Have you ever had something incredibly rare or strange randomly come into your life? It might have been something you found, or maybe you witnessed a one-in-a-million event that you know you’ll never see again.
People on AskReddit shared their interesting stories and I think you’ll be mightily impressed by them.
1. Fantastic!
“As a kid, I used to go to this village where some of my family lived in Greece. It was up in the mountains, and one day I got incredibly bored and decided to go “fossil hunting” with my father. We were just looking at some rocks at the side of the road when I saw something that actually looked interesting. It was fairly big rock that looked like it had tubes of stone coming out of it: turns out it was part of an ancient sea-animal burrow from the Cambrian, 500 million years ago.
We found loads of other things; more burrows, ancient coral, and shells. Just as we were about to leave, we saw another rock in front of us and collected it… and I was nearly bitten by a 10cm long bright orange giant centipede thing. Fantastic.”
2. A rare find.
“Working on my dissertation at uni (I did Palaeontology) and while sifting through sediment I’d broken down came across what appears to be a late Jurassic avian tooth.
You don’t see a lot of those in southern England.”
3. Cool!
“I have a small piece of agate (probably used as a seal or on a ring), carved with the symbol of one of the members from the Order of the Garter. But I do not know which member as I have not been able to find any info about it.
I have taken it to antiques dealers who say it is likely genuine. The stone itself is worth sevrel hundred AU$.
I believe it was looted during WWII.”
4. Fish mating.
“When my husband and I were snorkeling on the Barrier Reef, the guide became really excited. He’d noticed that a particular fish was engaged in a mating ritual, and he said that witnessing this was really rare. He was beside himself with excitement. I don’t even remember the name of the fish, we saw so many awesome fish that day that the scaly bastards all melded together.”
5. Special delivery.
“This happened a couple of years ago. I was on adhuntr.com, which lets you search every craigslist in the country, looking for a Blue Shark DDR pad. They haven’t been made in years and you occasionally see them come up for sale. I happened to find someone in Manhattan, NY that had one for sale, but the listing said that they would only sell it to someone who would pick it up locally.
I had no way of making it over to NY to buy it, but I ended up messaging her anyway because it was in pretty good condition. I explained that I had no way of meeting to pick it up because I live in Indiana, but I was really interested in purchasing it. She replied back and said that she was actually going to Indiana that following week with some friends on vacation and would possibly be able to meet me somewhere if it was close. I told her the city I lived in to see if it would be worth the drive to meet her somewhere. Turns out they were coming to a lake about 10 minutes from my house and I got her to deliver the thing right to my door.”
6. Love connection.
“I have a similar story to the best rated one: i coach lacrosse and every year disney has teams come down to play in early spring. I coach in ohio so it was nice to go down to 80 degree heat. So anyway you get free tickets to the park, and me and a bunch of players were walking around. Everything is kind busy, except the enchanted tiki room, but still had a wait. We are waiting to in when this dorky but cute worker is chating with me and flirting a bit.
She mentions she is doing the college program and is from st louis university, so we are both flirting, i really like her but cant ask her out as i am in ohio and she is in florida/st louis. Flash forward 3 years later. I am around 25-26 and looking to settle down and start a family, so i sign up for eharmony, one of the first people i get set up with is a girl that looks really familiar.
I think nothing of it and go on a date with her. We get to talk and on the date she told me she really loves disney and use to work for them, and thats when i remembered her and asked if she remembered me, she started to laugh and was taken back, and she said i knew you looked familiar, fast forward 2 years and we have been married for 3 years now.”
7. Aliens…?
“One night I drove out of town to do some telescoping. This bright light caught my eye. Even though it moved at the same steady pace of a satellite, it was not a satellite, as I checked the satellite tracking app on my cellphone. I managed to peep at it through my telescope and I could see two fainter lights flanking both sides at equal distance of the main bright light. This thing literally did a 30 degree turn in the other direction and hauled ass. I’m not saying aliens…but damn was that thing crazy warp-drive quick.”
