50 Times People Found Such Unexpected Things, They Just Had To Share The Pics Online (New Pics)
Life is full of surprises. Of course, we can't pick and choose; one day they come in the form of an arrowhead in a dried up stream, the next it's a death mask under the bedroom floor. We just have to keep our eyes open. That's the only thing in our power, really.
Luckily, the subreddit r/MildlyInteresting has plenty of perfect examples that good things happen when we do. Many of its 19 million members have shared photos of unexpected finds they came across pretty much everywhere you can imagine.
Continue scrolling to check out the ones that have impressed us at Bored Panda the most and fire up our earlier publication for more astonishing discoveries.
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Worth It
Geologist Finds Rare Formation Inside Rock That Looks Exactly Like Cookie Monster On Sesame Street
A surprises might sound like something insignificant but even good scientists search for them, as well as coincidences and mistakes. With a little curiosity and perseverance, they can turn unexpected incidents into new insights.
As author Isaac Asimov once wrote, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but, 'That's funny ... '"
Take Carlos Jared, for example. One time, he was doing fieldwork in the jungles of southwest Brazil and picked up a harmless-looking frog. The frog twisted and thrashed, butting Jared's hand with his head. Excruciating pain spread up Jared's arm, and for the next five hours, he remained in agony.
He had inadvertently discovered that frogs can be venomous.
Even though many amphibians secrete toxins through their skin, the frog Jared picked up — Greening's frog — was the first discovered to actually force those toxins into a predator's bloodstream. When attacked, it retracts the skin around its upper lip, revealing bony spines; Jared and collaborator Edmund Brodie discovered that a gland at the base of each spine produces toxic mucus that is twice as potent as the venom of a Brazilian pit viper.
Found This On A Bench In Margate UK This Weekend
"Dedicated to - HAYDEN KAYS. Forever missed by his friends and family. - He's not dead yet. He's just become increasingly anti-social."
Gifted A Bonsai Tree, Found An Egg Near The Trunk - This Little One Hatched From It Today
You Never Know What You Will Find When You Pick Up A Shell At Honeymoon Beach, Florida. Little Dude Was Put Safely Back In The Water
Also, did you know that blue is a notoriously tricky pigment? Turns out, the stone originally used to produce blue paint was once worth more than gold. So naturally, humans tried to manufacture the blues they needed ... and got mixed results. The dyes and paints they came up with often turned out to be poisonous, expensive, impermanent — or all three.
Mas Subramanian wasn't at all interested in all of this. In the department of chemistry at Oregon State University, he was looking for materials with novel magnetic properties to use in advanced computer hard drives. He would mix up likely chemicals and bake them in a furnace at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (around 1093 degrees Celsius). However, when he added manganese oxide to the recipe, he got a colorful surprise — a pile of bright blue powder.
The new pigment is stable and nontoxic. It reflects infrared radiation, so it might help keep buildings and vehicles cool. Subramanian is working with paint manufacturers and energy conservation companies to develop the product.
Went On A Walk, Fogged Up My Glasses, And Found This
Found Amethyst Pieces In A New Gravel Driveway
I Came In My Kitchen To Find A Lizard Using A Sponge As A Raft In The Sink (I Live In New Mexico)
In the book Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected, Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger argue that surprise, whether good or bad, is important for bringing vitality to our lives.
Turns out, surprise works on the dopamine system in our brains, helping us to focus our attention and inspiring us to look at our situation in new ways. Luna and Renninger highlight four stages of the surprise response:
- Freeze—when we are stopped in our tracks because of the unexpected;
- Find—when we get hooked into trying to understand what’s going on/how this happened;
- Shift—when we begin to shift our perspectives, based on conflicting findings;
- Share—when we feel the pull to share our surprises with others.
We can even “hack” each stage to encourage more surprise in our lives. For example, when we are in the “find” phase, it can help us to adopt a stance of curiosity, asking questions rather than looking for answers right away, which can lead to worldview shifts.
This Pixelated Leaf I Found
Found This 'Veiled Lady' Mushroom On A Hike This Morning Near Seoul, South Korea
Older Roman Mosaic Under A Layer Of Less Older Roman Mosaic - Found In Greece
A normal day in the office. This kind of thing happen literally every day in Italy.
