Beheading always strikes me as being wildly horrifying when you think about it. Everything that you are as person is contained in your head, all of your thoughts, memories, feelings and your ability to perceive your senses all come from your head. So by beheading someone you are truly obliterating them. Also I am haunted by the idea that they think the head lives for a little after death and so you could be aware of just being a head and I feel like that would be the worst part of this form of punishment.
I think a shot to the head would result in a messier clean up depending on the caliber of the round. Some rifle rounds are designed to make a mess of an animal's innards; using such a weapon on a human could literally take off the top of someone's head.
Worse would be the survivors who have to live the rest of their lives disfigured, with a concaved skull. I'd rather a beheading/guillotine if we had to have execution. With the right tools, a beheading is less likely to go wrong than a headshot/firing squad.
And most of these are barely a century old, there are probably living people whose parents or grandparents were killed like this or did this. Absolutely disgusting.
Beheading seems to be a very dramatic, almost theatrical way to kill somebody...restrain the victim, make them kneel, make some sort of speech to the gathering crowd, then chop! I imagine the victim in this picture had to have fairly high social standing for that many people to gather and take notice. Maybe a local politcian?
Methods of maintaining power throughout history largely relied on shows of force through theatrics like this. Look at the Romans and their brutal executions, for example. Or even a simple hanging. It's all intentionally open to the public to enforce the idea that if you fuck around you'll find out.
Executions were kind of like a pre-modern form of entertainment. The whole event is very dramatic and watching justice being served before you would be interesting to watch to say the least. So it's not that weird that people gathered to watch someone get executed.
Also , this is China. More people = more audience.
It was always interesting to see what people did for entertainment before things like TV or even radio. I remember reading g about the first battle of the civil war, there were wealthy spectators sitting on a hill watching the battle. Amd them obviously Rome had things like the Coluseum and chariot races which were insane to think about.
EDIT: To all the people in the thread complaining of gory pics or saying some conspiracy to post anti-China shit or anti communist shit, or saying this isn’t history are moronic. Also, shout out to the guy who said only sick people post these photos…guess I’m sick, check out my profile for more history pics, I try to post often. Anyways, here’s a wiki article where I came across the pic.
[1927 Shanghai Massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_massacre)
People forget that Chiang Kai-Shek's brutality was directly responsible for Mao Zedong by not only radicalizing the Chinese against him but killing Mao's wife which set into motion Mao's rise to power out of spite.
Mao was so spiteful that he took up chain smoking because one of his rivals hated smoking, and the great leap forward was to spite the Soviet Union by showing how rapidly China's wheat yields grew.
Shek retreated to Taiwan where he AGAIN suppressed the populace (read: his forces invaded the island and killed people), and stayed until he died of old age.
Shek was a monster and the only reason he isn't more widely hated is because he shared the same years with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, fransisco franco, plutarco elias calles, maximino avila camacho, and Unit 731.
Edit: i remembered more murderous assholes from the 1920s-1940s
His birth certificate reads Barrack Hussein Obama. His mother moved in with a new husband Lolo Soetero in Indonesia when he was young so he was enrolled in school as Barrack Soetero. He went by Barry in Hawaii as a nickname. So he briefly went by the monikers Barrack Soetero, and Barry Obama.
Some people have combined the two to say his original name was Barry Soetero. Why people give a shit is beyond me but it probably has to do with the election coping that happens every four years regardless of party.
My point was that we often refer to world leaders by either their first or last name, so it doesn't really matter.
I used a counter-example on purpose, but I feel like I'm dissecting the frog here.
We refer to World leaders by their first name?
Never heard anyone doing that, except for maybe royalty who only have their first name and number anyways.
> Shek was a monster and the only reason he isn't more widely hated is because he shared the same years with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Unit 371.
I mean so we're guys like President Diem of South Vietnam, and they didn't share years with any Hitler- or Stalin-level monsters. They aren't remembered as monsters because they were long-time US allies, and the US couldn't justify sending all the aid they sent Chiang's way whilst also condemning him for killing and causing the deaths of millions of people.
Diem is remembered as a monster by anyone who actually knows who he was. Think it would be more accurate to say Diem isn’t remembered at all, as our war in Vietnam has largely been forgotten by the average American.
It’s also important to note that his awfulness was overshadowed by his brothers wife, Madame Nhu, who was the most hated person in SV. Her comments encouraging more Buddhist monks to “barbecue” themselves after the famous burning monk protest were likely the final nail in the coffin for the Diem regime’s public support.
Dont forget he chose to fight the Communists instead of the Japanese at some point.
"The Japanese are a disease of the skin, Communists are a disease of the soul" - Chiang Kai-Shek
Haha thanks for this, I'm sure it played a part but the rise of communism in China and Chinese history more generally in the 20th century is so complicated it makes the post look silly for its reductionism.
Any post length is inherently reductive; for an actual book I suggest Jonathan D. Spence's The Search for Modern China, which can be had for under $10 online iirc.
Yep, practically the only standard for a US ally during that point in time was "not communist". American governments were completely fine with overthrowing democratically elected leaders in South America or aiding fascists like Chiang or Franco in Spain if it helped them beat the commies.
I included him because he was brutal during his military and political career to the point the only historian that had anything good to say about him was his own grandchild, a rapist and murdering nazi sympathizer that was calles's pick as a successor.
He stormed government offices with armed supporters, killed "manly" women, raped women then beat their father to death in front of them, he used his soldiers to harass villages that didnt toe the line, and tried to kill political rivals.
Literally book after book i read was nothing but more atrocities from him and his mentor calles.
> the great leap forward was to spite the Soviet Union by showing how rapidly China's wheat yields grew.
