10 creepiest ways to hide your face

Ever since man invented clothes, he has constantly tried to cover his face as well. The reasons for this were different each time - from functional and useful to mocking and even funny. These days, some of these masks are impossible to look at without an unpleasant feeling of fear caused by their purpose, and sometimes just their appearance.

We found the 10 creepiest things a person has ever put on their face and detailed what made them do it.

The so-called "menpo", or simply a mask for protection, the samurai covered his face immediately before the fight. In addition to its main function, it also played a supporting role for a rather heavy helmet of a warrior.

For the first time, such masks were used by the British army at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Their task was to protect the face of the tanker, into whom shrapnel and ricocheted fragments flew through the embrasure in the armor.

One of the most well-armed gladiators in ancient Rome were the murmillons, who also had a massive helmet in their 15-kilogram equipment. Its distinctive feature was large slits for the eyes, protected by a large mesh, which prevented a mortal wound from a trident or sword.

This mask, along with the rest of the equally creepy plague doctor outfit, was designed in Paris in 1619. The long beak served as a repository for fragrant herbs and flowers, as people believed that the disease was spread through the unpleasant smells of decaying flesh that hung everywhere in the air.

One form of public punishment for women in England and Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries was the wearing of a similar mask with a vise for the tongue. Such a “volume control” was intended for noisy and habalistic persons, sometimes even suspected of witchcraft, but, apparently, not so much as to immediately send them to the fire.

This method of hiding the face was used in one of the most famous prisons in Australia, which functioned in Melbourne from 1842 to 1929. The most dangerous criminals here were kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, and during hour-long walks in the yard they were taken out in caps made of coarse fabric, which prevented them from communicating with each other.

There is dirt in order to temporarily lose efficiency or even commit suicide, for slaves from Africa it was a common practice. The owners, losing money on this, did not come up with anything better than putting masks on the rebels, which prevented those handfuls from eating the land.

Fearing the start of massive gas attacks after Pearl Harbor, the US military suddenly found out that gas masks for adults and children are very large. When creating a smaller version of the protection with the permission of Disney, the image of the iconic cartoon character Mickey Mouse was taken. A single batch of 1000 samples, each of which was supposed to add a playful element to the defense process, is now sorted into collections as one of the most terrible interpretations of the mouse.

Before rubber and plastic finally took over the market, in preparation for Halloween, all people did not go to specialized departments in the supermarket, but made costumes with masks on their own. Some of these creations from the 1900s look really scary, especially against the backdrop of careful sketches these days.

These completely black masks, in which it was also very difficult to talk, were put on by women of the 16th century completely voluntarily. The task of these "masks" was to protect the snow-white skin of the face from the sun's rays, which gave it a plebeian tan.