Yeah, those vintage refrigerators may look all cute and retro, but it turns out they had a deadly feature: latches that only opened from the outside. So imagine if you're a small child looking for a place to hide. Are you starting to see the horrifying problem?

According to Buzzfeed, back in the day so many children were climbing into refrigerators, getting stuck inside, and suffocating to death that the government passed the Refrigerator Safety Act in 1956. Until then, refrigerators could only be opened from an outside latch and were lined with an airtight rubber seal, making it harder for parents to hear their children calling for help. Talk about scary.

The new act required manufacturers to make fridge doors openable "easily from the inside." So most companies switched to a magnetic mechanism that allowed doors to stay closed when you wanted them to, but open from the inside with a little push. Interesting side note: To help develop door standards, scientists from the American Academy of Pediatrics even studied the effects of being trapped inside a fridge-like atmosphere on kids.

Thankfully, refrigerator-related deaths have greatly decreased since then, however, old refrigerators can still be found in some homes, or abandoned in garages and backyards. As recently as 2013, three South African children were suffocated after being trapped in an abandoned refrigerator near their home, according to The Huffington Post.

Moral of the story: Thank goodness for technological advances.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io