We all know who Hitler and Stalin are, but these ten killers committed just as many atrocities.
Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar
Queen Ranavalona I ruled Madagascar for 36 years in the 1800s. During her reign, she prevented Madagascar from being colonized by European powers through brutal tactics.
One of her favorite methods of determining guilt was through the tangena: a process where subjects accused of crimes were forced to ingest three chicken skin pellets before drinking a poisonous nut extract. Those who vomited up all three pellets were considered innocent. Those who died or couldn’t vomit up the pellets were executed.
Historians believe her regime killed approximately half of Madagascar’s population through this “trial,” forced labor, and military expeditions.
Francisco Macías Nguema
Francisco Macías Nguema was the first president of Equatorial Guinea after its independence in 1968.
He soon established a dictatorship, expelling teachers and doctors from the country and referring to himself as the country’s “Grand Master of Science, Education, and Culture.”
He oversaw mass killings of people who wore glasses or appeared to be intellectuals.
During Christmas Eve of 1975, he ordered troops dressed as Santa Clauses to massacre 150 political prisoners at a national stadium while a band played pop music overhead. By the time he was ousted, more than a third of the nation’s inhabitants had been killed or had escaped.
Delphine LaLaurie
Madame LaLaurie was a famous anti-abolitionist socialite in New Orleans during the early-to-mid 1800s. While the public face she presented to society was one of obscene wealth, grace, and Southern hospitality, her private life was something completely different.
When firemen responded to a fire at her mansion on Royal Street in 1834, curious onlookers forced their way into the attic where LaLaurie kept her slaves. Once inside, the group discovered dozens of slaves strapped to tables and walls while undergoing gruesome experiments and bodily mutilations.
A mob destroyed her mansion in retaliation for what they had discovered, though Madame LaLaurie was able to escape to Paris without punishment.
Thomas Midgley Jr.
Though neither a dictator nor mass murderer, this evil American chemist killed and injured more people than you’ve ever heard of by ruining the planet.
He developed leaded gasoline in the 1920s, fully aware of lead’s neurotoxic dangers, even taking time off for his own lead poisoning recovery. He then went on to create Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were solely responsible for the massive hole in our planet’s ozone layer.
To this day, decades after his death, his commercialized inventions cause millions of premature deaths from cardiovascular disease as well as irreparable environmental damage.
Shirō Ishii
Microbiologist and head of Unit 731, Ishii was Japan’s secret biological warfare operations chief during WWII.
While stationed in China, Ishii conducted live-human vivisections on thousands of prisoners-of-war (“logs” was how they were labeled by their guards), frequently without anesthesia. His experiments included freezing body parts to observe frostbite’s effects, infecting captives with virulent diseases like anthrax and the plague, and detonating small bombs on individuals secured to chairs.
Ishii escaped war-crime prosecution entirely; the U.S. gave him full immunity post-war in exchange for his research findings.
Hong Xiuquan
Hong Xiuquan claimed to be the actual younger brother of Jesus Christ. After failing the civil service exams, he led a rebellion against mid-19th century Qing China known as the Taiping Rebellion.
Hong instituted an insane communist-theocracy which outlawed private property, segregated men and women completely, and persecuted anyone associated with Confucianism or Buddhism. Hong waged total war on the Qing dynasty in the name of his new religion.
What followed was a decades-long slaughter that included scorched-earth policies and mass starvation. Total deaths in the conflict are estimated at between 20 and 30 million people, making it one of the deadliest wars of all time.
Solano López
Paraguay dictator of the 1860s, Francisco Solano López, had an ego so large that it resulted in him destroying his entire country. López got Paraguay involved in a war that they had no chance of winning against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. This was called the War of the Triple Alliance.
Even after his entire army of grown men were wiped out, López would not give up. Instead he had children glue on fake beards and put them on the front lines of battle.
By the time López was killed fighting, about 70% of Paraguay’s total male population had been wiped out because he simply refused to surrender.
King Léopold II of Belgium
Unlike most rulers who seek to establish empires, Léopold II sought to create his own corporate slave plantation. During the late 19th century, the Congo Free State functioned as nothing more than his personal hunting ground.
Cloaking his actions under humanitarian pretenses, Léopold had the native population collect rubber under the threat of his soldiers’ guns to support the industrial revolution in Europe. Villages that did not meet quota would have their children’s hands cut off by Léopold’s hired African armies.
Forced labor, systematic torture and genocide via starvation from his reign killed an estimated 10 million people in the Congo.
Enver Pasha
The Ottoman Empire’s Minister of War during World War World I orchestrated the empire’s genocide against its minority populations.
Claiming that Christians were responsible for a humiliating defeat against Russia at the Battle of Sarikamish, Enver gave the order to begin the Armenian Genocide. Under his command, vast numbers of civilians were stripped of their belongings and forced into deadly treks across the Syrian desert, devoid of any provisions.
His policies of genocide, forced assimilation, and deportation worked and Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks suffered immense losses, with over a million perishing.
Thug Behram
Active in India during the late 1700s and early 1800s, Behram was the deadliest member of the cult of thugs known as Thuggee.
He traveled with a gang of stranglers who waylaid unsuspecting travelers, befriended them, went with them on their journeys, and then murdered them by throat-slitting while they slept, using a yellow cloth as a ceremonial practice.
Since they buried the bodies in undisclosed locations and robbed their victims of everything they owned, Behram and his gang were able to keep a low profile and went undetected by authorities for decades. When British forces finally caught up with Behram in 1840, he was responsible for killing 931 people.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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10 women who earned their place in history by being ‘evil’
Throughout history, women who have overcome stereotypes and expectations to take power for themselves often earn evil or bad because they refused to just exist peacefully on someone else’s terms.
