Even the worst day can be made a lot better with a surprise discovery. There are literally so many random little (or big!) things out there just waiting for us to find them, it’s kind of unreal.
These people found some pretty cool things out in the wild. It’s almost enough to make you want to put your phone down and get to exploring.
“Found this sidewalk chalk art while out for a walk.”
The best part about street art is the fact that you’re going to find the most amazing things, all done using surprising media like chalk. But the worst part is the fact that you may never know who the artist was that made such an incredible creation.
At least we can all stop and stare at it.
“Balanced Rock, formed by glacial erosion ~20,000 years ago, in Devil’s Lake State Park, Wisconsin.”
That’s so cool! It’s amazing how rocks and erosion can make different things. This rock doesn’t look like it should be able to balance like that, and yet it seems to be perfectly unmovable.
I would honestly go on a long hike if it meant getting to see something like that.
“This Howls Moving Castle of boathouses I came across in Idaho.”
You really have to wonder how long it takes people to make buildings like this. All of those different parts stuck together all intricately probably takes a lot of patience.
But the design is absolutely flawless! Somehow, every part works so well together, even though they don’t look like they should.
“The Ayam Cemani (black rooster).”
I didn’t know that roosters could be black. This one looks beautiful! The blueish and greenish tints to the black feathers are so pretty; it reminds me of a peacock or a butterfly.
Do you think female chickens can come in black? Would they lay black eggs? Nah, probably not.
“This recently found Australian magpie nest (3 foot wide) contains many man made items including a plastic fork, USB stick, headphones, coat hangers, electrical wire and 3D glasses.”
It’s amazing just how much junk we leave around the world. It’s gotten to the point where even animals are adapting to use our junk in their homes. This magpie nest has wires and other human made things in it, which is just wild. Our impact can be felt everywhere.
“This book about everything we know about furniture making.”
I have to hand it to whoever decided to take every piece of furniture making knowledge out there and put it in a massive encyclopedia. I mean, just look how big that book is!
If you didn’t know anything about furniture making before reading that, you’d probably still end up becoming an expert.
“Remodeling my 1918 home and found this battery in the wall.”
That’s so cool. I’m pretty sure every super old home has some secrets or surprises hiding behind the walls or under the floorboards. Things people have left behind, or forgotten about (or even hid on purpose).
I wonder if it’s… safe to keep that battery in the house. It’s pretty old, so it’s probably harmless now.
Chunk of ice glowing in the sunset in an Icelandic cave.
I swear, if you want to find something incredible and out of this world, just go to Iceland. That country is full of the most amazing things that you literally can’t see anywhere else. It’s surreal.
Who would’ve thought that the sun hitting a chunk of ice at just the right angle would cause it to glow like this?
“Corn truffles! Sometimes, if the heat and humidity are high, corn can be infected by a fungus that causes the kernels to expand and become the delicious delicacy known as huitlacoche (pronounced whee-tla-KOH-cheh).”
So. Today I learned about corn truffles. They look gross, and would probably freak me out if I found them on my cob of corn. But they’re apparently edible, so that’s good.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty curious now. I hope I can have the chance to try it someday.
“The Coca-Cola Lake (Lagoa da Coca Cola) in Rio Grande do Norte region of Brazil – boasting high iodine and iron content, enhanced by the pigmentation of tree roots that reach into the lake.”
That’s really pretty. Like, really pretty. It almost makes me want to drop everything, travel to Brazil, and just jump in (but I won’t).
The people who first discovered this lake probably freaked out when they saw the color, but since it’s just caused by tree roots, it can’t be harmful.
“Chicago skyline visible from nearly 50 miles away in Indiana Dunes sunset.”
How incredible! I know that, on certain bodies of water like the Great Lakes and stuff, you can sometimes see a city skyline on one side from the city on the opposite side, but I’ve never seen it first-hand.
Since Indiana Dunes and Chicago both sit along Lake Michigan, it makes sense that they’d be visible to each other under certain conditions.
“This hallway.”
When I said that these images would be of things that are special, I didn’t say some of them wouldn’t be “special” in the sarcastic sense.
I hope no one ever needs to move furniture down this hallway, because that’s way too many pivots.
“Liddicoatite, also called kaleidoscope tourmaline, is a rare variety of tourmaline only from Madagascar!”
What a pretty gem. It’s a kind of tourmaline, which makes sense, because it reminds me of watermelon tourmaline , which is supper pretty too.
Places in Africa like Madagascar really have the coolest gemstones. I swear, every day I’m hearing about different gemstones, and they all come out of that region.
“This mushroom that has grown directly out of the cracks on a fence post.”
Sometimes, it’s the smallest discoveries that leave the biggest impact. These mushrooms may not be anything special, but they’re so cute! The fact that they’re growing out of a fence post is kind of random, but what can you do?
