r/HolyShitHistory

Saskatoon (Canada) police had a practice known as "starlight tours," in which they drove Indigenous people to the city's frozen outskirts at night and abandoned them. It only came to light after Darrell Night survived one in 2000 and spoke out — despite the death threats he received for doing so.

This is one of the last photos of Billie Holiday, photographed shortly before her death in 1959. The FBI had persecuted Holiday for two decades over her drug use, also working to ensure her earning capacity was limited. She was handcuffed to her own hospital bed while dying of liver disease age 44.

In 2004, 17-year-old Craig Frear left his girlfriend’s apartment and walked into the nearby woods. Two boys spotted him in the distance, and when Craig realized they were watching, he put a finger to his lips in a “shhh” gesture and kept going. He was never seen again.

Dennis Hastert (born 1942) was the Speaker of the US House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007. Hastert molested at least four underage boys when he was a high school wrestling coach. In May 2015, he was indicted for using hush money to cover up this sexual abuse.

In 2017, Paddy Moriarty left the only pub in Larrimah, a tiny Australian town of just 11 people, and rode home on his quad bike with his dog Kellie. He fed Kellie, made himself dinner, and then both of them simply disappeared.

On August 31, 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Jabbar Gibson, 20 years old at the time, found a school bus and began driving by the time he was done, he'd loaded close to 70 passengers onto the bus.

On 29 April 1945, elements of the U.S. 157th Infantry liberated Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, where they soon discovered 36 boxcars filled with the rotting dead. Without orders, American troops and surviving inmates rounded up the SS camp guards, executing them on the spot.

A woman stayed unidentified for 46 years until her friend recognized her morgue photo online.

Aurora Mardiganian (1901–1994) was an Armenian genocide survivor who was sexually enslaved. She eventually escaped from a harem and moved to New York City in 1917. Mardiganian wrote the memoir "Ravished Armenia", which was turned into a silent film. She died at 93.

In 1997, 14-year-old Reena Virk had been relentlessly bullied by classmates over her Indian heritage. Her life ended when one of those bullies, Kelly Ellard, held her head underwater until she drowned.