You know in kids cartoons when detectives are shown as these tall, dark, mysterious figures that sneak around with their fedoras and magnifying glasses? Somthing tells me that wasn’t an accurate description.
Detective work happens every day online, with help from lots of non-fedora-wearing people. This list below is just a few examples of sleuthing abilities in all of us, courtesy of Reddit’s r/whatisthisthing community!
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“Switch on the back of an old clock labelled ‘Miracle Eye’. What is this?”
‘Miracle Eye’, as someone figured out, is a type of sensor. If there is no light (and the ‘eye’ is on), the clock won’t make any chimes or alarms as not to wake people up!
“Found in the woods behind my house. Definitely not a real gun, but I haven’t the foggiest of what it might be.”
If you’re like me and thought this looked like a retro-future ray gun, you’re kind of right! It’s a Buck Rogers Disintegrator Pistol , a toy from 1935!
“Retired engineer’s donations to garage sale. Sadly he’s lost his mind and has no recollection.”
One reason he might not have any recollection isn’t due to his mental state, but due to the fact that it’s a fake. It’s a replica French key fob that’s made to look like it’s from a French hotel. A cool keychain, nothing more.
“What is this? It’s magnetic, the little magnets inside are all being forced together against their natural magnetic pull.”
This is a form of anti-theft tag remover. One being in a Goodwill might mean that someone left behind a life of theft and crime (good for them) only to let someone else discover it (bad for them).
“About the size of a ping pong ball, hollow like one too.”
The fruit-looking plant is actually an Oak Apple Wasp Gall . A gall is a type of growth on trees and other plants, and these ones specifically are created by the gall wasp.
“Walking on the beach and found two of these near each other?”
A neat research tool, this is an XBT core. XBT stands for Expendable Bathythermograph, and a bathythermograph is used to measure the temperature of different levels of the ocean.
“Shines very bright under light. Almost blinding to look at. M 12 etched on the side.”
More of a partial object, someone said it looks like the top of a silicon boule . The same person said it was likely a failed boule that broke before it finished, which would explain the size and cracked look at the top.
“Found in a library book. Tape over staples?”
A little more complicated than that. It’s an electromagnetic security tag that allows you to just take the book without needing to check it out!
“This glass within a glass is Google-proof!”
This is a shrimp cocktail icer! It’s commonly used for different types of seafood, though. Ice goes in the bottom part, which keeps whatever is in the top part cold!
“Priority mail addressed to my wife at our exact address from Romania. Everything is written in Romanian and the letters GT is written on it. We don’t even know anyone outside the United States. Syringe is empty.”
This mystery had an interesting end to it. Someone informed the uploader that not only is Golden Teacher, or GT, a popular strain of psychedelics, but this is also how mushroom spores are packaged and shipped.
The uploader then told a story, “We used to have a dumbass ex-friend that was caught ordering drugs online to other friends’ houses and then making up weak excuses about why it went to the ‘wrong address’.” It had also arrived empty, meaning it’d likely been broken along the way.
“Weird luminescent red thing on the beach in a lightning storm.”
A mystical alien tracking device it is not. It’s actually a type of fishing rod that glows for night time and low-light fishing.
“Picked this up at a local antique shop. The left side is copper lined, the right side is not, and the center divider is concave.”
A cool piece of furniture, it seems to be a smoker’s table with an extra feature. The copper-lined section was used as an ashtray, while the concave center could fit bottles.
“This was found in the sand at Lewes Beach, Delaware. It looks like it’s part of a mandible but unsure about that. Anyone recognize it?”
Someone not only identified it as a fish ‘premaxilla’ (small bones at the tip of the upper jaw), but specifically that of a type of wrasse (a family of amrine fish).
“Cut open my ceiling to repair some drywall and this started falling out, somewhat squishy and there was a lot of it.”
Though it looks like sand, this is actually an old type of insulator called zonolite. In a perhaps concerning piece of trivia for the uploader, zonolite does contain asbestos!
“What are these brightly coloured string-like things that were washed up on an Australian beach?”
These are the eggs of the sea hare , a species of large sea slug! These guys are weirdly cute, and their eggs are weirdly pretty. Overall just weird.
“Small hard ‘pellet’ found inside a cooked King Crab leg, roughly the size of a pea.”
Huh, today I learned that crabs can make pearls! Yep, this is probably a crab pearl , which can be formed under a crab’s shell when a piece of sand gets stuck in there!
“Found this in my driveway, clearly it’s a McDonald’s fry.”
Monopoly has more ties with McDonald’s than just the annual game, this is a piece from one of the ‘Monopoly Here & Now’ games.
“An unknown rocket-like object is being transported by a barge along the Don River, Russia.”
A simple answer with a complicated transportation method, this is a distillation column for refining crude oil (or anything else that needs refining).
“Yellow box hanging by suction cup with wire to back of box. Two blinking red lights on it as well.”
We all know how important night time visibility is while driving, which this helps with! It tests the effectiveness of the lines painted on the roads, making sure they’re still easy to see in the dark.
“Driving through Erie PA. Weird circle in the sky. Lots of folks pulled over taking pics of it.”
No, it’s not an impending alien invasion, though I’d love to announce that through a pictures list like this. It’s a smoke ring from a blown transformer.
