There are plenty of stupid ways to die. But we can say that before (in the old days) we had a good chance of going over to the left for frankly stupid reasons. The website Listverse thus listed some innocuous things that could kill us during the Victorian era and it’s tasty so we’ll tell you about it here in good and due form (and also because Listverse ugh the laziness).
1. Go to the bathroom
Today we have really well made toilets (so well made that they burst 10 liters of drinking water with each flush). But this is all very recent. Not so long ago, for example, we had oil lamps to light up the toilets (and lots of weird stuff that we tell you in this top tips to know about life before electricity). And unsurprisingly it caused a few small domestic accidents like big fires.
2. Eat a sandwich
You make me laugh with your overpriced ham and butter, you don’t realize how much that stuff could kill you before. Globally, the food was made with contaminated ingredients, a study even showed that under the Victorian era 10% of butter, 8% of bread contained copper while white lead was put in cheese to make it whiter and looks less gross, then also lead in mustard and mercury in chocolate. Nutriscore all rotten food of the time.
3. Go down the stairs
The stairs are very convenient. The horrible stairs it’s less practical. But before we were less fussy about the measurements and many constructions banged their ass to have perfectly straight stairs. Especially since the cities were experiencing massive densification and to accommodate all this pretty little world we had to make very narrow, badly designed stairs and sometimes without a ramp (especially for the servants). Unfortunately, this architectural je-c’en-fais not devoid of an old-fashioned charm caused many accidents and fatal falls. The stupid thing.
4. Play pool
Billiards has a not insignificant history in our evolution, in particular because it has greatly contributed to the enthronement of plastic in our daily lives. Billiard balls used to be made of wood, but it sucked, they wore out really fast. So we opted for the ivory balls (too cute) but it was super expensive, so expensive that we ended up saying to ourselves “enough is enough” (the history books are intractable on this quote) and especially by dint of killing all the elephants, we had fewer and fewer. V’la-ti not that we started using celluloid to make balls cheaper but of as good quality. GREAT, but the downside is that they were very flammable and could therefore again cause fires or just explode.
5. Make up your face
There was a time when people liked to put radium everywhere, including in cosmetics. This is how putting on make-up could easily lead to death and I recommend our article on the radium girls on this subject, it fucks the female dog.
6. Playing with toys as a child
We were too happy to discover asbestos in the 19th century. Super insulating, it also makes it possible to fireproof furniture and homes so we don’t deprive ourselves of it, even in children’s toys because necessarily a toy that does not catch fire, in principle, it looks cool (especially after telling you about that dark story of exploding billiard balls). Lack of pot exposure to asbestos leads to cancer. OUPSIIIE.
7. The first fridges
It is sometimes difficult to imagine what life looked like before fridges, but above all we forget that the first fridges were far from perfect. Jacob Perkins thus invented a refrigerating machine using vapor compression, I don’t really know what compressed vapor looks like but you have to believe that it worked well because the machines were messing around a lot. To improve the equipment, we have therefore added refrigerants. No luck, they were so toxic that we stopped making them after a leak in the manufacturing plant that led to many deaths.
8. Use an iron
After all that we have already read in this top, I even wonder how we could have had the sad idea of using this kind of tool without detecting any potential danger. Henry W. Seely created the first electric iron in 1882, but to use it you had to permanently connect it to an electrical circuit. And the silly thing is that you couldn’t adjust the heat level, so obviously when you wanted to iron the collar of a shirt you could burn it and cause a… a? Guess it, it’s easy. Well yes a fire.
9. Put up green wallpaper
Wallpapering is not dangerous. Wallpapering with arsenic is dangerous. But how do you come to commit such nonsense? Well, in the 19th century, we began to create the first synthetic dyes, and green was a very difficult color to reproduce and especially to keep because it oxidizes very quickly. When we manage to develop emerald green, everyone fights for it, but it was made of arsenic. It took a few deaths in the 19th century to realize this and I recommend This article highly well done to learn more.