Have you ever come across something weird in your home or while out and about and wondered "what is that thing?"
Of course you have. Thankfully, in the age of the internet, there is a place to ask every question and for random discoveries you can turn to the subreddit r/whatisthisthing.
It's an old timed fuse, likely from Japanese artillery, repurposed into a pretty cool plumb bob.
A plumb bob is an old-fashioned way get a vertical reference line, before the invention of the spirit level we use today.
It's just the dregs, but it can definitely be a surprise if you decide to swig that last bit of wine directly from the bottle. Wine dregs are made up of leftover bits of grape solids, yeast cells, tartaric acid crystals, and other little bits from the winemaking process.
If you're going to sell a vintage item, you need to know what it should be listed as. This is a scuttle, which is a kind of shaving mug with a large spout for pouring in the hot water.
Having never had a home with a garbage disposal, I would have been confused too. These are deodorizor capsules.
You assume correctly. It's certainly easier to keep a bathroom floor clean if you don't have to get the mop around the base of a toilet, but otherwise wall-mounted models aren't really known for their structural integrity.
They are 25 Mark notes made of linen specifically by the bank of Bielefeld in 1921. They aren't real money, per se, but more like a gift printed by the city to be given out that can then be used in local shops before a specific date. Those retailers can then exchange them for real money from the city.
Sort of like a special gift card.
Clearly, this person was never a girl in the '90s, because that is a very bright slap bracelet.
It's a gel highlighter and you probably didn't realize that's what it was supposed to be when you tried it because gel highlighters are the worst.
Once someone in the comments asked about whether fidebo lived near a military base — they do — it was easy to answer. It's a flare.
Apparently it's common for pilots to fire one as thanks for refuelling.
Yeah, I can see why Mom was confused. These are highly suggestive-looking dog toys. They stick to the floor and the bristle bits are meant to help clean Fido's teeth while he chews.
Presumably, they mean the vertical lines seen across the front of the bulbs. Those are "fins" that block the light from being visible from the sides. They're common for intersections that aren't perfect ninety-degree angles.
That's a pretty neat find! It's a sand table, which are used for mission planning. They're more practical than a giant map table, because you can draw the exact location in the sand and wipe it away afterwards.
This is part of a kit for carpet installation that is used when carpet is being stretched by a power stretcher. It's covered in carpet of its own to protect walls and trim from possible damage.
It's a tracker that was likely installed by the dealer. Depending on how shady they are, some used car dealers will use these to find the car if loan payments are missed. Other places will install them with the intention of up-selling people to some expensive anti-theft package. It may have never been turned on, but I'd take it out anyway.
It's an overly complicated trivet. The pieces can be shifted around to match whatever plate or pot you want to set on top, but I really don't see how that's better than a plain cork one.
It was found in an assorted fruit mix and is a candied prickly pear.
He's half right. It is an antenna, but not from a plane. It's just a regular home TV antenna. How it got on his roof is a mystery of its own.
As for the half of a banana, he says he's mildly allergic, so only eats half of one at a time.
The person was parked at a Native American memorial, which makes finding prayer ties more understandable.
Usually, they are left in a place of importance, but perhaps someone was leaving them as a thank you to visitors.
Hey, cool, a Ferrari part, right? Well, unfortunately, it's not the fabulously expensive supercar kind of Ferrari, but the Ikea cabinet parts-maker Ferrari. So this is just a cabinet hinge. Ah well.
To think, somebody had just left this cast iron sausage press beside the building's dumpster. Of course, even if you're not into sausage, I'm sure you can press many other things into a tube with this device.
Being worried about your dog's well being with this thing is the right attitude — it's a Portuguese Man O'War, which can cause a might bad sting that stays with you for weeks.
The uploader added that they had searched "on and off for a year with no luck," and that they didn't think it was from a sleeping bag. But that is on the right track — it's a garment that snaps together, kind of an ancestor of the Snuggie, the blanket you can wear.
Under more ideal circumstances, those chains would be attached to a garbage receptacle as an extra precaution against large, hungry wildlife. In this case, the wildlife wanted it more.
So they are clearly warning symbols. The one cut-off on the right appears to be for corrosive substances and the left one is for the vaguely threatening , yet generic "health hazard".
They are on the door or window of a daycare and not just on like, the cabinet of cleaning supplies, which is a bit weird.
Ah yes, the classic random sighting at a thrift store. Well, the thimble-thumbed crowd of a certain vintage might recognize this — it's a sewing machine attachment for buttonholes.
As you might be able to tell from the picture, part of this device is lit up in yellow, while others aren't.
The reason is that we're actually looking at a "set theory clock" in Berlin that uses increments of fives and ones to tell time. The first row counts hours by five, while the second counts them by ones. The third and fourth rows follow the same pattern with minutes.
So, knowing that, we can see that this was taken at 11:41.
Technically, this old device is actually a projection microscope that displays what you can see under it on a nearby wall to make it easier to draw.
This is a hopper used for lifting mixed concrete with a crane, put it's hard to tell how it ended up here with no concrete around.
That's quite a thing to forget at the job site, but what else could have happened?
But for those who don't know, it's a kind of antenna designed to spread 5G service throughout various urban areas without taking up much space.
They asked what these structures on the surface of Mars are that look like ball bearing, but are actually 100 meters (328.084) in diameter each.
Although it's hard to confirm this without sending a probe there, it's likely that these are mineral formations and that the shinier parts of them are ice containing a lot of carbon dioxide.
Instead, he was likely hired by service providers to run tests on what kind of signal each of these phones could get and maintain in a busy train.
Better he finds connectivity issues than the customers, after all.
As you've probably observed, it's a playing card in a series about dinosaurs.
The descriptions are written in Chinese and they refer to the dinosaur's classification breakdown, as well as its estimated height and weight.
Unfortunately, it's likely that we're looking at the result of someone breaking open a paperweight out of desperation for money only to realize that the bills inside of it were fake.
And it turns out that those are both useful things for a a utility lock to have. Apparently, you'll end up using a lot of these if you install cable.
Apparently, each tube is a fabric turner used to turn sewn pieces inside out by running them through the tube a certain way.
Somehow it didn't take long for the eagle eyes on Reddit to figure out that this old piece of wood with a handle is a tinder box, intended to hold the little things you need to get a fire going.
It's a home security device that's supposed to drop into a hole in the floor and prevent a door from opening. Apparently, at some point during a home reno, that hole had been covered up.
It's obviously styled after those old nesting dolls, and once again, it's a thing for sewers. That spiral-like thing is actually a stack of bobbins, so each section would have thread wound around it for storage.
A few people were able to identify this other old cast iron thing as a mining lamp, specifically a carbide lamp. "No oil is used in it. It uses a reaction between calcium carbide and water to generate acetylene to burn," one person explained. Neat!
