15 Strangest Things Ever Discovered

the world is a big place filled with many weird things that many of us wouldn't believe possible today we're taking a look at the top 15 weirdest discoveries ever made [Music] number 15 headless chicken sea monster the earth's oceans are so vast that we've only just scratched the surface in terms of exploration and it seems as if every research trip that sets out to explore the mysteries of the deep returns with news of the discovery of a new creature it's definitely a weird and mysterious world down there you can imagine the surprise when the first images were recorded of a creature called the inyptiastes as more commonly known as the headless chicken sea monster it's easy to see why it's been given this unusual moniker because it really does look like a headless chicken floating in the current in truth however it's actually a species of deep-sea sea cucumber that lives at depths of up to 3 300 feet growing at up to 10 inches tall they're bright pink in color and are actually semi-translucent which means that if you look closely you can actually see its internal organs particularly the intestine after the creature is eaten they are found in waters across the globe and are believed to be an integral part of the marine ecosystem they feed by filtering through the sediment on the ocean floor for nutrients and as they're at the bottom of the food chain this nutrition is eventually passed on to larger animals number 14 the atacama skeleton archaeologists have found countless different human remains that span the past hundred thousand years and from them have been able to show how the bodies of our species have evolved and adapted to the changing environment on the planet and our food sources that are available to us most that are found can be placed within the timeline of our species history but occasionally something truly weird is discovered sometimes this can force historians to completely rethink what they thought they knew about the spread of people across the globe but in other cases the only true way to understand a set of remains is by performing deep scientific analysis by far the strangest human discovery of all was a small skeleton that was found in the atacama desert in 2003 and for 15 years it confounded anyone who saw it it's just six inches long and at first no one knew what it was was it human some other unknown animal or perhaps even an alien unsurprisingly the discovery led to a number of conspiracy theories about the skeleton's origin and it was only in 2018 that dna analysis was performed to find out for sure the skeleton was indeed human but of someone who had 64 unusual mutations involving the skeletal system including some associated with dwarfism and scoliosis unfortunately for the mother and child involved it's thought that the baby would have survived only a few days after birth because of the complications and was quickly buried to finally be at peace number 13 bouvier island lifeboat bouvet island is one of the most remote places on earth located in the southern ocean it's just a thousand miles north of antarctica 1600 miles southwest of south africa and has never been known to have a permanent population although it's a territory of norway and has acted as a stop-off for their research ships on their way to antarctica since the 1970s what's particularly peculiar about the island then is that in 1964 a south african ship traveled to the island with the intention of building a weather monitoring station but to their complete surprise they found a lifeboat on the shore surrounded by a colony of seals there was no other signs of life or of the people who had been on the boat and it must have come from a larger ship even though whaling ships often went into the southern ocean there was no established routes within a thousand miles of the island so how could it have possibly gotten there the initial theory was that a larger ship veered off course found themselves in difficulty and had to launch a lifeboat to escape the boat had clearly been occupied when it made it ashore but there was no trace of a campsite or anything it would have been a few decades later before the true explanation was finally found it's now believed that a larger ship visited the island in the early 1960s that was funded by ham radio enthusiasts who often travel to the farthest reaches of the planet to make contact with other users known as d expeditions you'd be surprised at the lengths they've been known to go in this pursuit but a trip to buuvei island is definitely true commitment to the cause number 12 peanut worm there are at least 162 different species of worm that are called peanut worms and they're found in all oceans throughout the world they spend most of their lives buried within the seabed or in rock or hundreds can be found per square foot and they're one of the most unusual and comical looking creatures on the planet you can just imagine what the first naturalist thought when he was trying to describe the worms in 1767 they usually grow up to four inches long but some can be much larger and they have a mouth at the tip that's surrounded by tentacles there are no hard parts meaning the body is completely soft and when it's touched by external stimuli it'll pulsate in response it's not clear how long worms like these have been around because their soft tissue prevents them from forming fossils there's some evidence to suggest they existed more than 500 million years ago however which would make them one of the longest surviving species that's shown very little change in the meantime new species of peanut warm are actually being found all the time with most living in shallower waters where there's more chance of finding nutrition in the sediment in some countries particularly across asia they're so prevalent that they become a highly sought after delicacy where they are eaten whole as a jelly or in dried form number 11 the lycurgus cup our understanding of chemistry in the modern age has allowed for the development of new materials that were simply impossible to create before but while we may think we've come a long way in recent centuries objects are occasionally found that prove our ancestors were far more advanced than we had previously realized one of the greatest examples of this is known as the lycurgus cuff it dates back to the roman empire and is not only a rare complete roman cage cup but is the only known object from that time period that's made with dichroic glass this means that depending on the angle you look at it and if the lights passing through it it will appear to change color in the case of the lycurgus cup the color change is stark and it turns from a dark red when it's lit from