Yes, negative surprises are much more challenging than positive ones, but Luna and Renninger believe that we can avoid them—they are a natural part of life. So it is better to find ways to cope with these negative surprises than to resist them.
Being open to uncertainty, learning how to reframe negative experiences in more positive ways, and nurturing stable relationships are all tools we can use to recover from life's curveballs more easily.
This Little Door I Found In The Trunk Of A Tree While Walking In Lowell
We Just Found Kittens In The Bushes Near Our House
Found While Out Deer Hunting In The Middle Of Nowhere
It Has Been Family Lore That My Grandmother Had A Pet Raccoon Named Smokey. I Didn’t Believe It Until I Found Photographic Evidence. Late 40’s Or Early 50’s
Found A Tiny Greenhouse In The Woods
This Caterpillar I Found
This Morning I Found A Bat Sleeping In My Window... Inside The Screen
This Purple Mushroom I Found
Found An Unopened PS1 In My Grandfather's Attic
A Cast Iron Cauldron I Found Buried In My Forest
I Came Across These Theropod Tracks While Fly Fishing In Leander, Texas
Leander, Texas, now there's a name I haven't heard in forever! Outside of Austin.
Old Cars Becoming The River Bank
This Massive Bald Eagle Feather I Found
Clam Covered Mannequin Head That Washed Up On Shore
My Dog Found A Huge Bone At The Beach Today
In 1945 My Great Grandmother Wrote Her Name In A Sidewalk. We Found It Again. She Is 93
Megalodon Teeth I Found Diving In 90 FSW Off The Coast Of North Carolina
My Mom's Purse Was Stolen In The 80s At A Hiking Trailhead. Today Someone Messenged Her That They Found It Deep In The Woods. The Leather Was All Destroyed
My first thought on finding something like this would be "murder victim"
Surreal Moment Today. I Went To Oaks, PA "Too Many Games" Expo. Found My Gameboy From Early 2000’s
A Roman Road Discovered While Excavating For A New McDonald's In Marino, Italy. They Incorporated A Glass Floor In The Restaurant After Excavations Were Complete
This Strawberry I Found Is Shaped Like A Perfect Flower
Woman Finds Sunken Message In Bottle From 1926 Addressed To One George Morrow, The Internet Helps Find Surviving Relatives
This Giant Dandelion I Found On My Walk Today
My Mom And Uncle Found A USAF Target Drone On The Beach
I would take it home and half bury it in my front garden as though it's crashed.
This Rattlesnake Was Found Bathing In The Puddle Created From A Cow Hoofprint
Found An Arrowhead In A Dried Up Stream
My Son Found This At Goodwill And It Really Takes Me Back
I Found This Plant Growing Out Of The Concrete
A Gold Bar With Mint Marks, Recovered From The Spanish Treasure Ship 'Atocha' Which Sank In 1622
Found Some Old Newspapers In My Grandpa’s Basement
I would absolutely LOVE to have newspapers from this era. My son is a huge US history buff with WWII being his main focus. He has 2 papers framed from the Vietnam War, one from the Korean War, and 4-5 from Desert Storm where I saved those as a teenager. Something like this would just make his decade!
Found This Outside. Someone's Day Will Be Ruined
Friend Bought A N64 Game, Found This Inside
For those of you wondering, he was taking this game apart to use the back on his JP copy of Mario Kart so he could take it to a friend’s house with unmodded N64's. As to why he didn’t hear the pills loose shaking around, they were stuck to the sides with double-sided tape. You can see that in the image. The tape itself also looks old. He bought the game a year or so ago, but the game itself was made in the late 90s so who knows how long this has been sitting in there.
We Found A Missile While Out Blueberry Picking
Found An E Than Survived The Recycling Process On The Cardboard We Use At Work
I Found A Pile Of Walnuts In My Car Engine
My Friend Was Cleaning Out Her Grandma's Belongings And Found This Old School Kit From The 70s
I Found A Diamond In My Shoe While Working Out
A Plane Crash I Hiked To In North Carolina
I Found A Box Of My Dads 30-35 - Year - Old Sodas There Are Probably 50 In There And I Thought It Would Be Cool To Share
My Friend Found This Guy At Work
So This Is A Newly Discovered Ancient City Built 3000 Years Ago. West Old Thebes, Egypt
I've Found This Heart Shaped Potato In My Garden
Found A Hundred And Thirty Year Old Recipe Book While Cleaning Out Grandmas House
I Found Jewish Ghetto Coin From 1943
"The Elder of the Jews" "Receipt over 10 Mark" from jewish ghetto in Lodz/Poland
We Found War Ration Books From 1944 Inside An Old Purse In The Basement
A Wildfire Ripped Through Waterton Lakes National Park In 2017. Found This Burn Pattern On A Tree There Last Month
1866 Penny Found In Wall Of My Old House During Renovation
A Strange Mural Found After Removing The Paint In My Aunt's New House
The Note I Found In This Second-Hand Book
I Found A Bird’s Nest In A Tree Trunk While Taking A Walk
These Old Shaving Kits That I Found
Water Levels At Lake Powell Are So Low You Can Find Old Wrecks Out Of The Water
This Mushroom I Found 5 Years Ago
Cleaning Out An Old Apartment And Found A 1982 Coca Cola Screwdriver Set
I Found A Dollar Bill With A Rotationally Symmetric Serial Number
Found Some Old Containers For Transporting Eyeballs
My Sister And Brother-In-Law Moved Into A New House Today, Found This Safe In The Floor And Can't Open It. Yet
Found A Piece Of Rock That Looks Like A Steak
"McSpoon" That Was Banned In 1979 Turned Up In My Yard
Every Vauxhall Car Built Since 2004 Have A Hidden Shark Somewhere In The Car. Found Mine In The Glove Box
My Friend Works In Mines And Found A Mummified Mountain Lion
Coworker Found A "Motion Picture Use" $100 On Our Construction Site
I Found This Locked Suitcase In The Back Of A Storage Closet At The Hotel Where I Work. I Pried It Open And It's A Little Time Capsule
Found This Rock With Odd-Shaped Hole
Friend’s Family Owned A Pharmacy. They Found This In The Basement Secret Corner That Collapsed In A Flood
A 130-Year-Old Crypt Found While Renovating A Church In Sc, They Put A Glass Window On It So You Could See The Face
stay clear man i have seen return of the living dead and this is how it starts this isnt the year to do this
My Husband Found A Pre-WWII Globe At Goodwill
I Just Found 8 Four-Leaf Clovers In One Patch
We Found A Death Mask Under Our Bedroom Floor. Now What?
Came Across This Spine And Pelvic Bone Hanging From A Tree Limb During My Hike Yesterday
This Gravestone I Found In The Woods
Chrome Blue Wasp I Found In My Backyard
Found A Dinosaur Footprint On Our Hike In Utah
If you go to the Capitol you can find lots of Dinosaur prints on the floor. Just follow Mitch McConnell.
Found This In Garbage. This Is A Postcard That Is About 100 Years Old, With Mark That Originates In A Country Which Existed For 2 Years. I Find This Very Interesting
Too bad the stamp isn’t in better condition. I looked it up, here is some more info on your stamp - The Chain Breakers (verigari) refers to a few series of postage, dues, provisionals and newspaper stamps issued in the Yugoslav Kingdom (SHS) from 1919 to 1920. They're wildly popular among many collectors in Slovenia since most were printed in Ljubljana (some in Vienna as well), for use in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia & Hercegovina. The common varieties have no appreciable value, but various variations, errors, shades etc sell for fairly hefty fees.
This Silver Pin I Found Metal Detecting Is Called A Luckenbooth Brooch. Scottish Tradition But Likely Traded With Native Americans 300 Years Ago
I Found This Leaf With Only Its 'Veins' Remaining
Found This Thing On The Bottom Of My Pool
I Found A Letter From Richard Nixon From 1955 In My Grandfathers Stuff In Guatemala
When Ripping Out My Ceiling Drywall I Found A Report Card From 1957 A Kid Must Have Hid Up There. Someone Failed The 8th Grade
Megalodon Tooth I Found In A Dirty Florida Creek
Jar Of Ash From Mountain St Helen. Found In My Sister-In-Law's Garage
I Found This In My Basement. I'm Pretty Sure It's A Spider, But I Don't Know How He Got Like That
Found This 1829 Silver Half-Dime In The Woods. Nickels Weren’t Invented Yet
This Long And Rectangular River Rock I Found
Bought A "Brand New" Jacket Online. Found This Inside The Pocket
A Family Member Found This In His Father’s Things He Saved From The War
Found Out Why The Roomba Quit Working
Found Over 30 Vapes And A Bunch Of Other Trash While Diving With My Best Friend
I Found A Stack Of 10 Uncirculated Australian $1 Notes. These Were Discontinued By 1984
Holy s**t. In 1995 I bought a secondhand book that had an envelope containing $11 dollars of uncirculated Australian $1 notes too. Still have them. 20211214_2...d5-png.jpg
This Flat Fire Extinguisher I Found
A Pay Stub We Found While Renovating Our Home
Found A Check From 1879 For $105 In My Dresser That I Inherited From My Grandfather
Woke Up This Morning To Find An Interesting (Natural) Ice Sculpture In The Garden
Ball Of Salt That I Took Out Of The Dead Sea
I Found A Bomb While On A Hike
A dud mortar shell. Did you lost your track or how did you end up to a military shooting range ??
This Almost Perfectly Egg-Shaped Stone I Found In My Garden
This 7-Leaf Clover I Just Found
I’m Going To Need A Loan To Pay The Late Fees For This Tape I Found In My Basement
Found My Dad's Old Phone
loool love it ! it reminds me of when we were biting the end of the antenna before answering
My Sister Got A Mini Starfish In Her Mussels
Found A Newspaper From 1998 And A Phone From The Same Era Left Alone On A Bench
I Found My Doppelganger. On A Thrifted T-Shirt, 2,700 Miles Away
A Triumph Motor Stuck In A Tree I Found While Walking
Found In A Crystal Shop In Sedona, AZ
New House Find, Do You Think It’ll Play Crysis? It Doesn’t Seem To Have Any Problems Playing Rust
Pocket Watch Found Amongst My Late Husband's Things
I Found A Pile Of Snail Shells In My Car Engine
Looked Through A Patch Of Clovers Before Mowing The Lawn, I Found 16 Four-Leaf Clovers
A Pay Phone! In The Middle Of Muir Woods, San Francisco Bay Area
Today I Found An Unexploded WWII Bomb
Found Some Unopened Pokémon Cards From 20 Years Ago While Going Through My Grandparents Stuff
Found This Cool Moss Covered Shoe In The Woods
This 1890-91 Colt 45 I Found Digging In My Yard
My Mum Found This Bird Skull In Our Plant Pot
I Found Plane Wreckage While Hiking In A State Park This Weekend
These Spring Shoes I Found At A Thrift Store Many Years Ago
I Found A Frozen Snake
I Found This Perfectly Mummyfied/Dried Frog On A Hike
Found This Steel Plate In My Papa John's
Found In An Old Book
From the 1940s. Not sure if they’re paycheques, or what, but $8.92 doesn’t seem like a lot these days!
The weirdest thing (besides the fact that they survived this long) is, they’re from Nebraska, and here I am on the east coast of Canada!
I Found A Weirdly Bent Banana
they could use it for one of those peronie's disease commercials that have been hitting the airwaves recently
Found My Kid's Watch He Lost 3 Months Ago
I Found This Stick And It Looks Like A Katana In The Shadows
I Stumbled Across This Car That’s Painted Half Black And Half White
This Useless Staircase I Found In The Wild
The Birds By My House Line Their Nests With Fur From My Great Pyrenees
Cleaned Out My Closet And Found My Unopened Star Wars Trilogy VHS That I Bought In 1995
Remodeling My 1918 Home And Found This Battery In The Wall
Absolutely keep that! Antique radio (and self-winding clock) collectors love having period-accurate cell canisters. They'll pull the innards out and replace it with a modern equivalent.
We Found A Bud Inside A Bag Of Yarn We Bought At The Thrift Store
My Girlfriend Found This Rock That Looks Like A Moustache
I Found An Exactly 23-Year-Old Newspaper Sitting On A Park Bench Yesterday
Damn time travellers, dropping their newspapers and stealing our jobs
Grandfather’s Odds And Ends Tin Full Of Vintage Packages (And Hardware)
Oooh, authentic GEM clips. They invented the modern paperclip shape we know and love.