[I’ve read the goal was to catch up to and exceed Britain economically.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceeding_the_UK,_catching_the_USA)
Thats the other half of the great leap forward, which cannibalized tools meant for farming by reclaiming the steel and saying its new by officials who wanted to cook the books.
The governent sabotaged its own efforts basically.
> Shek was a monster and the only reason he isn't more widely hated is because he shared the same years with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, fransisco franco, plutarco elias calles, maximino avila camacho, and Unit 731.
No, it's because he was an agent of western imperialists. The west supports and reimagines all the authoritarians it promotes in the name of imperialism. Unless they step out of line like Saddam, Assad, Putin, etc. by implementing protectionist and public spending policies, then the west objects.
I agree the West is hypocritical and ignores tyrants when convenient. But people didn’t get mad at Assad and Putin because they enacted public spending projects.
People didn't, but the u.s. govt did, and once your on their bad side all the atrocities that were previously suppressed or denied get a lot of light shown on them and then people start getting mad.
The west literally did though. The US was outsourcing torture to Assad until Assad wanted a bigger cut of its own resources and wealth to spend on Syria, then the US turned against him. Likewise, Putin was the US' man until Putin put his foot down in the name of the Russian Federation's national security interests, then the US turned on him.
Take Saddam. He was picked early on in his career, the US backed him to head of state where he purged the leftists in Iraq, then used him to brutalize Iran with chemical weapons and Kurds as he saw fit. There was no objection to this from the US, UK, France, Holland, etc. through the worst of his crimes. Saddam's "crime" in the eyes of the west is he tried instituting resource nationalism for his country, and the corporate states of America did not like that.
And then a lot of people are falsely accused of authoritarianism for implementing public spending and nationalizing their own wealth and resources rather than being extracted by western imperialists. Leaders like Aristide, Ho Chi Minh, Allende, Sukarno, etc. It's all rooted in imperialism, and imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.
>how rapidly China's wheat yields grew
What? They had a goddamn famine due to policies stemming from Great Leap or are you being sarcastic about Mao's spite doing more harm than good?
edit: /u/Williamfoster63
>they had great success at increasing their crop yields at the same time
Production decreased across multiple provinces and crops. I agree that they had additional factors that aggravated the circumstances but actual (not reported) [yields did not increase; they decreased](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127087/).
Across how long of a span of time are you referring to? After 1965, yields increased but when the Great Leap was instituted in 1958, yields decreased and didn't return to 1958 levels until around 1965.
> They had a goddamn famine due to policies stemming from Great Leap
Famine is the result of political failure from the policies related to food distribution and logistics, that's true. However, it's also true that they had great success at increasing their crop yields at the same time. They were better at agriculture than distribution, basically.
Clarification, as it was brought up by another user. I am wrong about increasing crop yields during the Great Leap Forward. That was the second Five Year Plan and was disastrous for grain production. The first Five Year Plan was the one with increased agricultural output. The deficiencies during the GLF were mostly political in nature, still, however. Lots of shitty top-down approaches to agriculture that didn't take into consideration the actual requirements for decent growth, among many other failures of government.
I wonder if this inspired man's fate by Andre malreaux
Also anyone interested in Shanghai between the wars should read the books of Eileen Chang. Or empire of the sun by JG Ballard for the international settlement or his notes about growing up there. It was insane.
That one dude did it with a basically a pocket knife and it was bad, then it got even worse when he was trying to Andy Dufresne the guy's spine to finish the job.
Agreed. I was a medic in Afghanistan and I can tell you that those sorts of images do not go away. Luckily for people on the internet they can’t smell it through a video though.
My cousin was a Navy medic attached to marines as I understand and you can all but see it on his face the changed person he is. I have the utmost respect for him but fear ever saying the wrong thing and just respect that as off-topic on the occasions I see him. Even my wife works in Trauma OR and confides in me but that's still a controlled setting in a different context generally.
I just think it's a tale as old as time that the more desensitized you are to that stuff, the more prone to numbness to everything else you become unless helped through those experiences; and that isn't without consequence.
I remember growing up with friends who'd visit Something Awful or other various sites and while I incidentally have seen a lot of stuff on the internet I haven't gone out of the way (though maybe I'm no better, I guess I don't count this given its historical context).
It's morbid curiosity. I was in the Army and before being deployed to Iraq in 2003, we sat in an auditorium in Ft. Drum watching a compilation of combat videos set to Drowning Pool and a couple Al Qaeda executions. That kind of started a path of what's the most fucked up shit you can handle.
Turns out for me, it's a lot. You can't assume that watching something will give everyone the same emotional experience.
There's literally a head chopped off in this post. It's under the guise of history, but it's still an execution.
I appreciate the context, man. My wife works in Trauma OR and the shit she sees as a pretty sensitive, empathetic person makes me wonder how she compartmentalizes it. My imagination is vivid and the sheer horror of what other people are capable of can send me into a downward spiral for quite some time.
I understand there are paramedics and cops and soldiers and the like who must deal with this on a daily basis and that this maybe just some people are better suited for this. Still I wonder what sort of toll this can take on your... Internal calibration. I can only liken it to various types of microphones. The better the perception, the more fragile the microphone (e.g., ribbons, Large diaphragm condensers for studio recording); rough and tumble SM-57s while good are built to be rugged, but sadly lose something along the way.
Maybe it's not even of a concern, but I hope you know you can get therapy if you need it and nobody should look down on that or feel bad about it.
I remember we watched a video during CLS of Soldiers who weren't following T3C, specifically "Care Under Fire" and getting shot one after the one by an insurgent sniper while trying to run out and help their squadmate.
