Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost a son while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both were shot behind the head.

Here is an interesting one…
Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy’s secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners.

Both successors were named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are made of fifteen letters.

Mr. Booth shot Lincoln in a Theatre called “Ford”.
Lee Harvey Oswald, shot Kennedy in a car called “Ford” Lincoln.

Booth ran from a theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And last but not least,
A month before Lincoln was shot he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A month before Kennedy was shot he was with Marilyn Monroe.

(Source: fuckyeahoddities)

4:35 pm  •  18 January 2012  •  7,696 notes

Hirohito was the Emporer of Japan from 1926 to 1989. In 1937, Japanese troops committed the war crime that is now known as the Rape of Nanking (the then Capital of China, now known as Nanjing). The duration of the massacre is not clearly defined, although the violence lasted well into the next six weeks, until early February 1938. During the occupation of Nanjing, the Japanese army committed numerous atrocities, such as rape, looting, arson and the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. A large number of women and children were also killed, as rape and murder became more widespread. The death toll is generally considered to be between 150,000 and 300,000. The Wikipedia article contains images and descriptions of the atrocities committed.

(Source: listverse.com)

12:30 pm  •  29 April 2011  •  18 notes

“Jack the Ripper” is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. Other nicknames used for the killer at the time were “The Whitechapel Murderer” and “Leather Apron”.

Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes from the slums. Most experts point to deep throat slashes, abdominal and genital-area mutilation, removal of internal organs, and progressive facial mutilations as the distinctive features of Jack the Ripper’s modus operandi.

The concentration of the killings at the weekend, and within a few streets of each other, has indicated to many that the Ripper was employed during the week and lived locally. Others have thought the killer was an educated upper-class man, possibly a doctor, who ventured into Whitechapel from a more well-to-do area. Despite the many and varied theories about the identity and profession of Jack the Ripper, authorities are not agreed on a single solution and the number of named suspects reaches over one hundred.

4:41 pm  •  22 February 2011  •  11 notes

Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jean Baker, was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills on August 5, 1962, by her housekeeper Eunice Murray. She was naked, atop her telephone on her bed, with unhealthy levels of barbiturates in her bloodstream. But the typical signs of barbiturate overdose were completely absent.

Supposedly, Monroe had had an abortion at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on the 20th of July. It has been said that she had as many as a dozen abortions over the years. But certainly it is well known that she was terminated by her job at Fox Studio. And there were problems with her relationship with Robert F Kennedy; he was not returning her calls.

Evidence is missing, including the original autopsy, her supposed suicide note (which mentioned suicide not at all), and original police report. Furthermore, the first officer at the death scene has publicly disputed the suicide finding.

In 1985, a 20/20 episode was to air where Robert Slatzer postulates that Monroe was killed by Bobby Kennedy, or was in his presence when she died. The show is cancelled.

Marilyn is buried at Westwood Memorial Cemetery.

12:37 pm  •  25 December 2010  •  34 notes

The body of the Russian monk and favorite to the czarina, Grigori Efimovich Rasputin (1872-1916). On December 30, 1916, a plot to assassinate Rasputin transpired. The monk drank several glasses of poisoned wine, and consumed several pastries with potassium cyanide as an active ingredient. When this failed to stop Rasputin, he was shot by Prince Felix Yusupov, shot again, stabbed repeatedly, and finally met his end drowned in the icy Neva river. 

8:39 pm  •  12 December 2010  •  22 notes

Born in Schäßburg, Transylvania, Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia (1431–1476), more commonly known as Vlad the Impaler or simply as Dracula, was a three-time Voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462.

In 1447 Dracula’s father was assassinated in the marshes near Bălteni by rebellious boyars beca

use of his semi-pro-Turkish policy. In the same time, Dracula’s older brother Mircea was also tortured (blinded with hot iron stakes and buried alive) and killed by his political enemies at Târgovişte. At this point, the Sultan released Dracula, invaded Wallachia and and put him on the throne as his puppet ruler. His rule was brief because soon after that, Hunyadi himself invaded Wallachia with the Hungarian military and ousted the Turks.

