Let’s flip the script on one of our old lists. Imagine cracking open a book for some mild escapism. Experience a fun, colorful, harmless fantasy world. Look behind the scenes for the life of an innocuous celebrity. Now, put a scene that would be considered envelope-pushing if Stephen King or Grady Hendrix included it in…

As Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi points out in an article for Discover, in 1536, witnesses to Anne Boleyn’s execution claimed that her severed head’s lips moved, causing them to wonder whether she was attempting to speak. Likewise, when Jean-Paul Marat’s assassin, Charlotte Corday, was guillotined in 1793 and her executioner slapped the cheeks of her…