The world is filled with sadness.
It’s a fact of life and yes, it’s a huge bummer.
So I hope you’re ready to get a little depressed today…
What’s the saddest fact you know?
Folks on AskReddit spoke up.
32. Bad luck.
“A guy in my area had just retired on a Friday. The following Wednesday he was out fishing and a thunderstorm came up.
He pulled his boat out of the lake and while standing next to his car on the boat ramp lightning took him out.
5 blessed days of retirement.”
31. Goodbye.
“Read about a dolphin who had learned some basic communication and was in some sort of pen.
Dolphins can s**cide by going under water and refusing to go back up for air. This dolphin was miserable and told it’s handler goodbye before going under and ki**ing itself.
The fact the dolphin was sentient enough to choose s**cide breaks my heart.”
30. Emotional animals.
“Elephants will mourn other elephants in their group dying and will hold funerals for them and will even recognize the bones of said elephant and cry out in sadness.”
29. Wild kingdom.
“Penguins sometimes get r**ed by sea lions.
These young seals are those who can’t mate with a female because a larger sea lion controls a massive harem.
After getting r**ed, the penguins’ head are munched off most of the time.”
28. Terrible.
“There is a genetic disorder that makes it impossible for some people to sleep.
So far only 20 people are known to have it, and none have lived past 30…”
27. Very sad.
“One of my neighbors has a nine year old daughter who has a very rare genetic condition.
She’s not expected to live much beyond her mid – late teens. The girl doesn’t know and believes she’s a perfectly normal child.
It’s heartbreaking to hear her saying that she wants to be a hairdresser when she grows up. She ain’t never gonna grow up”
26. Missing him.
“That I won’t get to feel my husband’s presence anymore.
He passed away suddenly on the 11th.
I miss him every minute of the day.”
25. Part of life.
“The older we get, the older our parents get.
My mom was 22, and my father was 24, when they both had me. At the age of 8, my father passed away. He was 32 years old at that time.
Now, I’m 23 years old, and my moms 46……only got one parent left, and as much as I hope to have her forever, sadly, one day, I’ll lose her, too.
And that’s just life.”
24. Lost forever.
“There are over 2,500 ancient languages that are either already extinct, or in danger of being forgotten forever.
Most of these languages are tribal in nature, such as those of Africa, and Central/South America.
Many of the Native American languages here in in the US are dying, but some are being preserved in language learning apps, such as Texas Caddo, and Cherokee.”
23. I’m gonna cry.
“There’s a recording of the last Kaua’i Oo bird singing before it went extinct.
It was a mating call sung by a male bird. The song has breaks for the female bird to respond.
There’s no response because the male Kaua’i Oo was the last of its kind.”
22. Jeez…
“Some people, either through loneliness, age, or mental health, are so closed off from the outside world that they either can’t or don’t know how to take care of themselves until they d**.
Most of the time the only way for anyone to notice that something is wrong is either by accident or the smell.
There is/was a Dutch guy who films the cleanup of those kinds of houses (he has a cleaning service specialized in those kinds of extreme cases). One woman’s toilet backed up and she just did her business on the bathroom floor for months.
In another case a guy had a square meter of space to sleep in, the rest was literal garbage halfway up the wall. He even made holes in the walls and floors to stuff it in.”
21. Poor cats.
“Cats are the most euthanized pets in shelters even over pitbulls.
I worked at an animal shelter when I was a you g lad and every f**king time someone came to adopt a pet it was a dog! I even heard a family say “ we want a dog only cats don’t love you”
I socialized many of their cats and most of them were so sweet, and cuddly and made me just so sad inside everyday watching people adopt dogs and ignore the cats. This was a no k**l shelter but still it was so heart wrenching I quit because of that.
Cats do love you back you just have to earn their trust and they show it differently than dogs. All animals show love in their own special way.”
20. Stressed out.
“Mother hamsters will sometimes eat their newborn babies.
This can be for a variety of reasons, but one of the major problems is that a mother hamster will get stressed out and assume that she does not have enough food or space for all of the babies to survive inside of their tiny cage.”
19. This is too bad.
“Overfishing has caused sharks to move further inshore to hunt for food.
You know what happens when they move closer to the shore? Yeah, we k**l them. They’re just trying to survive.
Also, the shark fin trade is brutal. People will catch live sharks and slice their fins off before releasing them back into the ocean.
Without their fins, sharks can’t swim and subsequently d** a painful d**th.”
18. Awwwww.
“A dog will lie awake at night after getting in trouble or having a bad day thinking about it.
Additionally, dogs feed off our energy so if you are having a bad day, anxious or depressed that actually rubs off on your dog.”
17. Awful.
“For me it’s the d**th of the 13-year-old Colombian girl Omayra Sanchez in 1985.