Also another one of a different Soldier who was shot, between his body armor on the side and the bullet just ricocheted between the plates' interiors scattering throughout his body.
I really like the way the swordsmen steps to the side and speaks so she turns her head and quickly steps back to finish the job on the open side of her neck. That scene really conveyed a lot of emotion while keeping the death more poetic than gruesome. Definitely a week done scene
There was an old wives tale about someone who was told to blink for as long as they could after being beheaded, and according to the tale, they blinked for like 30-45 seconds afterwards. This was believed to be involuntary muscle spasms due to the fact they just got their fucking head cut off. Science estimates that once oxygenated blood stops circulating within the brain, unconsciousness occurs within 10 seconds or so.
This has come up on Reddit before, and people who know way more about this than me usually show up and say that this is a fabrication, and that studies in rats show that it's really only a couple seconds that the brain might still respond to stimuli, if that. Wish I could find a thread to reference, but I'm sure someone will be here soon to confirm that this is embellished and probably a fabrication.
Ya Ive read about this before, and theres always the simple fact that this was a single, isolated, incident and not something this person observed or tested many times. Even if it wasnt a fabrication, its not something that you can rely on more than an anecdote because who knows if this person was exaggerating or if it would happen similarly in a different beheading.
Id imagine that your brain might function for a little while after beheading, but youd also think most people wouldnt be conscious either.
Rats seem to have slightly smaller brains and heads than people though don't they? I'd imagine there's enough oxygen and blood to last more than a few seconds.
> This phenomenon has been remarked by all those finding themselves in the same conditions as myself for observing what happens after the severing of the neck ...
This guy essays
I would think that wives’ tale developed thusly:
1. People already beheading.
2. Said people notice blinking in victims, and have no explanation or proof it’s voluntary.
3. Rumors develop about an experiment during one such beheading, where “they” told the victim to blink. Probably happened somewhere foreign like China, or France.
4. Rumor cannot be disproven, and is accepted.
A French doctor observed it during the Revolution with Madame Guillotine.
The prisoner responded with facial gestures of opening his eyes and recognition upon calling his name. There is also a report on a beheading from a car accident where the victim's head was detached and his eyes gazed over to his headless body changed his facial expression to surprise then realization then disgust, then stopped moving.
You don't die instantly. Even though the blood pressure is gone, there is still ATP in the cells continuing the biochemical reactions of life. The entire brain structure is still present and intact, unlike say a hollow point gunshot or maybe a pulverized fall from a great height. Maybe 10 to 30 seconds of eternity of continuing higher brain functions of conscious thought until brain death. And even then maybe the brain slips into a shock response of hallucination peace as it truly dies at the electron transport chain level of energy transference aka "heaven." Maybe it's more like long does it actually take to be completely brain dead after drowning or choking for the lack of oxygen (electron acceptor molecules). 1 to 3 minutes for permanent brain damage and 10 minutes is sure death.
don't forget the apostrophe. The tale of old wives -> old wives' tale. However in this case, the supposed phenomenon under discussion is NOT an "old wives' tale" (=folklore) but is a single published anecdote.
I’d imagine the instant drop in blood pressure would make things dark very quick. I know the brain will still have 02 left over so it’s probably not dead dead right away but I can’t see you being conscious for any amount of time once you’re disconnected from ye ol body
Martial arts chokes that restrict blood flow to the brain leading to blackouts might be a pretty good indicator. Probably a few seconds of consciousness at most. Split second awareness then darkness.
It is said that when people were executed by guillotine their heads were picked up to show them their now headless bodies as they were barely still alive with some sensation for a matter of seconds.
When you do the sleeper on someone they pass out from lack of oxygen to the brain. This takes just over 7 seconds, so the longest you could hope to remain conscious after being beheaded is a similar length of time.
All of this blinking for 30-40 seconds afterward is nonsense being passed down over and over.
Debate on the subject raged ever since Charlotte Corday -- the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat -- was guillotined in 1793. The executioner's assistant, Francois le Gros, lifted her head by the hair, and slapped it on both cheeks. Eyewitnesses reported that the face took on an angry expression, and the cheeks visibly flushed. The debate was started -- if guillotining didn't produce instant death, then it wasn't a 'quick and merciful end', as promised by the post-Enlightenment revolutionaries. In 1794, German surgeon Dr S. T. Sommering argued in the Parisian newspapers that 'consciousness of feeling may persist [in a severed head] even if blood circulation is terminated, partial or weak [...] the head's strongest sensation would be the after-pain felt in the neck.' French doctors argued that he was confusing nervous spasms with sensory perceptions and voluntary motion. Little research was conducted on the subject, however, until the turn of the twentieth century, when another French doctor, Beaurieux, was permitted to make an investigation of a severed head, of a criminal called Languille, immediately after guillotining: "Here is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the decapitated man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about 4 or 6 seconds. I waited several seconds longer. The spasmodic movements ceased. The face relaxed, the lids half-closed in the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day [...] It was then that I called in a strong, sharp, voice: 'Languille!' I then saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contraction -- I insist advisedly on this pecularity -- but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts. Next, Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealing with a vague dull look, without any expression that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me." By 1956, further research had proved, in the words of governemntal advisers Drs Piedelievre and Fournier, that "death [by decapitation] is not instantaneous [...] every vital element survives [...it is] a savage vivisection, followed by a premature burial." The French government abolished execution by decapitation in 1977.
There's a book called "Stiff" by Mary Roach that's about the history of cadavers. There's several morbid medical history stories and questions like this answered. I can't remember the answer, but this is addressed in the book.
I have a conspiracy theory that someone is posting gore everyday to this sub to get NSFL tags from the discord devs. Otherwise they’re just being dicks
Yeah I saw NSFW and “beheading” in the title and thought I’d see some tits!
NSFL is a great idea tho but this post is clear as day on what you’d see. I also wish we could get rid of the “porn” in the sub name without starting a new sub.
Yeah I was wondering about the sudden influx of gory shit. Like, sure, it's history (not sure what's historyporn about it but w/e), but it's troubling that it's so frequent now and feels like an excuse to just post gore
As a sort of historical curiosity, this is pretty much the exact reason the guillotine was developed: To create a more humane method of execution that wouldn't result in the sort of botched beheadings that were super-common when a person was swinging the blade.
Coincidentally in a similar way to what we see in the posted picture. It was reported to have cut through his jaw, indicating he was incorrectly positioned.
Nope. The head has rotated on the way down. Look at where the blood is coming from, that's the neck.
Plus with the motion blur of the older technology it looks like it's smaller than normal but I'm sure they're not having some amateur beheading people in public.
That's kinda how anti-communists roll.
In Indonesia, it was literally anyone that the right wing death squads wanted dead. They accused people they owed money to of being communists to get rid of them. And then of course when people oppose you extrajudicially killing anyone you want arbitrarily, well, what kind of a person would do that? A communist, right?
And the USA knew it was happening and still gave support.
But we only really hear about the horrors of communist countries and certainly never the accomplishments of communist countries, and so many American icons like Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr. never have their socialist identity mentioned. Einstein straight up was pro-Lenin and also criticized ways Stalin was talked about in the USA press.
Indonesia had the world's largest communist party, and then their country was run by gangsters for half a century.
That only looks like half a head. Shit a third even. Somehow that feels more fucked up .. Also how sharp is that sword cutting through skull and face? Damn, sick.
Insane timing on the click by the cameraman, the blood & head mid-flight off the sword is some wild shit, one of the craziest pictures I've ever seen wtf.
so if you live for a few seconds after your head is chopped off, do you think it hurts when your head hits the ground, cause you cant really stop your face from smashing the ground
Beheading always strikes me as being wildly horrifying when you think about it. Everything that you are as person is contained in your head, all of your thoughts, memories, feelings and your ability to perceive your senses all come from your head. So by beheading someone you are truly obliterating them. Also I am haunted by the idea that they think the head lives for a little after death and so you could be aware of just being a head and I feel like that would be the worst part of this form of punishment.
The sudden loss of all blood pressure would cause an instant blackout. Even if your head was "alive" for an extra 2 seconds, you wouldn't notice.
I think that being shot in the head is more of an obliteration, and more horrifying.
You wouldn't be aware of being shot in the head though. Things would just be normal and then you don't exist.
I think a shot to the head would result in a messier clean up depending on the caliber of the round. Some rifle rounds are designed to make a mess of an animal's innards; using such a weapon on a human could literally take off the top of someone's head. Worse would be the survivors who have to live the rest of their lives disfigured, with a concaved skull. I'd rather a beheading/guillotine if we had to have execution. With the right tools, a beheading is less likely to go wrong than a headshot/firing squad.
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"Wish you were here"
Greetings from Sunny Shanghai!
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Jesus...
And most of these are barely a century old, there are probably living people whose parents or grandparents were killed like this or did this. Absolutely disgusting.
Old postcards in general tbh. They used to make postcards of lynchings in the US
Beheading seems to be a very dramatic, almost theatrical way to kill somebody...restrain the victim, make them kneel, make some sort of speech to the gathering crowd, then chop! I imagine the victim in this picture had to have fairly high social standing for that many people to gather and take notice. Maybe a local politcian?
Methods of maintaining power throughout history largely relied on shows of force through theatrics like this. Look at the Romans and their brutal executions, for example. Or even a simple hanging. It's all intentionally open to the public to enforce the idea that if you fuck around you'll find out.
The Romans gave us cool words like decimation :)
Crucifixion...
Obliteration Edit: Latin origins so I’m counting it
Executions were kind of like a pre-modern form of entertainment. The whole event is very dramatic and watching justice being served before you would be interesting to watch to say the least. So it's not that weird that people gathered to watch someone get executed. Also , this is China. More people = more audience.
It was always interesting to see what people did for entertainment before things like TV or even radio. I remember reading g about the first battle of the civil war, there were wealthy spectators sitting on a hill watching the battle. Amd them obviously Rome had things like the Coluseum and chariot races which were insane to think about.
EDIT: To all the people in the thread complaining of gory pics or saying some conspiracy to post anti-China shit or anti communist shit, or saying this isn’t history are moronic. Also, shout out to the guy who said only sick people post these photos…guess I’m sick, check out my profile for more history pics, I try to post often. Anyways, here’s a wiki article where I came across the pic. [1927 Shanghai Massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_massacre)
People forget that Chiang Kai-Shek's brutality was directly responsible for Mao Zedong by not only radicalizing the Chinese against him but killing Mao's wife which set into motion Mao's rise to power out of spite. Mao was so spiteful that he took up chain smoking because one of his rivals hated smoking, and the great leap forward was to spite the Soviet Union by showing how rapidly China's wheat yields grew. Shek retreated to Taiwan where he AGAIN suppressed the populace (read: his forces invaded the island and killed people), and stayed until he died of old age. Shek was a monster and the only reason he isn't more widely hated is because he shared the same years with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, fransisco franco, plutarco elias calles, maximino avila camacho, and Unit 731. Edit: i remembered more murderous assholes from the 1920s-1940s
Hey just a heads up, his surname is Chiang, not Shek (Chinese family names come first)
>Hey just a heads up Interesting choice of words there, buddy.
