn't bizarre . Chemists are developing such chemicals all over the world.
I think at tht time it might be considered bizzare bc of its adverse effect
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Missing Cosmonauts
Most think that Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, but is that true? As the space race boomed between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, both countries were going to great lengths to be the first to cross that great boundary. Many of the attempts made by both the United States and Soviet Union ended in failure, and because of this, most of those stories have been destroyed. It’s believed that prior to Gagarin’s successful attempt, two or more cosmonauts had been sent into space—never to return.
In order to avoid the bad publicity, most information on any “lost” cosmonauts has been covered up. However, The Torre Bert listening station in Italy has captured several recordings of the almost mythical figures. The first was of a very frightened and confused woman talking about her craft failing upon re-entry—She is believed to be saying “Isn’t this dangerous? Talk to me! Our transmission begins now. I feel hot. I can see a flame. Am I going to crash? Yes. I feel hot, I will re-enter–” and then the transmission cuts out. (Some believe this to be a hoax because radio signals cannot be transmitted during re-entry). Another recording picked up sounds of heavy breathing and other noises that lead some to believe Sputnik 7 was a manned flight and that the pilot, Gennady Mikhailov, died of heart failure during orbit.
The Torre Bert heard three more signals, one from a couple aboard Lunik affirming that “Everything is satisfactory, we are orbiting the Earth” at regular intervals until an abrupt shift to garbled and frantic communication on February 24th, a description of something very large outside their ship, and then silence. The next transmission came in as an SOS signal that seemed to be fading as the cosmonaut drifted farther and farther from Earth. The final transmission received is believed to be from Alexey Belokonev frantically radioing “conditions growing worse—why don’t you answer? We are going slower. The world will never know about us.”
Whether or not the Soviets ever covered up a lost astronaut, it was certainly within their capabilities. For proof, look no further than the case of Grigori Nelyubov, a man dismissed from the Soviet space program, only to have all documentation about him destroyed (including his removal from a series of pictures documenting his membership in the program).
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I think so they knew
I read the wiki article on Project MKUltra after reading this thread...In most cases people didn't know.
Everything related to the project was destroyed ; all documents ..except some documents which were stored somewhere else were found and due to them there is some knowledge of what went on , but most of it had already been destroyed.
The experiments were conducted not just in USA , but in other countries as well...many universities and private institutions were involved.And in most cases the subjects didn't know they were being used.
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Killed By Kindness
George Price was a chemist and geneticist who moved to London in 1967 to do some work in theoretical biology. With no formal training in the fields of population genetics or statistics, Price was still able to formulate an equation that mathematically disproved the idea of true altruism. No theory had ever had the sheer number of applications in evolution, biology, and mathematics that Price’s theory on kin selection did. In a nutshell, his theory stated that people are most likely to show altruism to an organism whose genetic makeup is most similar to their own (like a parent or child perhaps) because in doing so, their genetic heritage would be most likely to live on.
Price also theorized that, in the same way an organism would “sacrifice” itself to further its genetic line, it would also sacrifice itself to eliminate others closely related to it if that meant that the organism’s genes would better propagate. The implication is that kindness is never truly selfless if it’s actually a survival adaptation.
As mind-blowing as that is, the more interesting part of the story is what the theory did to its creator: Price could not emotionally handle the idea that he belonged to an exclusively selfish species. He began partaking in increasingly random acts of kindness towards both strangers and the homeless, only to have his hopeful altruism continuously disproven by his own theory. He gave up all of his belongings and allowed homeless people to live in his house. Eventually, people began stealing his things until he himself was both homeless and sick with depression.
In the end, he lost everything in his effort to disprove his own theory. George Price committed suicide in January of 1975.
Re: Most Bizarre Scientific Stories in history
I read the wiki article on Project MKUltra after reading this thread...In most cases people didn't know. Everything related to the project was destroyed ; all documents ..except some documents which were stored somewhere else were found and due to them there is some knowledge of what went on , but most of it had already been destroyed. The experiments were conducted not just in USA , but in other countries as well...many universities and private institutions were involved.And in most cases the subjects didn't know they were being used.
acha I didn't read tht, will read it alter, first finishing the thread :)