Home > Work > The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities

The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities QUOTES

The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities QUOTES

1 " Legend has it that while drinking wine in a boat on the river, [8th century Chinese poet Li Po] tried to grab the moon's reflection on the surface and tumbled in, which is probably the poet's equivalent of dying bravely in battle. "

― , The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities

2 " When corporate security squads were sent on punitive raids, they were told not to waste ammunition—one bullet, one kill. They were not supposed to use company ammunition hunting big game for sport. As proof of their frugality, they were expected to bring back one severed human hand for every bullet expended.4 One eyewitness described soldiers returning from a raid: On the bow of the canoe is a pole, and a bundle of something on it. These are the hands (right hands) of sixteen warriors they have slain. “Warriors?” Don’t you see among them the hands of little children and girls? I have seen them. I have seen where the trophy has been cut off, while the poor heart beat strongly enough to shoot the blood from the cut arteries at a distance of fully four feet.5 Severed hands became a kind of currency—proof that orders were being obeyed. A basket of smoked hands covered any shortfall in production, and if there was no rubber to be had, the Free State’s security forces, the Force Publique, would go out to collect a quota of hands instead. Natives quickly learned that willingly sacrificing a hand might save their life. And not just hands. After one commander grumbled that his men were shooting only women and children, his soldiers returned from the next raid with a basket of penises. "

― , The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities

3 " The slave trade largely invented racism, this division of humanity into groups organized solely by physical appearance. A feedback cycle developed where so many Africans lived as slaves in the New World that slavery seemed like the obvious, natural condition for Africans. Once Europeans began to associate dark skin with slavery, every dark-skinned person was assumed to be a slave, and if he wasn’t, well, then he should be.23 If owners liberated too many African slaves after a period of servitude, it would create a class of free blacks in which runaways could hide. The slave owners had to vigorously oppose the growth of an independent, unregulated free black community. Then they had to justify these actions by appealing to racist ideology. "

― , The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities

4 " After an arrow from the walls of the besieged city of Nishapur killed his son-in-law, Genghis Khan allowed his widowed daughter to decide the fate of the city: “She reportedly decreed death for all. . . . According to widely circulated but unverified stories, she ordered soldiers to pile the heads . . . in three separate pyramids—one each for the men, the women, and the children. Then she supposedly ordered that the dogs, the cats . . . be put to death so that no living creature would survive the murder [sic] of her husband” (emphasis added).5 Personally, I find it unsettling to see the victims of Genghis Khan shrugged off as easily as Holocaust-deniers ignore the Jews, and then to realize that hundreds of years from now, some historians will be rehabilitating Hitler’s reputation. "

― , The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities

5 " In the United States, the North-South divide over slavery intensified and touched every aspect of public life. In 1845, for example, the pro-slavery factions of the Baptists split off and formed the Southern Baptist Convention, currently the second largest religious body in the United States. "

― , The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities