You Might Not Have Seen These Things Before, But We Found Them For You
The world is an interesting place. Unique and interesting processes go on all across the globe every day, though many of them go unnoticed, undocumented, or unknown to the public.
Here are some cool things about the world we live in that you've probably never seen or heard of before—at least not like this.
The Claws Of A Southern Cassowary
Cassowaries are large flightless birds indigenous to islands in Oceania and northern Australia. These large, terrifying birds are not to be trifled with, because when they feel threatened, they attack with their claws out aimed at the abdomen with the goal of disemboweling their enemies.
If you ever needed proof that birds descended from dinosaurs, the cassowary is it.
Fiat Had A Rooftop Test-Track In 1929
This photo was snapped 90 years ago at the Fiat factory in Turin, Italy. The factory had an upward spiral structure with five levels of production so that cars eventually reach the roof where they could be driven and tested.
While a very interesting concept, cars started to get a little too fast for this rooftop track to be safe.
The Inside Of A Debit Card
Apparently, credit and debit cards aren't actually just magic pieces of plastic that help me buy burrito bowls at Chipotle. This "peeled open" debit card reveals the intricate circuitry and RFID hardware within the card that allows for contactless payment, such as tap or chip readers.
Now I feel a little bad about losing my cards, which are so complex, so often.
Don't Worry, She Can See Perfectly Fine!
This person has a coloboma, which is a hole in one of the parts of the eye, such as the iris, retina, or choroid, though iris is most common.
A coloboma is normally present and detectable from birth. A coloboma normally has little to no impact on vision, except for some people whose vision is slightly worsened at night.
A Three-Player Chessboard
If you thought that two-player chess was challenging enough already, then this chess board for three players is going to make you queasy.
There are actually many different designs for how a three-person chessboard can work, from a hexagonal board to a three-dimensional board. Either way, the game is a whole new level of challenging with an extra opponent.
Sunlight Going Through The Eye And Skin
This dog was sitting at the perfect angle near a window for the sun to go straight through the eye and be visible through his skin.
This is called "transillumination", and it's a technique used in medicine to help diagnose certain problems in organs by shining light through to identify masses or collections of fluid. Luckily, this doggo is perfectly healthy.
This Venus Flytrap With Tons Of Heads
Rather than grow taller into maturation, this Reddit user's Venus Flytrap grew dozens of tiny, fly-eating heads instead.
Many plants that are grown in a tissue culture, which is a way to make many seedlings that can be cut and sold separately instead of growing into large, mature plants, will grow this way for years after potting before maturing.
How Clothes Are Made From Plastic
This diagram shows how plastic recyclables can be broken down and remade into clothing items. In fact, much of the polyester clothes that were manufactured in south-east Asia were made through this process.
While recycling is good, polyester clothes still release amounts of microplastics that end up in waterways. For best practice, try to get clothes made from ethically-sourced natural materials, like cotton.
This Photo Was Taken In Daytime During The Amazon Fires
This is a photo of São Paulo, Brazil during mid-afternoon while the Amazon forest fires were blazing at their strongest point in 2019. The locals were describing the conditions as the apocalypse.
Air pollution is one of the leading causes of death, killing about 1 in 9 people on Earth and increases in forest fires are endangering large subsets of the population.
Modern Tomato Vs. One Grown From Seeds From 150 Years Ago
The difference may seem shocking, which just goes to show how far science has come in adapting foods. While the term GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) seems frightening to most, GMO agriculture played a huge role in improving food availability.
Scientific changes have helped make foods more resilient to their climates and disease, and often have no effect on the consumer.
There's A Lot Going On Here
While I cannot explain how or why this squid ended up in a parking spot, it's interesting to note that many people who saw this photo were shocked by its size.
This squid isn't even particularly large — giant squid that live in the ocean can reach a length of 13m (42.5 feet) long!
Do You Have Change For A $500 Bill?
This type of $500 bill featuring the image of President William McKinley hasn't been printed since 1945, and the $500 bill as a unit of currency was discontinued in 1969.
While you could still technically use this bill as legal tender, you would probably get more bang for your buck by selling it to a collector.
The Inside Of A "Hair-Catching" Hairbrush
This Reddit user explained that the handle of his wife's hairbrush broke off during a detangling session, and this is what was revealed.