8. Shipwreck.
“Well, i was diving in the Caribbean with my dive pals and we found a shipwreck with 22 cannons or something with a sh^tload of cannonball$ (Don’t worry we only took 1 cannonball). Cannonball$ are actually really tiny, i always thought of them as big balls. It turns out this shipwreck wasn’t known of and we told the authorities and they haven’t discovered it yet so yey! We came back to the site with some scientists and it turns out the ship was crossing the reef when it got stuck and started throwing things overboard so it weighted less but it still sunk (What probably happened say the guys).
I guess this is pretty rare :D”
9. Prized possession.
“I was at the beach one day, and I had forgotten my sunglasses at home. I meant to stop at a convenience store on the way and grab cheap sunglasses to shield my eyes, but i forgot to do that too. So there i am, walking the shore line, squinting wishing i had sunglasses to protect and comfort me, when i spotted a pair of glasses washed up on the sand. I ran over and grabbed them, and they ended up being the sweetest old school ray bans ever.
They must have been in the ocean for quite some time, as the frames (and lenses, which i have since replaced) were “sand blasted”, meaning they have an extremely unique finish to them that i would imagine is the only one of it’s kind in existence. I am not kidding when i say they are my prized possession.”
10. A moonbow!
“While camping in Colorado my buddy and I witnessed a moonbow. It was a very surreal experience. From wiki: the moon must be low in the sky (less than 42 degrees and preferably lower) and the sky must be very dark. Since the sky is still light on a rising full moon, this means they can only be observed 2 to 3 hours before sunrise, a time with few observers. And, of course, there must be rain falling opposite the moon. This combination of requirements makes moonbows much rarer than rainbows produced by the sun.”
11. Animal lover.
“In college, I was walking a long the beach when I heard some girls screaming. I ran up and saw a baby dolphin that had been washed up on the shore. I picked it up in my arms and I remember looking deep into its little eyes. I walked it out into the ocean and set it free. The waves pushed it back, so I swam it out past the break until it took off and swam by itself. I had my phone in my pocket and broke it because it got wet. To this day, almost nobody believes me.”
12. Ancient receipt.
“I found a 4000+ year old receipt while rummaging through a dusty cabinet.
It was for a goat, from a temple, and made out of clay. Some relative had bought it on a trip to Egypt about 100 years ago, and nobody knew it was there until I found it.”
13. Twice!
“I once saw a massive exploding meteorite when I was walking home one night. The memory of it never left me. Then about 15 or so years later I saw an even bigger one. I happened to be in forestry at the time and there was zero wash from town lighting. This second one was incredible and seared a path right across the sky from horizon to horizon, backlighting some clouds at the far end and finally bursting into full light as it finally burnt out. Wow, just wow. Silent and magnificent. And I was alone both times!”
14. Historical newspaper.
“I own a newspaper article about the Titanic from 1910 when it was still being built and before it was famous. A couple years ago I tried researching the article and as far as I can tell, it’s the only surviving copy.”
15. This is great!
“One day back in the 90’s I was driving with a group of friends from Chicago to St. Mary’s college in Indiana to visit a friend’s GF. On the way there we came up on a car and noticed that the passenger was drinking a beer and making funny faces at us. I was into photography at the time so I pulled out my camera to capture the random moment. By the time I looked through the viewfinder and focused the frame the beer had been put down and I could see that the guy making funny faces at us was in fact George Carlin.
I snapped a great photo of him right before all of us in the car erupted into excitement over the chance encounter. He must have sensed that we were big fans because he pulled out a piece of paper and wrote “want tickets?” on it. He pressed it against the window and we all fre*ked out and wrote back “hell yes!” on the first thing we could find. He wrote back “follow us” on another piece of paper and so we did.
It turns out he was going to South Bend to do a show at the theater there (can’t remember the name now) which was convenient because St. Mary’s is in South Bend. I was tasked with going up to the ticket booth to explain our situation. I told her about how we were offered tickets by George Carlin himself and that I know it sounded like bullsh^t but it was true. She came back a few minutes later with Carlin’s manager (the guy driving the car), who greeted us warmly and led us to seats in the balcony. It was a great show made even more special by the strange circumstances. I still have that photo to this day.”
Wow! Now that’s is some really unlikely stuff to have happened, right?
What did you think was particularly crazy? Let us know in the comments!
Oh, and if you have a story like this… post that too!