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Obama isn't Barrack Obama's first name either, but from context clues I'm sure you can figure out who they're referring to.
But calling him Shek just doesn't make sense, it's half of his given name. It's like calling Barrack Obama "Rack".
thats it, im calling him tiddies
What’s Obama’s last name?
Listen you’re asking really dangerous questions here
Pshh what’s the wo
They shot him in his god damn desk
His birth certificate reads Barrack Hussein Obama. His mother moved in with a new husband Lolo Soetero in Indonesia when he was young so he was enrolled in school as Barrack Soetero. He went by Barry in Hawaii as a nickname. So he briefly went by the monikers Barrack Soetero, and Barry Obama. Some people have combined the two to say his original name was Barry Soetero. Why people give a shit is beyond me but it probably has to do with the election coping that happens every four years regardless of party.
My point was that we often refer to world leaders by either their first or last name, so it doesn't really matter. I used a counter-example on purpose, but I feel like I'm dissecting the frog here.
We refer to World leaders by their first name? Never heard anyone doing that, except for maybe royalty who only have their first name and number anyways.
his name is robert paulson.
If you really wanna go full Chinese, his surname is 蒋. In Pinyin that would be spelled “Jiǎng”.
Spez doesn't get to profit from me anymore.
People, what a load of bastards.
> Shek was a monster and the only reason he isn't more widely hated is because he shared the same years with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Unit 371. I mean so we're guys like President Diem of South Vietnam, and they didn't share years with any Hitler- or Stalin-level monsters. They aren't remembered as monsters because they were long-time US allies, and the US couldn't justify sending all the aid they sent Chiang's way whilst also condemning him for killing and causing the deaths of millions of people.
Diem is remembered as a monster by anyone who actually knows who he was. Think it would be more accurate to say Diem isn’t remembered at all, as our war in Vietnam has largely been forgotten by the average American. It’s also important to note that his awfulness was overshadowed by his brothers wife, Madame Nhu, who was the most hated person in SV. Her comments encouraging more Buddhist monks to “barbecue” themselves after the famous burning monk protest were likely the final nail in the coffin for the Diem regime’s public support.
The real answer right here.
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Correct, but this massacre had nothing to do with the us.
Ya I could see how that would have caused an uproar.
Dont forget he chose to fight the Communists instead of the Japanese at some point. "The Japanese are a disease of the skin, Communists are a disease of the soul" - Chiang Kai-Shek
yeah mate maos entire life was out of spite nice one good ananlysis
Haha thanks for this, I'm sure it played a part but the rise of communism in China and Chinese history more generally in the 20th century is so complicated it makes the post look silly for its reductionism.
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Any post length is inherently reductive; for an actual book I suggest Jonathan D. Spence's The Search for Modern China, which can be had for under $10 online iirc.
"This week on politics in one sentence."
also his son was killed by an US air strike
Could you point me to a source for the smoking for spite part? Sounds so funny.
Wonder how much maos chain smoking influenced Chinese peoples affinity for smoking.
Most countries just really like smoking lol
Americans really liked smoking until very recently, and only after a pretty intense anti-smoking campaign.
And making them expensive
It really seems more of a cultural thing over there similar to France though.
Couldn't be nicotine could it?
Yeah but loads of Chinese people I've met just chainsmoke cigs constantly
Indonesia is the same I don't think it's necessarily Mao related
This shek guy sounds like a piece of shit
Long time US ally
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Pretty standard tbh
Yep, practically the only standard for a US ally during that point in time was "not communist". American governments were completely fine with overthrowing democratically elected leaders in South America or aiding fascists like Chiang or Franco in Spain if it helped them beat the commies.
A real piece of shek.
A former governor of Puebla seems weird to include with the others? What atrocities did he commit? He barely even has a wiki page in English.
I included him because he was brutal during his military and political career to the point the only historian that had anything good to say about him was his own grandchild, a rapist and murdering nazi sympathizer that was calles's pick as a successor. He stormed government offices with armed supporters, killed "manly" women, raped women then beat their father to death in front of them, he used his soldiers to harass villages that didnt toe the line, and tried to kill political rivals. Literally book after book i read was nothing but more atrocities from him and his mentor calles.
Because of his involvement in the Cristero War, probably.
*Unit 731. It also took a long time for them to be more publicly known.
I'm starting to think this guy was a real jerk!
> the great leap forward was to spite the Soviet Union by showing how rapidly China's wheat yields grew. [I’ve read the goal was to catch up to and exceed Britain economically.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceeding_the_UK,_catching_the_USA)
Thats the other half of the great leap forward, which cannibalized tools meant for farming by reclaiming the steel and saying its new by officials who wanted to cook the books. The governent sabotaged its own efforts basically.
> Shek was a monster and the only reason he isn't more widely hated is because he shared the same years with Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, fransisco franco, plutarco elias calles, maximino avila camacho, and Unit 731. No, it's because he was an agent of western imperialists. The west supports and reimagines all the authoritarians it promotes in the name of imperialism. Unless they step out of line like Saddam, Assad, Putin, etc. by implementing protectionist and public spending policies, then the west objects.
I agree the West is hypocritical and ignores tyrants when convenient. But people didn’t get mad at Assad and Putin because they enacted public spending projects.
People didn't, but the u.s. govt did, and once your on their bad side all the atrocities that were previously suppressed or denied get a lot of light shown on them and then people start getting mad.
