Have you ever found something unusual, something that nobody seems to understand the purpose of? Well, if you have, and if you want answers, the internet is your friend. All you need to do is post a picture.
Stashed into a book.
This old military-looking award was carefully hidden away in a cut-out book. As it turns out, the medal marks 15 years of impeccable service in the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.
James Bond?
A guy popped out this complicated-looking briefcase that’s full of electronics, then put some headphones on. It all seems strange, but it makes perfect sense once you realize he was testing different cellular signals in the area.
That isn’t meat.
An unfortunate carnivore found this weird device in the meat they were eating. It’s a microchip for tracking livestock, and it definitely shouldn’t have found its way onto somebody’s dinner plate.
Rustic bomb shelter?
This door in the German countryside isn’t a bomb shelter — far too flimsy for that — but a wurzel keller, a kind of root cellar. Because it’s partially underground, it helps keep things nice and cool.
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Is it real?
This money looks similar to U.S. currency, but also references the Japanese government and pesos. So what is it? Turns out that when Japan occupied the Philippines during World War II, this is what the money looked like.
Time to get paranoid.
Someone found this hidden under a dresser. If it looks like a surveillance device, that’s because it is. There’s no camera, but there is a microphone for audio recording. Pretty creepy…
Mystery booth.
The person who posted this jokingly speculated that it was a personal nuclear shelter or Futurama -style sucide booth. It’s actually neither. It’s just a public washroom stall that rotates into place once someone enters.
We’ve all wondered.
I think everyone uses these escalator bristles as shoe shiners, but what are they actually intended for? They’re put in place to keep loose stuff like purse straps or baggy dresses and pants from getting snagged.
Top secret.
A matte black, unmarked truck with a police escort? It might seem like it’s on its way to Area 51, but it’s actually a package wastewater treatment tank — basically a glorified alternative to a septic tank.
No, it’s not kinky.
“Found in my dads room, really hoping its not a sex thing,” wrote the original poster. Well, the poster is in luck as it’s not a sex thing at all, but a device that can be worn over shoes to give improved traction on ice.
An inconvenient room.
This tiny, inaccessible room in the peak of a barn is intended as a roosting area for barn owls. Barns are full of little pests like mice and rats, and barn owls are really, really good at handling said pests.
Kill it with fire.
A Redditor stumbled onto this squirming thing that they aptly described as a “Lovecraftian nightmare”. They were advised that this is simply a common hog moth, though I think it still qualifies as a nightmare.
Pebbles in the sand.
This thing has a heavy metal weight inside, numbers etched on the outside, with the consistency of sea glass. That’s because it comes from the sea. It’s a tracker pebble, which is thrown into the water to track currents.
Red sky at night.
This red (or purple) sky can be seen at nighttime anywhere there’s a big grow operation nearby. These facilities typically have grown lights that operate 24/7 and can create an eerie glow.
Weird thing for a bar to have.
A bar located in an old building found this big wheel embedded in the ground when they were doing renovations. The building used to be a garage, and old-timey cars couldn’t reverse, necessitating the use of turntables like this.
Better call I.T.
The server room is a place for servers, cables, and maybe a mouse or two. But this server room contains something a little bit alarming — a Russian Sagger missile.
When the uploader bought a new house, they uncovered two rusted metal devices that look like this.
They initially thought they were mouse traps, but it turns out they were thinking a little too small. These were actually supposed to catch gophers.
In the Galician region of Spain, it’s apparently not uncommon to find these small raised huts in people’s backyards.
In, Spanish, they’re known as hórreos, but they’re also called cabazos in the Galician language.
They’re essentially raised cellars that are built with these stilts to keep rats out and are often used for drying corn.
While exploring Piha Beach in New Zealand, the uploader came across this wedge that seemed to be part of a life form.
It turns out they were right, as this is actually a piece of a sand dollar.
Despite taking this 14 karat gold object to multiple jewelers, this user got no closer to finding out what they actually had.
If it seems like a strange handcuff to you, you’re actually fairly close. Apparently, this is an antique glove clip.
As you might expect, the uploader became pretty curious when they saw this massive box pull up to their neighbor’s house.
Normally, you’d think this would be as easy as asking them, but it turns out the uploader wasn’t actually in town at the time and received the photos from their partner.
Nonetheless, others were able to get a likely fix on this cube’s purpose: A storage cube that makes it easier to take stuff to and from a storage facility.
When this person bought a car, they found this bottle of unknown yellow liquid that apparently came from Bulgaria inside.
While it would seem pretty mysterious out of context, it turns out that the rose on the label is a pretty major clue.
As you might expect from a bottle this small, this is actually perfume made from rose oil.
This key chain piece definitely stands out, but the uploader had no idea how it ended up in their house.
That is, until they found out that it was from a Cirque Du Soleil show at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. That apparently told them everything they needed to know about who brought it over.
Neither the uploader nor their teacher seemed to understand why this little wheel with German text was in their school.
I’m not sure whether the knowledge that it’s a seed chart intended to classify them for easier filtration actually helped to answer that question, but at least they found out what it was.
When this person moved into a new apartment, this solid block of wood with a bunch of slots was waiting for them.
As they would soon discover, it’s likely a holder meant to carry military challenge coins.
These coins are apparently supposed to prove membership to a certain military unit when challenged, but whoever owned this seemed to be collecting them.
This object apparently consists of a hollow cone and an end piece with this plastic spikes on it.
While it’s understandable that it would be hard to figure out what it’s for if that’s the only information you have, others quickly recognized it as a special design of ice scraper.
Apparently, it works pretty well.
Blow-out valve.
If you’ve ever wondered about these indentations on milk jugs, wonder no longer. They’re designed to prevent the jug from exploding if it’s dropped. The force, theoretically, will cause the bubble to push out, preventing the whole thing from blowing up.
Room numbers for the very short.
These weirdly low room numbers in a hotel are designed to be read in the event of a fire. If fire crews need to check out a room when there’s heavy smoke, they can get down low to read the room number.
Makeup box?
There are all sorts of weird stuff that can be seen when cruising at 30,000 feet, and this isolated site in the desert is one of them. It isn’t a makeup box at all, but a mineral mine in the middle of nowhere.
Beachball.
It looks like a cannonball that’s washed up on the beach, but it’s actually something far more benign: part of a bottom trawl rig, known as a rolling bobbin.
