31. Girl Scout murders
The Oklahoma Girl Scout murders
32. Depressed Nobel Laureate
Gilbert Newton-Lewis, the scientist who made the Lewis-dot structure we all learn in chemistry was nominated for the Nobel Prize 35 times, and won it 0 times. After having lunch with a rival who built off of his work, who won a Nobel Prize over him, Gilbert Newton-Lewis went into his lab and killed himself with the chemicals he was experimenting with.
33. Public bus killer
a man was sleeping on a Greyhound bus in 2008, going through Canada, when a man next to him on the bus decapitated him and began eating his flesh. Man, you can’t fuckin’ make me go on a Greyhound now.
34.
The “Vampire of Sacramento,” who cannibalized his victims. He would also kill animals, put their organs in a blender, and drink it with Coca-Cola… What still creeps me out to this day is that “he took locked doors as a sign that he was not welcome, but that unlocked doors were an invitation to come inside.” I just imagine him walking through a neighborhood, trying all the doors, seeing where he was invited…
35. A city whose children just up and left
I’ve always thought the story of the children of Hamelin was pretty creepy. The town’s records start in the late 1300s with the line “It is one hundred years since our children left us.”
Basically, Hamelin is where the legend of the Pied Piper comes from. He was a guy who would go around to cities and have the mayor pay him to get rid of all the rats. He would then walk through the streets playing a flute and all the rats would just follow him out of the city. One day someone decided not to pay him for getting rid of the rats. So he came back at night, walked through the streets playing his flute, and all of the children followed him out of town, never to be seen again.
Obviously THAT’S not true, but it’s based on the Children’s Crusade. A boy gathered an army of children (whether or not ALL of them were actually kids is disputed, but unlikely) to retake the holy land. Hamelin is believed to have let their children go on the crusade because they were going broke or something. The army crossed the alps, commissioned some ships in Venice, and the ships promptly took all the children to Tunisia where they were sold into slavery.
It’s not the most WTF story, but I do think it’s a little creepy that there was a city out there whose children just up and left.