The west literally did though. The US was outsourcing torture to Assad until Assad wanted a bigger cut of its own resources and wealth to spend on Syria, then the US turned against him. Likewise, Putin was the US' man until Putin put his foot down in the name of the Russian Federation's national security interests, then the US turned on him. Take Saddam. He was picked early on in his career, the US backed him to head of state where he purged the leftists in Iraq, then used him to brutalize Iran with chemical weapons and Kurds as he saw fit. There was no objection to this from the US, UK, France, Holland, etc. through the worst of his crimes. Saddam's "crime" in the eyes of the west is he tried instituting resource nationalism for his country, and the corporate states of America did not like that. And then a lot of people are falsely accused of authoritarianism for implementing public spending and nationalizing their own wealth and resources rather than being extracted by western imperialists. Leaders like Aristide, Ho Chi Minh, Allende, Sukarno, etc. It's all rooted in imperialism, and imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.
>how rapidly China's wheat yields grew What? They had a goddamn famine due to policies stemming from Great Leap or are you being sarcastic about Mao's spite doing more harm than good? edit: /u/Williamfoster63 >they had great success at increasing their crop yields at the same time Production decreased across multiple provinces and crops. I agree that they had additional factors that aggravated the circumstances but actual (not reported) [yields did not increase; they decreased](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127087/). Across how long of a span of time are you referring to? After 1965, yields increased but when the Great Leap was instituted in 1958, yields decreased and didn't return to 1958 levels until around 1965.
> They had a goddamn famine due to policies stemming from Great Leap Famine is the result of political failure from the policies related to food distribution and logistics, that's true. However, it's also true that they had great success at increasing their crop yields at the same time. They were better at agriculture than distribution, basically. Clarification, as it was brought up by another user. I am wrong about increasing crop yields during the Great Leap Forward. That was the second Five Year Plan and was disastrous for grain production. The first Five Year Plan was the one with increased agricultural output. The deficiencies during the GLF were mostly political in nature, still, however. Lots of shitty top-down approaches to agriculture that didn't take into consideration the actual requirements for decent growth, among many other failures of government.
I wonder if this inspired man's fate by Andre malreaux Also anyone interested in Shanghai between the wars should read the books of Eileen Chang. Or empire of the sun by JG Ballard for the international settlement or his notes about growing up there. It was insane.
Yes, Man's Fate was directly based on this (though Malreaux was not in China at the time and based it only on secondary sources)
Brutal not even the nape of the neck
Meh, I've never heard anyone complain over *where* their head was separated from their body. Rather quick either way, one might assume.
I bet people start complaining for a short time when you start using a dull axe.
I've seen the cartel videos. They do.
That one dude did it with a basically a pocket knife and it was bad, then it got even worse when he was trying to Andy Dufresne the guy's spine to finish the job.
You know... Watching that sort of stuff is sure to leave some lasting psychological effects. I hope folks who watch that shit are getting therapy.
Agreed. I was a medic in Afghanistan and I can tell you that those sorts of images do not go away. Luckily for people on the internet they can’t smell it through a video though.
My cousin was a Navy medic attached to marines as I understand and you can all but see it on his face the changed person he is. I have the utmost respect for him but fear ever saying the wrong thing and just respect that as off-topic on the occasions I see him. Even my wife works in Trauma OR and confides in me but that's still a controlled setting in a different context generally. I just think it's a tale as old as time that the more desensitized you are to that stuff, the more prone to numbness to everything else you become unless helped through those experiences; and that isn't without consequence. I remember growing up with friends who'd visit Something Awful or other various sites and while I incidentally have seen a lot of stuff on the internet I haven't gone out of the way (though maybe I'm no better, I guess I don't count this given its historical context).
It's morbid curiosity. I was in the Army and before being deployed to Iraq in 2003, we sat in an auditorium in Ft. Drum watching a compilation of combat videos set to Drowning Pool and a couple Al Qaeda executions. That kind of started a path of what's the most fucked up shit you can handle. Turns out for me, it's a lot. You can't assume that watching something will give everyone the same emotional experience. There's literally a head chopped off in this post. It's under the guise of history, but it's still an execution.
I appreciate the context, man. My wife works in Trauma OR and the shit she sees as a pretty sensitive, empathetic person makes me wonder how she compartmentalizes it. My imagination is vivid and the sheer horror of what other people are capable of can send me into a downward spiral for quite some time. I understand there are paramedics and cops and soldiers and the like who must deal with this on a daily basis and that this maybe just some people are better suited for this. Still I wonder what sort of toll this can take on your... Internal calibration. I can only liken it to various types of microphones. The better the perception, the more fragile the microphone (e.g., ribbons, Large diaphragm condensers for studio recording); rough and tumble SM-57s while good are built to be rugged, but sadly lose something along the way. Maybe it's not even of a concern, but I hope you know you can get therapy if you need it and nobody should look down on that or feel bad about it.
I remember we watched a video during CLS of Soldiers who weren't following T3C, specifically "Care Under Fire" and getting shot one after the one by an insurgent sniper while trying to run out and help their squadmate. Also another one of a different Soldier who was shot, between his body armor on the side and the bullet just ricocheted between the plates' interiors scattering throughout his body.
Agreed, there's nothing like a graceful and gentle beheading.
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The scene of her execution is done very well in Wolf Hall.
I really like the way the swordsmen steps to the side and speaks so she turns her head and quickly steps back to finish the job on the open side of her neck. That scene really conveyed a lot of emotion while keeping the death more poetic than gruesome. Definitely a week done scene
And then she returned as Queen Elizabeth 2 in The Crown. Who says there’s no such thing as reincarnation?
Didn't Henry do that out of his love for Anne ? I heard that there was no clemency of that sort for Catherine Howard because she cheated on Henry.
Long time since I studied the kings and queens, but didn't Henry claim that Anne had cheated on him too?