The human head is covered in millions of hair follicles, and it's totally natural for about 100-125 hairs to fall out every day. Brushing helps remove and detangle these hairs from the ones still attached to your scalp.
This Road Was Misaligned After An Earthquake
This road runs through California, but an Earthquake caused the one side to move away and misalign from the other.
Earthquakes are caused by the shifting and collision of tectonic plates underneath the Earth's surface, and this road just happened to run perpendicular to a fault line underground. While inconvenient, it looks pretty cool.
Calcium Buildup In Pipes At Home
This Reddit user snapped this shocking photo to show the pipe they had to remove from their home plumbing system due to excessive calcium buildup.
Calcium can build up and line the insides of pipes when there's too high a concentration of it in the water. Water like this is called "hard-water" and it can also contain other minerals like magnesium and potassium.
A Lunar Globe
This unique lunar globe is extra interesting because it's also from the 1960's when astronomers hadn't yet been able to effectively see and chart the dark side of the moon.
The dark side was observed by Soviet probe Luna 3, but the imaging wasn't very clear. That's why one side is much more detailed than the other.
A Tour Brochure For The World Trade Center
This Reddit user was organizing their family home when they stumbled across this tour brochure from the World Trade Center.
Prior to the tragic destruction of its two towers in 2001, the World Trade Center was a huge tourist destination, with the south tower being the tallest building on Earth when it was completed in 1973.
Trees Will Eat Signs
Trees are incredibly resilient organisms, and they will envelop or work around anything that interrupts their natural path of growth.
The rings on a tree trunk are past encased tree exteriors, and the bark learns its patterning from its past "skin", which is why this bark has mimicked the sign's design.
This Irregular Key Code Pad
This key code pad makes my head hurt to look at, but it was actually designed for advanced security purposes.
Each time you go to enter the code, the keypad changes the configuration of the letter and numbers so that the numbers/letters you use don't get worn down and an onlooker can't look at your hand movements to guess the code.
This Guy Only Has Four Fingers On His Left Hand
This Reddit user posted a photo of his left hand, explaining that he was born with no thumb, although his index finger is kind of placed like one.
Interestingly enough, he also had a twin brother who was born with the conventional five digits on each hand. While abnormal, this guy does get a very wide reach while playing the piano.
This Is The First Mobile Phone Ever Made
The world's first mobile phone call was completed on April 3, 1973.
When the model was created and proven to work, a senior engineer at Motorola named Martin Cooper made a call to a rival telecommunications company and inform them that he was speaking with them using a mobile phone.
This Is The Biggest Dicotyledon Leaf Found In The Amazon
I could wrap myself in this leaf and use it as a blanket, which is incredibly cool to think about.
Dicotyledon plants, also known as dicots, are one of two types of angiosperms (flowering plants). The name refers to one of the typical characteristics of the group — the seed has two embryonic leaves or cotyledons.
No Prawns Were Injured In The Making Of This Floor
This rather famous fossil is shaped just like a prawn, but it isn't actually one. This is actually a piece of fossilized coral that dates back about 345 million years.
It was imbedded into marble that was later used to make the floor of the Australian parliament building. The fossil is named "Shawn The Prawn"!
This Tree Stump Is A Natural Work Of Art
This beautifully colorful and designed tree stump isn't the work of woodland Banksy, but actually the result of a natural process called "spalting". Spalting is wood coloring caused by fungi and mostly happens in dead trees.
However, spalting can also occur in living trees that are under stress. The unique coloration and patterns of spalted wood are coveted by woodworkers.
Are Denmark And Canada Real Places?
This is a photo of Hans Island, which is a barren and uninhabited knoll located between Denmark's territory of Greenland and Canada's northern Ellesmere Island.
The two countries have an ongoing dispute over which it belongs two, and the militaries of the respective countries occasionally travel, remove the other's flag, and leave a bottle of Danish schnapps or Canadian whiskey.
A Funnel Cloud Touching Down
This woman was either incredibly brave, or she was unbelievably foolish. A funnel cloud is created when water droplets get trapped in a vortex between rapidly moving hot air and cold air.