She was trapped in water after a volcanic eruption, kneeling with her legs trapped under debris, and there was no way to extricate her without triggering a rise in the water level, which would have dr**ned her. Responders considered amputating her legs but decided that she probably wouldn’t survive, and that the most humane thing to do was to let her d**.
The would-be rescuers and some journalists stayed with her for three days while she joked and prayed and sang and left messages for her mother before d**ng of either gangrene or hypothermia.”
16. Heartbreaking.
“A researcher played a recording of a recently deceased elephant to its family. The family recognized the sound and went crazy, running around trying to find their buddy, visibly distressed.
The researcher felt really bad afterwards and said he’d never do that again. Man, when I heard this story, it just broke my heart.”
15. The day the world changed.
“At the 9/11 museum I learned the unfortunate fact that Flight 93 flew upside down for a period of time before crashing in the field.
Apparently, people all over the plane were vomiting. If you’ve even been on a flight where someone throws up nearby, you can imagine how disgusting, awful, and traumatizing this had to have been. Breaks my heart just thinking about it.
Another sad fact is that 8 children were on those planes. 3 were on a trip to California with their teacher. Two siblings (ages 8 and 3) were traveling with the parents, and after missing their original flight, were put on Flight 77 (crashed into the Pentagon.)
I was in middle school at the time, but nearly 20 years later, 9/11 facts continue to haunt me.”
14. Man’s best friend.
“Hachikou was a Japanese Akita dog who each day would wait at the train station for his owner to return from his commute.
One day his owner had an aneurysm at work and passed away. Hachikou would spend the next ten years waiting at the station.
We don’t deserve dogs, they are too good.”
13. Beautiful song.
“The song (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay is technically unfinished. The whistling you hear at the end of the song was an ad-lib, intended to be a placeholder for a final verse.
Unfortunately, Otis Redding d**d in a plane crash before he could record that final verse and we will never know how he wanted it to end.”
12. Let’s hope not.
“Bananas could go extinct soon.
There is some kind of fungus or disease wiping out the trees, once they get infected its a total loss.
Eat em while you can.”
11. Famine.
“The Ukranian Famine (Holodomor) ki**ed at least 3.5 million people back in 1932-1933.
Stalin’s insane plans to optimize state crops while starving out the farmers themselves is some of the most horrific s**t I’ve ever heard of.
D**th by starvation has got to be one of the worst possible ways to go.”
10. Does it exist?
“There isn’t “someone for everyone”.
There are plenty of people all over the world who will go through their entire life never having a romantic partner, regardless if they want one or not, because of whatever reason (unattractiveness, poor social skills, poor mental health etc).”
9. Horrific.
“Dozens of sailors trapped in the USS West Virginia when it was sunk in the Pearl Harbor attack survived several days.
A few lasted over 2 weeks. Salvage crews could hear them banging.”
8. Look it up.
“The federal government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition so that it would k**l people to “prove” how dangerous al**hol is.
They literally m**dered their own citizens to prove a danger that wouldn’t have existed at all without them.”
7. Wow.
“The money in off shore bank accounts 5 years ago could end world poverty for 50 years.
Forbes once had the headline: “Poverty is a choice, just not by the ones in poverty.””
6. Terrifying.
“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger (or at least a good number of the crew) didn’t d** when the fuel tank exploded.
They instead d**d upon impact with the ocean after their cabin fell 65,000 feet back to the ocean.
There is also good evidence that they were conscious for their almost 3 minute fee fall to Earth.”
5. The way it is.
“The fact that in the grand scheme of things, nothing you do, say or feel matters.
You will be d**d very soon and the history of the human race is a very small blip in time with a very very small impact on the galaxy, let alone the universe.”
4. One more dog story.
“Greyfriars Bobby is a dog that guarded his master’s grave for 14 years.
He was two years old when his master d**d, and Bobby guarded his master’s grave until he d**d when he was 16 years old.
His grave is placed next to his master’s grave, because he became a local celebrity during his life, and it reads “let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.””
3. All alone.
“I learned today that if a grizzly bear has a single cub it will abandon it.
The hypothesis is that a single cub will need three years of care, while if she abandons a single cub now, next year or the year after that she is more likely to have twins or even triplets.”
2. Terribly sad.
“785 million people do not have access to safe water.
Access includes having having water within a 30 minute round trip for collecting it and carrying it home.”
1. Not fair.
“Bill Finger, the man who created a vast majority of if not everything that makes Batman a success today, not only never got credit in his lifetime, but was also called a liar by Bob Kane.
Kane who came up with an idea of a bat themed vigilante called The Bat-Man, later used his fathers law firm to make up a contract in which he not only got sole credit but also any major proceeds stemming from the success of Batman.
Bill d**d penniless and on his couch in a s**tty apartment in 1974 while Kane was running around telling everyone he created Batman and such.”
Do you know any sad facts?
If so, share them with us in the comments.
Thanks a lot!
The post 32 Interesting Facts That Are Also a Bit Tragic appeared first on UberFacts.