There’s something truly captivating about an unsolved mystery. Although a lot of them are grisly in nature, the very idea of a code that nobody has been able to crack yet does wonders for our curiosity.
Whether it’s because we have the confidence to think we’ll finally be the ones to solve it or just because we want to see how tough it is for ourselves, something in ourselves tells us that we have to give it a try.
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And hey, that’s the kind of attitude that does eventually solve mysteries. You never win if you never try, right?
Well, someone definitely gave these fascinating photos a try and there’s a good reason to be mostly satisfied with the answers.
This scenery almost seems unreal, but it would definitely jump out at you if you visited an autonomous region in China called Macau.
That great golden behemoth is actually the Grand Lisboa hotel and we can see the contrast between its opulence and the poorer neighborhood in the foreground.
The uploader decided to show us their retinas and there’s a pretty distinct difference between their “good eye” and their “bad eye.”
It turns out that the damage to the eye at the bottom was the result of a plastic pellet that was launched into it when they were a child.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before they lost the ability to see out of it.
While it’s unclear why this water bottle is in the shape of a dumbbell, it teaches us something interesting about fruit.
Namely, that strawberries float, while blueberries sink. Not only that, but the sweeter ones are apparently the most prone to sinking.
This could be because glucose is a fairly heavy molecule.
There are no shortage of conspiracy theories nowadays, but this one has to be one of the more oddly fascinating.
Yes, for some reason, this person is absolutely convinced that of all people, author Stephen King had John Lennon killed and set up his actual assassin, Mark David Chapman.
Other than the fact that King apparently prefers the Rolling Stones, it’s hard to tell what led them to believe this.
Still, I think it’s easy to see why King “isn’t denying it.” After all, if someone accused you of murdering a celebrity out of nowhere, wouldn’t you want to NOPE out of that conversation too?
This shore in Iceland is one of the most colorful in the world and it’s like that for a reason.
The blue water and the green fields don’t come as much of a surprise, but it turns out that the beach is black due to the presence of ground up, cooled lava called basalt.
As for the yellow river? Fortunately, that’s not like that because of chemicals or a giant’s urine, but rather the presence of very fine, bright sediments.
I’m sorry to say that this isn’t some bizarrely skinny ice rink.
Instead, we’re looking at a fiberglass mold for what will eventually become the blade of a wind turbine.
Yes, one. Those things are massive.
Most of us aren’t too excited to look at ads, but it’s worth noting that this one was hand-painted onto the side of this building.
As for why that is, some areas and buildings don’t allow ads, so companies will have artists make murals like this to get around bylaws.
That explains why one street artist I saw seemed really excited about a then-upcoming Mass Effect game.
It looks innocent enough, but this Soviet-era candy bar is definitely not for vegetarians.
According to Atlas Obscura , this is known as a Gematogen (AKA Hemotogen) and it’s made with condensed milk and processed cow’s blood.
That secret ingredient wasn’t supposed to be malicious, however. It was intended as a means to treat anemia, fatigue, and malnutrition. It’s also still sold in Russian pharmacies and Russian-themed grocery stores throughout the world, though with varying ingredients and “blood” content.
This building has a secret passage, but unfortunately, what it’s hiding is kind of underwhelming.
Rather than a treasure trove or a secret laboratory, this hidden door is only keeping the custodian’s supply closet out of sight.
Oh, well.
While this would probably inspire a really cool Mortal Kombat stage, the reality behind its continued existence is far more impressive.
This is the site of ancient Basilica Cistern, which was intended as the water supply for what was once known as Constantinople.
About 1,500 years ago, these were commissioned by the Byzantine emperor Justinian and now rest in modern Istanbul. The place held up pretty well for being well over a millennium old, didn’t it?
If neither Martin Luther King Jr. nor his son seem particularly worried in this picture, it’s likely because this was hardly the first time Dr. King had to do this.
As for what he’s doing in this picture, he’s removing the remains of a cross that somebody had burnt on his lawn in Atlanta, Georgia.
The passengers on this plane aren’t watching a movie about air travel, but rather seeing from their plane’s perspective.
Although it’s hardly unusual to have individual TVs to watch in modern planes, they don’t usually show a live feed from the plane itself.
However, that’s exactly what the uploader was treated to on their short flight from Mexico to Cuba. Apparently, these cameras are also outfitted on some Emirates aircraft.
Someone dug up these odd canisters from their back yard in Southwest London, England.
Given that it’s not unheard to come across buried explosives from World War II in Europe, they were understandably nervous about their find.
However, it turns out that these were just zinc-carbon batteries, although that just raises further questions as to why somebody buried them.
This one is still technically unsolved, but there are some likely answers to what’s going on here.
Apparently, a woman in the Netherlands ensures that these oranges on a stick remain in place here whenever local kids knock them over or steal them.
Although its unclear why she’s doing this next to a random stretch of road, the most common answers suggest that these oranges on sticks are a means of keeping either cats or wasps away.
There’s also the chance that they’re emergency nourishment for bees.
This either seems like a particularly dazzling rock or an art piece, but neither answer really tells the full story.
That’s because this was a chunk of wall taken from West Compton, California.
So it’s not technically just one art piece, but several because the wall featured several layers of street art that people kept painting over with their own work.
This sight may seem a little silly, but it was actually born from some pretty sad desperation.
You may have heard that China is experiencing a deadly coronavirus outbreak right now and this is the answer some people have turned to when they find out there aren’t any more surgical masks available.
Apparently, the cafeteria in UC Davis serves Cheeto dust. Yes, the dust specifically.
This is reportedly near the panini bar, so the expectation seems to be that some students might want to season their sandwiches with Cheeto dust.
As for the weird assertion that it “contains all major allergens,” that was likely added because nobody there knew what’s actually in Cheeto dust.
The pieces in this collection of odds and ends are all united by one theme.
Namely, that all of them were found by the uploader’s dad when he took his metal detector out into the world.
It seems he decided to put it all in his personal mini-museum.
Despite the fact that it has no toes, this pigeon was apparently walking no differently than its peers.
As for why it was missing its toes, that’s apparently a question with a lot of possible answers.
According to Livescience , one possibility is that their toes are being wrapped in discarded human hair and that trying to pry it off only makes the loop tighter. Eventually, enough circulation gets cut off from the toes that they would fall off.
Another possible culprit is bacterial infection contracted after pigeons spend too long standing in their own feces.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the result of someone taking great care and building their own little rock monuments.
Instead, nature itself deserves the credit for these formations, as the water washes the dirt around these rocks away when it laps at the shore.
This creates the phenomenon known as balancing rocks.
I’ve seen a lot of awkward bathroom by now, but some additional context shows just how uncomfortable the design decision was here.
As we can see, the person on the left took this selfie from the stall and blurred out the person in the next one.
What this image doesn’t show, however, is that the person taking the picture is five foot three. So yeah, it really doesn’t offer much privacy.
This plastic skeleton has this weird tubing surrounding it for an important reason.
With some help from an added fluorescent fluid, the 1961 experiment that this skeleton was made for showed how radiation effects the human body.
If your area is known for having huntsman spiders, it’s probably a good idea to watch carefully as you pass by trees.
After all, it turns out that they’re the one thing that the giant spider can press against without standing out in a really obvious way.
By the time this photo was taken back in the ’60s, this bottle of whiskey had already had quite the adventure.
If it looks like it’s covered in snow, that’s not a trick of the eye. It’s actually frozen solid in this image.
Why? Because it was brought to the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica.
It may be hard to tell what’s on this person’s finger, but the rest of this scene should provide a helpful clue.
Yes, it seems that whoever created this set of nesting dolls was ambitious enough to make the smallest of the pack barely fit on someone’s fingertip.
That one is the 20th doll in the set, by the way.
Not to worry, there’s nothing ominous going on inside of that room.
In this building, the bathroom floors have lights in them that turn red when the room is occupied. That should help prevent any awkward walk-ins.
Here we see all the punch cards that the United States National Records Service had stored in 1959.
Back then, the data stored in this whole, massive room would’ve totaled up to about four gigabytes.
Depending on your connection speed, downloading the same amount of data would take less than an hour today.
Based on the colors and the architecture, this might appear to be some shadowy organization’s mountainside base.
In reality, however, this is just a fire station in Italy, albeit an incredibly stylish fire station.
If the shadow of this tree seems a lot different than usual, that’s because there are only special circumstances where it would look like this.
When an eclipse is looming, some leaves are spaced in such a way that their shadows can have the same effect as a pinhole camera, thus creating these little light crescents on the ground.
At first, it might seem fortunate that whatever took the bottom of this telephone pole away spared the missing poster.
However, it turns out that the poster is actually in honor of the piece of pole that was somehow taken away.
It looks like we’re not the only ones wondering what happened to it or why somebody took it.
As you can see, this dime has a much smaller, but just as detailed one sitting next to it.
Apparently, these are just miniature coins that were made as collectibles. For some reason, popular variations of these in the ’70s and ’80s depicted Abraham Lincoln smoking on them.
Sometimes he had a pipe and sometimes he had a cigar, but that was what a significant number of people at the time wanted to see for whatever reason.
If this looks like the world’s largest hairball to you, then you’ve figured out the goal that this Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum has in mind for it.
Here we see the uploader making their contribution, about which they proudly said, “I’m officially a part of one of the worst things on earth!”