behind to green when it's lit from the front the problem for scientists is that it's not easy to create this effect and actually involve the use of manipulation of nanoparticles the glass contains microscopic levels of gold and silver and there's a debate within the scientific community about whether the roman manufacturers of objects like this were actually doing it on purpose or whether it was originally done on accident with a technique that was subsequently perfected still we don't know quite how they managed to create a glass like this and even now we know the science behind it attempts have been made to replicate it that haven't yet been able to match up to the original is the cup proof that romans were far more advanced than we had given them credit for or was this just simply a one-off fluke where the glass was contaminated in the workshop number 10 severed hands the 1755 mile long emerald river runs along the border between northeastern china and russia it's long been a boundary between nations and a place that plays an important role in local cultures but in 2018 a rather grim discovery was made on one of the river's islands close to the city of khabarovsk around 20 miles from the chinese border a bag full of 54 human hands found to be 27 pairs of hands stories soon began circulating about how they came to be there were they the remains of an ancient ritual was it something to do with the chinese mafia or perhaps trophies of a serial killer investigations found that the hands had only recently been severed which eliminated any notion of it being an ancient discovery but this only served to further frighten locals who feared they might be the next victims of the hand thief it wasn't long however until the investigative committee which is responsible for looking into serious crimes at russia announced that there wasn't actually anything so unusual about the discovery although the means in which the hands had been disposed of wasn't exactly standard procedure they had been removed from corpses that were due to be buried so the fingerprints were still available to be tested something that's apparently a common procedure of course they're meant to be stored in a forensic laboratory in case they're ever needed so quite how they managed to be left on the island still remains a mystery number 9 the lost lake if you drive through the state of oregon during the winter months the chances are you might pass a place called the lost lake covering 85 acres it's hard to miss but you might wonder why it has this name when it's so obvious to see but this is something that only becomes clear in the summer strangely if you take the same route when it's warmer all you'll see is a lush meadow because the lost lake is one of the few in the world that completely vanishes during certain times of year it's long been a source of confusion to locals and mention of it was made by the first people to ever explore the area for a long time it was a mystery as to why this happened but a few years ago the truth was revealed the entire state was once a volcanically active region and has a number of structures that remain from that time laval tubes are actually quite common there are two that open up in the base of the lake that water continuously pours through during the winter the volume of water entering the lake exceeds the volume that drains away through the tubes so the lake fills up but during the summer this is reversed and all of the lake's water drains away without being replenished so it completely empties we are constantly adding more people to the top fives production team to bring you all the best content be sure to subscribe with notifications on and hit the like button number eight lake michigan stonehenge stonehenge is one of the most famous ancient monuments in the world and shows a level of understanding and engineering capability that were far beyond what would have normally been expected of people at the time at least though it was known that the communities lived in the area when stonehenge was built but recently a similar structure was found in michigan which has forced a rethink about what we knew about when people first arrived in the area in 2007 researchers were scouring the depths of lake michigan in search of sunken ships but instead discovered the ancient monument that's believed to be around the same age as stonehenge and was built around 9 000 years ago furthermore there's an inscription on one of the stones that depicts a mastodon those animals were thought to have died out in the region more than ten thousand years ago so what could this mean for the area were there technologically advanced people there far earlier than previously thought who had the ability to know how to transport large rocks and build structures like this and what was its purpose it looks so similar to stonehenge that does this mean the druids and whoever built this monument shared the designs or was it a complete coincidence for now the exact location is being kept a secret for fear of an influx of tourists who may damage the structure but let's hope that further studies will uncover the truth behind it once and for all number seven the williams enigmaliff in today's world we rely on electricity for so much of what we do it powers our homes our vehicles and without it life would be very different but we only harnessed it for our own purposes in the past century or so didn't we in 1998 an electrical engineer called john j williams was on a hike with his family in an undisclosed location in north america when he stumbled across a peculiar rock he noticed something strange about it right away but when he looked closer he couldn't believe his eyes what he appeared to be looking at was an electrical plug embedded within the stone itself as we know the process by which stones like this form it seems impossible that this could have happened on its own within the past few centuries and the plug-like object seems perfectly made to be a natural formation according to williams who recently offered it for sale for half a million dollars the plug has been tested and dated to around a hundred thousand years ago experts have supposedly examined it and said there are no signs of glue or welding and the object had to exist at the time that the rock was formed so this begs the question of how this is even possible and who made it of course there are plenty of people who think it's just an elaborate hoax but could this be proof of a historical alien civilization a much more advanced human civilization from the past or perhaps even time travel until the object is released to the wider scientific community for study answers will remain pure conjecture but williams remains adamant