The 5 Most Painful and Inhumane Torture Devices! | Top 5 | Time Travels

Throughout history, there have been many horrible things people have invented to hurt other people

Whether you were seeking information on traitors, wanted a public execution as a show of force

or simply as a means of deterring criminals, there was a baffling array of torture devices

for the job. Hello Time Travellers, I'm your friend Mike Brady, and here are five truly terrifying torture

devices from history. One, zero, lift off! Mongol Trampling Platform

In the 13th century, the Mongol invasion was in full swing. They were laying waste to all the lands between Asia and Europe

There was a curious lore of the Mongol religion that was causing them trouble. Of course, they had no difficulty in defeating their enemies on the battlefield

that was the problem, but it was against their religion to spill the blood of any noble or king

Now this didn't mean they weren't going to leave them alive, of course, but it did mean they had to find creative workarounds every time

Now this could involve drowning, strangling or beatings. Just so long as they didn't bleed, the requirements of the religion were satisfied

Pretty grim stuff. In 1223, after a particularly devastating victory against the Eastern European Kievan Russ

the Mongol armies, under the command of generals Jebe and Subutai, captured a huge number of the enemy's nobility

The Mongol commanders decided to host a party to celebrate their victory

They would be singing and dancing and feasting for all the soldiers of the Mongol army

Sounds like a great time. So to host this vast celebration, they had a large wooden platform, like a stage, built

And in order to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, the Mongols decided to combine their victory celebration

with the mass execution of the captured nobles. They strapped the nobles beneath the platform

and then held their feast on top of it. They ate, drank, sang and danced atop the platform

that was being held up by the bodies of the Rus princes. And of course, they were all crushed to death

over the course of the celebrations. I've started to think these Mongols weren't very nice guys

The Mongols delighted in finding creative ways to execute their enemies, and the crushing of the Kievan Rus

is one example of their creative religious workarounds. But of course, there were many, many more

We'll revisit the Mongols another day in more detail. But in the meantime, let's flash back in time

to ancient Sicily and the tyrannical king, Philaris. The brazen bull. If being trampled to death isn't your style

what about being cooked alive? Well, the brazen bull was a device

built in the 6th century BCE for Phalaris the king of Acragas which is now modern Sicily The bull was designed for the execution of criminals In order to discourage them from

committing petty crimes, executions in this period were designed to be as gruesome as possible

and they were often held in full view of the general public. The Raisin Bull was built by an Athenian inventor called Perilos, who had carefully crafted the

bull to make death as slow and as loud as possible. The device was a full-size statue of a bull

hollow on the inside and built out of bronze. With a door on the side of the bull's body

an unfortunate prisoner could be stuffed inside the statue and then have the door locked behind

them. And after this, a fire would be lit underneath the bronze body of the bull

and the temperature would slowly rise inside until it was hot enough to cook whoever was inside to

death. To make the spectacle all the more gruesome, Perilos had designed a series of pipes and horns

that connected from the prisoner's position inside the body to the bull's mouth, so the screams of

the prisoner would come out, warped, made all the louder by the design of the tubes. And when a

prisoner was being burnt alive, the sound apparently resembled that of a bellowing bull

As the legend goes, when the inventor Perilos first presented the bull to King Phalaris

The king was intrigued enough to want to see the torture device in action

so he ordered that Perilos be the first one to be tortured. He stuffed him into the bull

For a while, Perilos screamed inside the bull, and just as he was on the verge of death

Falaris had him taken out. The king was satisfied the device would work as intended

but if Perilos was expecting a reward, he would be sorely disappointed

because rather than pay the man for his work, Falaris had the badly burnt inventor thrown from a cliff to his death

after this the bull was used on serious criminals who committed treason but the mad king may have

lived to regret commissioning the horrible invention because according to legend again

king phalaris himself was overthrown and executed through burning in the brazen bull

the bull's story didn't end there though in later centuries the device would be taken by the romans

and used to execute Christians and Jews that had rebelled against Roman rule as late as 287 AD

The Rack. This is an infamous device that we've all heard of

The Rack dates to the medieval age and was mostly used for the torture of traitors and so-called heretics

Various designs of this device exist, but it was perhaps most famously used in Spain

during the years of the bloody Spanish Inquisition, when it was used to torture those supposed heretics

