IIam sure you have heard of things like quartering and cutting out tongues. But here I gathered the nastiest ways people used to torture and kill others. This list includes both ancient and modern techniques of inflicting pain everywhere from England to China. I hope you enjoy learning about it and, please, don’t try this at home.
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The Breaking Wheel has a huge wooden wheel to which the punished one would be tied down and then beaten up with heavy objects. Sometimes those wheels were placed vertically on a spinning system and fire would be lit underneath so that when the torturer would spin the wheel the tortured one would get burned for a few moments. Sometimes after beating the punished one with a heavy wooden stick on the wheel, they would place the wheel vertically on tall wooden tower-like structures and left to die in the sun. They also would untie broken limbs and tie them back up bent in most unnatural positions to inflict even more pain on the punished one. The Breaking Wheel method would not necessarily kill a person, but they were destined to die after such torture because of pain, infection, and general exhaustion.
While it does not sound like a torture device, Spanish Tickler had nothing to do with tickling. It was a very sharp claw-like instrument that the torturer would hold in their hand and rip the flesh on the tortured one by applying pressure on the skin. Usually, such torture would be performed in public and the torturer would take his time scarring the person inch by inch. Sometimes the Spanish Tickler would be combined with other torture methods as racking (pulling a person apart to the point of limbs breaking) and rat torture. In most cases, people who would undergo the Spanish Tickler method would not survive to see another day because of the immense pain it caused. Imagine having long and deep wounds all over your body. That must have been a horrible way to go but wait till you read to the bottom of this article.
This is probably the most inventive method of torture I discovered. Bamboo Torture is just that torture with bamboo. No, not by hiking a person with bamboo sticks. But by letting the bamboo shoots grow into the body of the tortured one. Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth. “Certain species of bamboo can grow 910 mm (36 in) within a 24-hour period.” (Wikimedia) So an obvious use of this knowledge to our ancestors was to torture people with it. At first, I was sceptical about a plan penetrating human muscles but then I watched a MythBusters episode on it and they have proven that it is indeed possible. This would be indeed a nasty way to die. The death would be slow and painful. Those people were still alive when bamboo was growing right through them! Sometimes the bamboo shoot would indeed grow through tortured people and appear on the other end while the person was still conscious.
If you have seen The Vikings tv show you are most likely family with this execution method. A brutal way in which Northman murdered only the worst criminals. It was a religious act as well as execution because the life of the killed one was sacrificed to the gods. The ritual consisted of cutting open the back of the person with an axe breaking the ribs apart exposing lungs. Then they would stretch two sides of the upper body in opposite director creating wings out of flesh and skin, thus the eagle. Further, the lungs would be taken out of the ribcage still attached to the oesophagus so the person would be able to breathe to keep them alive until they finally die of blood loss.