Each of us has an area of niche knowledge. Heck, some of us might know about all sorts of niche things. But there's no way that any one person can positively identify every little thing they see.
Fortunately, there's the r/whatisthisthing subreddit. It's basically a one-stop shop for people who want to know what the heck they're looking at, or possibly holding.
If you're of a certain age, you remember these crazy things called photo albums, where we'd display actual physical photographs without the aid of a smartphone. This thing is simply an unused photo album.
I was hoping this was ambergris, since that stuff's super valuable, but this is more likely a bunch of glass floats from fishermens' nets that have become polished by ocean currents.
It wouldn't be a r/whatisthisthing post without a visit from the bomb squad, would it? These are practice rounds for 40mm grenades. Yes, the bomb squad was called.
We're not sure what the carving means, but the material is Whitby jet, something found along the Yorkshire coastline. People have been carving it into trinkets for centuries.
Here's a sad one, since these things are definitely not good for birds. They all appear to be from medical waste, as several are friction lids from pill bottles.
We don't hear much about cobblers nowadays, but the shoe-repair business used to be much bigger than it is today. This is an anvil, used as a kind of mold, for a cobbler to repair shoes.
You know how each toilet tank has a float inside, usually made of rubber? In the olden days, they had floats, but they were made of glass. This is one such example.
I wanted this to be an example of vintage drug smuggling, but it's nothing as exciting as that. The powder is just old foam padding that's deteriorated with age.
This would be perfect in a nautically-themed house, as the handle-looking thing definitely came from a hatch door from either a ship or a barn.
This is known as evaluation trial trenching. Basically, before a big project, some trenches have to be dug out to ensure that there aren't items of archaeological significance in the ground.
These look fun to clack together, and I'm sure they are. But the official use of this is to sharpen razor blades.
This honestly looks like some kind of secret prison or something, but it's something that was pretty common in the 1950s: a bomb shelter. Those racks are probably either beds or benches.
This one's kind of neat. The bag-looking thing is a positive pressure vent, which is essentially an exhaust system for expelling mold from a house.
It's a bomb, right? It has to be a bomb.
As it turns out, it's totally not a bomb. It's just a submarine detector that somehow washed ashore.
We can't be totally certain of this one, but it appears to be an inglenook — basically a cozy little reading nook in a house. They've largely fallen out of fashion.
This one's pretty straightforward. They're corner dust guards, designed to keep dust from accumulating in hard-to-reach areas, while also making it easier to sweep.
This is obviously something to do with some kind of sea creature, but what? If you're not a marine biologist, it would be understandable if you didn't realize this was cemented-together sand made by a moon snail.
We're not sure where the wash rag came from — perhaps it was just padding for the smaller object. The smaller object, for what it's worth, can be put in surgical gauze and used to detect RFID or x-rays.
If you think this looks like a bullet hole, well, you're on the right track. The hole was most likely made by a BB. It still isn't ideal, but it's better than an actual bullet.
When someone finds something from a WWII veteran, there's about a 50/50 chance they'll need to call in the bomb squad. Fortunately, that isn't the case here. This is just a timed artillery fuse.