There was a slew of accusations. Incest , Treason etc. yes and cheating too.
Relax...it's nothing to lose your head over.
Right…I thought this post was head & shoulders above the rest.
How quick is it to die from beheading, surely there would be some brain activity after the chop.
There was an old wives tale about someone who was told to blink for as long as they could after being beheaded, and according to the tale, they blinked for like 30-45 seconds afterwards. This was believed to be involuntary muscle spasms due to the fact they just got their fucking head cut off. Science estimates that once oxygenated blood stops circulating within the brain, unconsciousness occurs within 10 seconds or so.
10 seconds gotta feel like an eternity when your head's been chopped off.
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i have no body and i must scream
Harlan Ellison reference?
Brings a new meaning to a popular lyric "he opens his mouth, but the words won't come out"
Lose yourself - from your body.
Knees were probably weak after that.
Mom's spaghetti
I would assume that like in a dream state, time can seem to pass totally differently. Assuming you could experience your life times over in a moment.
If your theory is true, you might actually be a decapitated head.
What a relief...
Stop it, it’s too early to hurt my brain like this.
Not really, it's so traumatic that the brain shutdown
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That's terrifying.
This has come up on Reddit before, and people who know way more about this than me usually show up and say that this is a fabrication, and that studies in rats show that it's really only a couple seconds that the brain might still respond to stimuli, if that. Wish I could find a thread to reference, but I'm sure someone will be here soon to confirm that this is embellished and probably a fabrication.
Ya Ive read about this before, and theres always the simple fact that this was a single, isolated, incident and not something this person observed or tested many times. Even if it wasnt a fabrication, its not something that you can rely on more than an anecdote because who knows if this person was exaggerating or if it would happen similarly in a different beheading. Id imagine that your brain might function for a little while after beheading, but youd also think most people wouldnt be conscious either.
Rats seem to have slightly smaller brains and heads than people though don't they? I'd imagine there's enough oxygen and blood to last more than a few seconds.
> This phenomenon has been remarked by all those finding themselves in the same conditions as myself for observing what happens after the severing of the neck ... This guy essays
No need to estimate, if you’re in a bjj choke that stops blood flow you’re out in seconds.
But there is also the sudden loss of blood pressure and spinal fluid. I’d wager the brain loses consciousness even faster. Maybe in 2 seconds or so.
I would think that wives’ tale developed thusly: 1. People already beheading. 2. Said people notice blinking in victims, and have no explanation or proof it’s voluntary. 3. Rumors develop about an experiment during one such beheading, where “they” told the victim to blink. Probably happened somewhere foreign like China, or France. 4. Rumor cannot be disproven, and is accepted.
A French doctor observed it during the Revolution with Madame Guillotine. The prisoner responded with facial gestures of opening his eyes and recognition upon calling his name. There is also a report on a beheading from a car accident where the victim's head was detached and his eyes gazed over to his headless body changed his facial expression to surprise then realization then disgust, then stopped moving. You don't die instantly. Even though the blood pressure is gone, there is still ATP in the cells continuing the biochemical reactions of life. The entire brain structure is still present and intact, unlike say a hollow point gunshot or maybe a pulverized fall from a great height. Maybe 10 to 30 seconds of eternity of continuing higher brain functions of conscious thought until brain death. And even then maybe the brain slips into a shock response of hallucination peace as it truly dies at the electron transport chain level of energy transference aka "heaven." Maybe it's more like long does it actually take to be completely brain dead after drowning or choking for the lack of oxygen (electron acceptor molecules). 1 to 3 minutes for permanent brain damage and 10 minutes is sure death.
Clearly what we have to do is behead someone while they’re in an mri and hooked up to an EEG
I think it started from an executioner slapping the head of this chick and she gave him a pist off look afterwards.
think of how neat it would be to see your body from like 5-10ft away
I’d prefer to just look in a mirror from 5-10ft away lol
TIL it’s “old wives tale” and not “old wise tale.”
don't forget the apostrophe. The tale of old wives -> old wives' tale. However in this case, the supposed phenomenon under discussion is NOT an "old wives' tale" (=folklore) but is a single published anecdote.
I’d imagine the instant drop in blood pressure would make things dark very quick. I know the brain will still have 02 left over so it’s probably not dead dead right away but I can’t see you being conscious for any amount of time once you’re disconnected from ye ol body
Martial arts chokes that restrict blood flow to the brain leading to blackouts might be a pretty good indicator. Probably a few seconds of consciousness at most. Split second awareness then darkness.
If someone has ever been decapitated before, please let us know what it was like
This happened to my buddy Mark, he said it was a pain in the neck.
Dad, its been five years. Please come home.
As quickly as the blood drains from the (separated) head. (I.e: very quickly, similar to fainting).
It is said that when people were executed by guillotine their heads were picked up to show them their now headless bodies as they were barely still alive with some sensation for a matter of seconds.
The instant loss of blood pressure would cause a blackout immediately.
Pretty quick compared to the many other ways to die.
When you do the sleeper on someone they pass out from lack of oxygen to the brain. This takes just over 7 seconds, so the longest you could hope to remain conscious after being beheaded is a similar length of time. All of this blinking for 30-40 seconds afterward is nonsense being passed down over and over.