While these funnel clouds are normally short-lived, they turn into tornados when they make contact with the earth's surface.
Mozart Was Petty As Heck
Mozart (left portrait) deeply disliked Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, an operatic performer.
He was aware of her tendency to drop her chin on low notes and throw her head back on high notes, so he wrote a song with frequent and constant leaps from low to high notes so that her head would bob like a chicken on stage.
News Report About Climate Change From 107 Years Ago
Climate change, global warming, and climate science may seem like terms and scientific areas of studies that only started recently, but scientists have been documenting the effects of human-caused climate change for over a decade now.
Evidence pointing toward unsustainable energy sources being the dominant cause for environmental changes has been around for ages.
It's Possible To Be Closer To People In Space Than On Earth
Point Nemo is located in the Pacific ocean, and it's 2,700 kilometers (1678 miles) from the nearest land.
That means that a ship passing over this point at the right time of day is closer to the humans on the International Space station 416 kilometers up (258 miles) than they are to human life on Earth.
The Brilliant Way This Man Got Compensated
A musician had his valued guitar broken after a flight by United Airlines baggage handlers, but the company refused to pay repairs for a year.
He wrote a song called "United Breaks Guitars" and uploaded a music video to Youtube that got 16 million hits. United's stocks sunk by 10%, and finally were forced to pay him $3,000.
A Lizard With An Intact Shedded Skin Suit
Have you ever seen dead skin look so absolutely adorable? All reptiles shed their skin to some extent during the course of their lives. Most lizards shed their skin in pieces, so this entirely shedded suit is a pretty rare sight.
On a slightly gross note, some lizards are known to eat the sloughed skin.
These Are Actually Trees
In areas of northern Finland where the temperatures can fall to about 40°F during the winter months, trees can become encased in frost and end up looking like this.
The air in these boreal forests is naturally humid despite the cold, causing the moisture in the air to flash freeze around the trees when the temperature suddenly drops.
Follow The Wavy Brick Wall
While in England, you might see a brick wall or two that is laid in a wavy pattern. Interestingly, this method actually uses fewer bricks than a straight brick wall.
A straight wall would need at least two side-by-side layers of bricks to be sturdy, but the wavy pattern adds enough arch support strength for a single layer.
An Ingredients List That Actually Shows What Each Ingredient Does
When it comes to a vast number of pharmacy and personal care products, the ingredients list on the box might as well be useless because the average person has no idea what each ingredient is or what it does.
Product breakdowns like this help people better understand the items they use every day.
I Had No Idea Fish Could Live So Long...
Pictured here is Hanako, a koi fish who was born in 1751 and lived until 1977—she died at the age of 226. In 1966, a couple of her scales were removed and intensively studied in order to determine her age.
The average lifespan of a koi fish is 25-35 years, making Hanako an extreme exception.
A Zero-Waste Way To Stay Clean
This drug store in the Czech Republic has a station for customers to refill their own containers with shampoo, conditioner, and body wash so they don't have to keep buying new plastic containers.
Many places across the world have been introducing zero-waste concept stores to limit the amount of plastic waste created.
The Pyramids Were Even More Stunning Before
The Great Pyramid of Giza is considered one of the greatest wonders of the world with thousands of tourists flocking to the site every year, but they actually were an even more formidable sight when first built.
They were originally encased in white limestone with the point covered in gold.
A Library Created From Books Found In The Garbage
These garbage collectors in the Turkish city of Ankara started to collect books that were still in decent condition that people had thrown out in the trash to create a little library. When the public found out, some people started to directly donate books to them.
The library was originally created for sanitation employees and their families, but eventually, it was opened for the whole community to enjoy.
This Is What A Sunset Looks Like From Space
Sunsets are some of the most beautiful sights to behold on Earth, but they're also quite breathtaking from outer space.
The reason the light looks red during sunset is that the sun is casting light in a more horizontal way in relation to that spot of the Earth, forcing the light to go through more layers of the atmosphere and refracting more red light particles.
A Pill Bottle With A Timer On The Cap
This prescription pill bottle has a cap that tracks how much time has passed since it was last opened, resetting every time the cap is removed.
This design is helpful for people who have to take different pills at different rates or those who might have trouble remembering when/if they took their medication.