A Receipt Found In A Book From 1992. Not A Vegetable In Sight
Found An Overdue Rental At My Mom's House From 1994
Dude. I have a copy of Dazed & Confused that I never returned to blockbuster on VHS! My pops just passed away last September and I've been sorting through his house. He was a collector and saved all of our s**t from when we were younger (brothers n I) and I just came across a couple giant bins of VHS' and this was one of them. I guess I got too dazed & confused and forgot to return it too.
We're Cleaning Out My Late Stepmom's Storage Unit And Found Some Crayons From Before I Was Born
Found This Old Memory Module At Work Today
Found A Doll’s Head While Diving In An Adirondack Lake. Left It In The Freezer To Surprise The Next Visitors To Our Timeshare
Old 3ds Found With Erosion And Barnacles Found While Diving
Approximately 167 - Year - Old Garlic I Found Under The Floor Of My Half-Timbered House
Things I Find In Printers As A Printer Technician
I Found $10 While Scooping Sludge At My Wastewater Treatment Plant
Found On Beach In Seaside, Oregon
I love collecting these while walking streams fly fishing. My favorite find was a toothbrush holder that was given away as a promotion in 1881. Holds my bobbins.
This Twin Rose I Found While Gardening
There Were (Literally) Whole Grains In My Son’s Cheerios
Cleaning Out My Parents Basement And I Found Bottles Of Water They Saved During Y2K
This 70-Year-Old Japanese Picture I Found At A Estate Sale
I Found An Unopened Can Of Beer From 1954 At A Job Today
Dentures Found Inside An Abandoned Asylum
Found A WWII Nazi Spoon At Goodwill
Was Flipping Through A Review Book In The Condo We’re Renting And Came Across This Drawing
"This is Baby from Baby Driver. Baby Driver is one of my favourite movies and i totally recommend watching it if you get the chance. I've watched it more times than i can count. I actually brought a copy of Baby Driver with me on this vacation. I was watching it when i started it, the drawing i mean. I posted this on my art account on Instagram."
Found Another Crotal (Or Scrotal) Bell
My Friend Found This Paystub From 1949 For A Machinist. $1.17/Hour, 2021 Inflation: $13.13/Hour
Found An Original Glass Bottle Of Crystal Pepsi, With Foam Label, While Cleaning Out My Mother-In-Law's Place
Crystal Pepsi was an abomination. Even as a kid I wouldn't touch that stuff 😂😂😂
This Oddly Shaped Rock I Found At A Lake
Found A Four-Leaf Clover In An Old Book Of Poetry From 1889
Dug Up A Very Old Orange Crush Can In My Garden Yesterday
A Rock My Brother And I Found That Looks Like It Was Struck By Lightning
This Weirdly Shaped Strawberry I Found In My Garden Today
This Movie Prop Money I Found On The Street
A Bottle Of 1970s Aftershave, Found Buried In My Backyard
My 4-Year-Old Found Three 4-Leaf Clovers
Found This Little Old Globe That Has The USSR
Found Some Weimar Hyper-Inflation Banknotes While Going Through An Old Trunk
Finding This Japanese Condiment Jar Washed Up On The Oregon Coast
The waves bring Japanese things to the PNW all the time. Glass net floats were once common. A woman began picking up all the trash which she then made art from (lots of Olympic stamped water bottles). I suspect even more things will begin to show up from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
Found A Lil Wasp Nest
Found Lizard Milk For The First Time In Years
My son loved SOBE as a younger child. He's nearly 18 now and misses it so much.
This Tiny Pickle I Found At The Bottom Of The Jar
I Was Cleaning And Found This Ancient Relic Under My TV Stand
When i was a kid i picked up a HUGE conch shell, so excited about it's size and the condition it was in. I was shocked when a long spine came out of the tip towards me! I dropped it thankfully avoiding the spine and waded/ran/ swam away. It hadn't occurred to me the reason such a big shell was in such good condition was that it still had a resident protecting it. Oops
That sounds like a cone snail, if so you a lucky to be alive! Those things are incredibly venomous.
Load More Replies...When i was a kid i picked up a HUGE conch shell, so excited about it's size and the condition it was in. I was shocked when a long spine came out of the tip towards me! I dropped it thankfully avoiding the spine and waded/ran/ swam away. It hadn't occurred to me the reason such a big shell was in such good condition was that it still had a resident protecting it. Oops
That sounds like a cone snail, if so you a lucky to be alive! Those things are incredibly venomous.
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