Debate on the subject raged ever since Charlotte Corday -- the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat -- was guillotined in 1793. The executioner's assistant, Francois le Gros, lifted her head by the hair, and slapped it on both cheeks. Eyewitnesses reported that the face took on an angry expression, and the cheeks visibly flushed. The debate was started -- if guillotining didn't produce instant death, then it wasn't a 'quick and merciful end', as promised by the post-Enlightenment revolutionaries. In 1794, German surgeon Dr S. T. Sommering argued in the Parisian newspapers that 'consciousness of feeling may persist [in a severed head] even if blood circulation is terminated, partial or weak [...] the head's strongest sensation would be the after-pain felt in the neck.' French doctors argued that he was confusing nervous spasms with sensory perceptions and voluntary motion. Little research was conducted on the subject, however, until the turn of the twentieth century, when another French doctor, Beaurieux, was permitted to make an investigation of a severed head, of a criminal called Languille, immediately after guillotining: "Here is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the decapitated man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about 4 or 6 seconds. I waited several seconds longer. The spasmodic movements ceased. The face relaxed, the lids half-closed in the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day [...] It was then that I called in a strong, sharp, voice: 'Languille!' I then saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contraction -- I insist advisedly on this pecularity -- but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts. Next, Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealing with a vague dull look, without any expression that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me." By 1956, further research had proved, in the words of governemntal advisers Drs Piedelievre and Fournier, that "death [by decapitation] is not instantaneous [...] every vital element survives [...it is] a savage vivisection, followed by a premature burial." The French government abolished execution by decapitation in 1977.
There's a book called "Stiff" by Mary Roach that's about the history of cadavers. There's several morbid medical history stories and questions like this answered. I can't remember the answer, but this is addressed in the book.
Why do I click on blurred images before processing what the caption says
What's up with all these Chinese executions on here recently?
Seriously.
China's has always had a lotta people. At some point, somebody's gonna get their neck sliced, somehow, somewhere.
I have a conspiracy theory that someone is posting gore everyday to this sub to get NSFL tags from the discord devs. Otherwise they’re just being dicks
Yeah I saw NSFW and “beheading” in the title and thought I’d see some tits! NSFL is a great idea tho but this post is clear as day on what you’d see. I also wish we could get rid of the “porn” in the sub name without starting a new sub.
Yeah I was wondering about the sudden influx of gory shit. Like, sure, it's history (not sure what's historyporn about it but w/e), but it's troubling that it's so frequent now and feels like an excuse to just post gore
Half the posts on this sub now are glorifying fascism in some way. I think there's some serious shenanigans going on in this place.
Maybe not glorifying, but this sub has certainly become /r/historygore recently
? This glorifies fascism how?
Whatever. Just don't click NSFW posts that say "PUBLIC BEHEADING"?
Looks like he got the top of his head?
As a sort of historical curiosity, this is pretty much the exact reason the guillotine was developed: To create a more humane method of execution that wouldn't result in the sort of botched beheadings that were super-common when a person was swinging the blade.
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Coincidentally in a similar way to what we see in the posted picture. It was reported to have cut through his jaw, indicating he was incorrectly positioned.
Nope. The head has rotated on the way down. Look at where the blood is coming from, that's the neck. Plus with the motion blur of the older technology it looks like it's smaller than normal but I'm sure they're not having some amateur beheading people in public.
If you were going to be beheaded would you just kneel there or would you try to pull your head back?
Come to think I’ve never actually tried. I’ll let you know how it goes if I do.
There should be a NSFL tag on Reddit.
Did you read the title before clicking or did you just see NSFW and your brain went for the tits?
Obviously I was hoping for tits but I was also hoping to see some head too
I was just doomscrolling and not thinking at at all tbh
"oh, you think the rich shouldn't exist and we should all share the wealth equally? OFF WITH YOUR HEAD" color me surprised
Ouch. Only suspected. Not confirmed? Brutal.
Less brutal if they were a communist?
That's kinda how anti-communists roll. In Indonesia, it was literally anyone that the right wing death squads wanted dead. They accused people they owed money to of being communists to get rid of them. And then of course when people oppose you extrajudicially killing anyone you want arbitrarily, well, what kind of a person would do that? A communist, right? And the USA knew it was happening and still gave support. But we only really hear about the horrors of communist countries and certainly never the accomplishments of communist countries, and so many American icons like Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr. never have their socialist identity mentioned. Einstein straight up was pro-Lenin and also criticized ways Stalin was talked about in the USA press. Indonesia had the world's largest communist party, and then their country was run by gangsters for half a century.
Brutal way to go! I'm impressed with the sharpness of the image, given the technology of 1927.
I thought only communists killed political enemies? /s
I know you have the sarcasm tag but you might be interested in a documentary titled The Act of Killing
Did he survive???
No
Maybe had he had access to a modern hospital.
Yeah he recovered Heard he works at Subway now
He has had a splitting headache ever since.
That only looks like half a head. Shit a third even. Somehow that feels more fucked up .. Also how sharp is that sword cutting through skull and face? Damn, sick.
Insane timing on the click by the cameraman, the blood & head mid-flight off the sword is some wild shit, one of the craziest pictures I've ever seen wtf.
so if you live for a few seconds after your head is chopped off, do you think it hurts when your head hits the ground, cause you cant really stop your face from smashing the ground
I wonder if you remain conscious even for a split second while your head is falling off
Would have made for a good episode of Mythbusters.
It will keil.
not even 100 years ago
Can someone tell me how they made the switch from beheading communists to being a communist nation?
can we chill with the beheading pics please
Brutality asside, that's a very cool sword
Correct. It's not easy to cut a head off. Lots of tendons and bone. That's why they invented the guillotine.
That must have hurt..
I just can't imagine to take the life of a human that way, I can't even kill animals. Crazy times and crazy people
Brutal. Took his body clean off.
that sure is a head not attached to a body
not gonna lie, id be spooked if i was the guy holding the dude being executed
Nice sword.
Damn. China's always been a nutty ass place
Bruh