A group of scientists in Madrid in 2012 found that children inherit a fear of the dentist more from fathers than from mothers.

Residents of North Yorkshire from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries were so afraid of the dead rising to attack the living that they would dismember, decapitate, burn, and otherwise mutilate corpses before burying them. The process was generally undertaken shortly after death, when the bones were still soft.

A radio broadcast based on The War of the Worlds brought pandemonium to Quito, Ecuador, in 1949, as thousands of people attempted to escape impending Martian gas raids. A mob set fire to the radio station’s building, killing fifteen inside. Authorities were slow to respond; most police and soldiers had been sent to the countryside to fend off the aliens.

Charlotte Brontë wrote to a friend about a woman who “must be a regular bore with her unfortunate homophobia,” advising, “Don’t look for that word in the dictionary.” This may indicate, notes a scholar, “fear or dislike of men,” from the Latin homo (man), not the Greek homo (same). The word is unclear in the manuscript; it could also be monophobia, fear of being alone.

Describing phalanx warfare, Thucydides wrote that “fear makes every man want to do his best to find protection for his unarmed side in the shield of the man next to him on the right.” The soldier farthest right must try to “keep his own unarmed side away from the enemy, and his fear spreads to the others who follow his example.” The effect of this fear, wrote the historian: “the right wing tends to get unduly extended.”