You Don't Want to Know: The grisly, jaw-dropping and most macabre moments from history, nature and beyond

by James Felton

The suicide plant Australia is so awful that even the plants have evolved to be wankers. Of the many stinging trees of this fine country, the Gympie-Gympie is by far the most toxic. Amongst the first to come across the tree was North Queensland road surveyor A.C. Macmillan. In 1866 he reported that his packhorse had been stung by the tree – which is pretty toxic all over, but especially on the stems – and had then gone insane, dying within hours. Folklore says that having been stung, horses may throw themselves off cliffs in agony. People who have been stung by the plant describe it as unbearable. ‘I remember it feeling like there were giant hands trying to squash my chest,’ Ernie Rider said of his encounter in 1963.56 ‘For two or three days the pain was almost unbearable; I couldn’t work or sleep, then it was pretty bad pain