The rack is a fairly simple machine, really. A prisoner would be strapped onto a flat table

raised off the ground, and then have their limbs tied by ropes to axles that run across the head and the foot of the table So that a torturer would then insert a piece of wood into these axles using it to rotate the wheels pull the rope tightly and slowly

The prisoner's limbs were stretched in opposite directions to each other. So depending on the severity of the crimes and the length of time that it would take to

get a confession, many joints might be dislocated before the torture would end

The hips, knees, shoulder and elbows were all in danger of dislocating under torture

on the rack, and some muscle tendons were even stretched so far that they couldn't contract

This torture could take place over many hours and leave its victims permanently disfigured

Protestant preacher and poet Anne Askew was tortured on the rack for heresy

in the 1540s and was left so badly damaged that she had to be

carried to her execution because her limbs had been dislocated. Using the rack as a

restraint also allowed other tortures to take place. The victim could be

cut or burnt while held in place in the rack with no way of defending themselves from the torturer

The Spanish Inquisition in particular made use of cords attached to the rack and wrapped around

the limbs of a person undergoing torture so when the ropes were pulled tight the cords wrapped

around the limbs would also tighten cutting into the victim's flesh all the way down to the bone

John Custos was a Portuguese freemason who was tortured by the Inquisition in 1743

He was subjected to the Rack three times over the course of months, each time being grievously wounded before being healed back to health by his captives so that the torture could just begin all over again

Despite the reputation the rack has as a medieval method of torture, it was used as late as

the 18th century in some parts of the world. The practice was only outlawed in Britain in 1708, and in some places lasted way longer

Braking on the wheel Now the method of breaking on the wheel was popular across Europe

particularly in the 18th century, where it was done publicly as a deterrent to other criminals

And the watching crowd could even get involved. Great, who doesn't like crowd participation

It was probably modelled after an earlier Frankish execution in which someone was placed beneath a cart

and repeatedly run over until they died. Creative. The later torture device was often little more than the wheel of a cart

or if time was short some crude pieces of wood could be nailed together

into the rough shape of a wheel The prisoner would be tied to the wheel while the executioner

armed with a club hammer away at their victim's arms and leg were broken

before delivering a final blow to the stomach The actual length that this torture would go on for could vary

depending on who the torturer was and how strong the person being beaten was

In 1761 a French man accused of strangling his son was beaten on the wheel for more than two hours before he died His torturers were attempting to extract from him who his accomplices might have been Other times

someone was simply beaten until they gave up whatever information a torturer was seeking

and then let go. In some cases, breaking on the wheel was just a way of killing a prisoner in a

gruesome and public way. There are also multiple ways to perform the torture that could be adopted

to local conditions. The Germans liked to beat a person until their spine broke, and then they would

weave their body through the spokes of the wheel and then string the wheel up

This would then leave the person unable to move and they would die of exposure

It's horrible. Humanity's capacity for cruelty truly knows no bounds. The Boot

The Boot has had a few variations, but they all centred on achieving the same results

Unsurprisingly, from the name, this focused on a victim's foot. It involved placing the victim's foot in a wooden, or in some cases, metal, boot

And from here, there were two options. The boot could either be screwed tighter and tighter against the victim's foot

until the bones within began to crack and split. Some places also used the method of driving a wedge into the boot with a hammer

which would also cause the boot to contract and snap the victim's bones

Or in some cases, the boot could be used to submerge a victim's foot in boiling liquid

In England, a metal version of the boot was made of riveted iron, and once the boot was on, boiling oil was poured into the device

completely submerging the foot and cooking it inside the iron. Sometimes the boot would be filled with cold water and then slowly boiled over a flame

This brutal form of torture had its origins in the medieval period, but it was used up until the 17th century in some places

The French, meanwhile, used a similar sort of boot, though theirs was usually made of leather

These boots would be drawn over a prisoner's legs and feet, and then submerged in boiling water

The leather would absorb the liquid and cook the person's flesh on the inside

Unlike other methods of torture, the boot was not intended for public executions

and instead functioned solely as a means of extracting confessions from prisoners

It's easy to feel thankful that none of these devices are, to our knowledge, in use anywhere in the world today

But unfortunately, even though laws have been signed that outlaw the use of torture on prisoners

it still happens behind closed doors. People may not be being cooked alive inside of bronze balls

but some of the world's governments still make use of terrible, creative ways

of extracting information from victims. Remember, history doesn't repeat, but it certainly echoes