The first thing he had done as the prince of Wallachia was trying to seek revenge for his father and his brother deaths. On Easter Sunday of what we believe to be 1459, he arrested all the boyar families who had participated to the princely feast. He impaled the older ones on stakes while forcing the others to march from the capital to the town of Poenari. This fifty-mile trek was quite grueling, and those who survived were not permitted to rest until they reached destination. Vlad the Impaler then ordered them to build him a fortress on the ruins of an older outpost overlooking the Arges river. Many died in the process, and Dracula therefore succeeded in creating a new nobility and obtaining a fortress for future emergencies. What is left today of the building is identified as Castle Dracula.

Vlad’s brutal punishment techniques were well known; he often ordered people to be skinned, boiled, decapitated, hanged, burned, blinded, strangled, roasted, hacked, nailed, buried alive, stabbed, etc. He also liked to cut off noses, ears, sexual organs and limbs.

Impalement was Vlad’s preferred method of torture and execution. His method of torture was a horse attached to each of the victim’s legs as a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. Death by impalement was slow and agonizing. Victims sometimes endured for hours or even days. Vlad often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that constituted his target. The height of the spear indicated the rank of the victim. The corpses were often left decaying for months.

One of the most famous woodcuts of the period shows Vlad feasting in a forest of stakes and their grisly burdens outside Brașov, while a nearby executioner cuts apart other victims. This place was famously known as the Forest of the Impaled. In this forest is a story of Vlad’s “sense of humor”: a servant was holding his nose and Vlad said to him while feasting, “Why do you do that?” The servant replied, “I cannot stand the stench.” Vlad immediately ordered him impaled on the highest stake and said, “Then you shall live up there, where the stench cannot reach you.”

On the other hand, he made donations to various churches and monasteries, one such place being the monastary at Lake Snagov where he is supposed to have been buried, he tried to reduce the economic role of the nobility and increase the rights of peasantry, reinforced some castles, like the one at Poienari, where he also had a personal house built nearby.

9:59 am  •  13 November 2010  •  59 notes

Theodore Robert “Ted” Bundy, (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989), was an American serial killer active between 1974 and 1978. He escaped twice from county jails before his final apprehension in February 1978. Bundy was executed by electric chair for his last murder by the state of Florida in 1989.

Between 1974 and 1978 he raped and killed young women in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Florida. He confessed to 28 murders, but estimates make him responsible for hundreds of deaths.

All of Bundy’s victims were white females and most were of middle class background. Almost all were between the ages of 15 and 25. Many were college students. In her book, Ann Rule notes that most of Bundy’s victims had long straight hair parted in the middle—just like Stephanie Brooks, the woman to whom Bundy was engaged in 1973. Rule speculates that Bundy’s resentment towards his first girlfriend was a motivating factor in his string of murders. However, in a 1980 interview, Bundy dismissed this hypothesis: “[t]hey… just fit the general criteria of being young and attractive… Too many people have bought this crap that all the girls were similar — hair about the same color, parted in the middle… but if you look at it, almost everything was dissimilar…physically, they were almost all different.”

After luring a victim to his car, Bundy would hit her in the head with a crowbar he had placed underneath his Volkswagen or hidden inside it. Every recovered skull, except for that of Kimberly Leach, showed signs of blunt force trauma. Every recovered body, except for that of Leach, showed signs of strangulation.

On death row, Bundy admitted to decapitating at least a dozen of his victims with a hacksaw.He kept the severed heads later found on Taylor Mountain in his room or apartment for some time before finally disposing of them. Some of the skulls of Bundy’s victims were found with the front teeth broken out. Bundy also confessed to visiting his victims’ bodies over and over again at the Taylor Mountain body dump site. He stated that he would lie with them for hours, applying makeup to their corpses and having sex with their decomposing bodies until putrefaction forced him to abandon the remains. 

11:16 am  •  11 November 2010  •  45 notes