I don’t know what kind of mushrooms those are, but they’re cool! They look so magical.
“Snapped this incredible picture of these 2 Deathstalkers in a chokehold as I was camping in the desert last night.”
Yup, those are scorpions. And yup, they’re glowing in the dark. Surprisingly enough, scorpions glow in the dark , though the reason why isn’t very clear.
As terrifying as these violent arachnids may be, the way they glow in the UV light is kind of mesmerizing. That doesn’t mean you should go out looking for them, though!
“I took an absurdly detailed pic of the sun yesterday using a special telescope in my backyard.”
” Look closely and you can watch how the magnetic field affects the plasma in the atmosphere.”
(Quietly deletes every slightly blurry night sky pic on my phone, because why even bother anymore.) Seriously, this is incredible!
“Godzilla cloud.”
Look, sometimes it takes an incredible backyard telescope and photography setup to achieve an amazing photo of the Sun, and sometimes you just snap a pic of a Godzilla-shaped cloud.
Both can be super special.
“Trees covered with snow look like snow monsters. (Mount Zao, Japan).”
Winter is kind of funny. You have all these water droplets that get so cold, they freeze over. And then so many of them fall in one spot, they become chunks of white snow.
And then those chunks group together on things like buildings and trees, and completely transform the landscape. And make things look like monsters, somehow.
“A wolf designed entirely out of pipe cleaners.”
Of course, when I saw this pic I could tell that it wasn’t a real wolf, but I assumed it was a stuffed animal or something.
The fact that it’s actually a sculpture made of pipe cleaners is pretty darn special!
“The Chemistree.”
I’ve seen a lot of cool trees, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one that resembles a chemical diagram quite this perfectly.
Also, bonus points for the pun.
“Common snapping turtle babies look like tiny dinosaurs.”
Lookit the lil’ dino baby!
I mean, I always knew baby turtles are cute, but this just skyrockets them into the cuteness hall of fame.
“This photo is the island of Saint Vincent, taken from my parent’s house in Barbados, 110 miles away. This happens very rarely, as the sky has to be very clear at such a long distance for it to be visible.”
In case you didn’t know, Barbados is pretty much due east of St. Vincent. There’s nothing between them but the sea, so it’s technically possible to see one country’s skyline from the other.
But there are probably so many other factors that would have to take place in order for this picture to be possible. In any case, it’s cool!
“The rare purple cauliflower. Its signature color comes from the same antioxidant found in red cabbage and red wine: anthocyanin.”
This Redditor got come grief in the comments for calling purple cauliflower rare, but it’s uncommon where they live, so let them enjoy the novelty.
Either way, you can’t deny that this example is particularly photogenic.
“This handkerchief is carved on a marble.”
I’m not sure if the Redditor meant “in marble” or “a marble sculpture,” but either way this is impressive.
I’m always amazed by how sculptors can make such a hard material look gracefully draped like fabric.
“Rock freezes in the shape of a heart.”
This is super cool. The water would need to be moving just enough to create the artery-like shapes, but not enough to prevent the water from freezing solid once it got cold enough.
“A tungsten filled counterfiet American Gold Eagle. The coin weighs the correct amount, because gold and tungsten have a similar density.”
This is pretty cool and a pretty tricky scam. The weight is just right and according to the Redditor, this coin passed a couple of their tests before they tried cutting it.
That was the key. Tungsten is brittle, but gold is soft. So when attempting to cut it, real gold would have “smooshed” rather than crumbling apart easily.
“Manila staircase that tells you calories burned with each step.”
That’s kind of interesting. It puts into perspective how everything we do costs energy, and that energy is expressed in calories. Sure, climbing this staircase once probably won’t get you much closer to your fitness goals, but being able to visualize how much energy it takes to climb stairs is still pretty neat.
“$4 mil Quartz found in Arkansas.”
I’m so happy for the people who found this big old hunk of quartz. Quartz is such a pretty stone, and while it’s more common than, say, diamonds or opals, it can still go for a lot of money.
It’ll probably take years to sell all of that quartz. Unless someone decides to buy the whole thing…
“My Roman Republic Silver Coin Minted In 211 To 208 BC. At This Time, The Carthaginian General Hannibal Was Waging War On The Republic During The Second Punic War.”
It’s funny to think about how, of all the things we’ve kept from millennia ago, one of them is coins. Ancient Romans used to use coins the way we still use coins. Sure, we have electronic money now, but coins still exist, too!
I wonder what the Romans would’ve thought about our society today.
“World’s Oldest Football circa 1540s and found behind paneling in Stirling Castle.”
I’m not gonna lie, I thought this was a baseball. But still, the fact that people were playing soccer even 500 years ago (or at least, they were playing some form of what we know to be soccer/football today).
It’s amazing that, centuries later, this thing is still so well-preserved!