that he's found a truly weird object that if real would be the most significant find ever number six three-eyed fish one of the most famous episodes of the simpsons is the one where blinky the three-eyed fish was found in a river near the springfield power plant and while at the time most people saw this as a comedic commentary on the dangers of nuclear waste making its way into the natural environment real-life versions have since been found fishermen in cordoba argentina had been long concerned about the presence of a nuclear facility near the town and what effects it might have on the local wildlife and in 2017 their fears were fully realized one of them who was fishing in a reservoir that had been built to provide a reliable source of water to the power station realized there was something strange about a wolf fish that he had just caught and it took him a moment before he saw that there were three eyes looking back up at him similar specimens have also been found elsewhere in the world but they don't necessarily always happen in potentially polluted areas 3i mutations can occur randomly in nature but there's no doubt that the presence of chemicals particularly like nuclear waste can make these and other freakish mutations far more likely to happen number five the lloyd's bag coprolite there are plenty of ways in which historians can learn about how people used to live but a discovery that was made in 1972 during an excavation beneath lloyd's bank in the city of york in the uk surely has to be the weirdest of all archaeologists were searching the viking settlement of jorvik when they unearthed a peculiar looking log rather than being part of a tree or a bench however this was completely human-made as believed to be the largest fossilized piece of human feces that's ever been found it measures in at an enormous eight inches long and two inches wide an analysis of it suggests that the person responsible for it survived on a diet made mainly of bread and meat also rather worryingly there's evidence of hundreds of parasitic eggs that means the person would most likely have had a severe intestinal warm infestation which researchers now believe may have been quite common at the time now known as the lloyd's bank coprolite the specimen was put on display at a museum but in 2003 it was broken into three pieces when a guide for a tour accidentally dropped it while restoration works are ongoing the museum has a replica that it shows to guests to help them imagine what it must have felt like to produce such a monstrous deposit at the bank number 4 secret movie theater beneath the streets of paris are extensive tunnel networks that have been used to store the remains of more than 6 million people known as the catacombs construction began in the late 18th century to provide a place to re-bury the remains that were in the cemeteries of the city it was decided that they'd be arranged in such an ornate way that it's now become one of the most popular tourist activities in the city there are however more than 170 miles of passageways and caverns a large proportion of them have been long closed off and access prohibited to everyone apart from those responsible for ensuring they remain structurally safe in 2004 though it was found that not everyone takes these restrictions seriously and that someone had found a long abandoned part of the catacombs and turned a room into their own personal movie theater it's possibly the creepiest place in the world you could watch a scary movie with human bones surrounding you and swastikas etched into the ceiling authorities found it had a power supply a fully stocked bar and comfortable seating for up to 20 people quite who was responsible for it remains a mystery however but the leading theory was that it was the work of a secret parisian organization called the urban experiment that is dedicated to restoring and creating artworks throughout paris's long forgotten parts number three two-headed porpoise most animals of course have just one head but it's not completely unheard of for mutations to occur whereby individuals develop two or more snakes are well known for this but it can actually happen to any species and in 2017 a fishing trawler in the north sea caught a very rare specimen a two-headed porpoise what you're looking at is actually two newborn males who share the same body the body itself looks exactly like you'd expect from a porpoise of that age and this was only the tenth known example of conjoined twins occurring in species of whale or dolphin unfortunately for these ones it made it almost impossible for them to swim and hunt and it's thought that they would have died within hours of being born it's not known how often this happens in the wild because it's incredibly rare for them to survive for very long but new theories based on discoveries like this suggest that it could be just as common for most species as it is in humans number two ice balls when winter comes depending on where you live you'll expect certain types of weather such as snow rain freezing temperatures and frost but for residents living near lake michigan there's a whole different phenomenon that takes place the formation of peculiar ice balls it's a strange sight to see and when the conditions are right the water can be so full of them that's impossible to navigate a boat through it's by no means guaranteed to happen every year it was only relatively recently that their origin was fully explained rather than having fallen from the sky like huge hailstones these ice balls originate within the lake itself when it's cold enough a layer of ice forms over regions of the water and this gets broken up into chunks if the water is the right temperature the ice won't melt but will instead be worn away by the action of the waves in a similar process to what happens to boulders eventually they become perfectly smooth and round and are washed up on shore to create one of the weirdest natural ice formations you'll see anywhere on earth number one the voynich manuscript it's easy to think that our understanding of the world and how it works is the best that it's ever been and that human civilization has been on a continual trajectory of learning whereby we're building on it every day this isn't necessarily the case however as there are a number of artifacts that suggest various peoples and communities in the past were well ahead of their time possibly the weirdest of them all is called the voynich manuscript dating back to the beginning of the 15th century it's not known who wrote it but has fascinated researchers ever since it appeared in 1912 throughout the 240 pages are illustrations and writings but as of yet no one has been able to decipher what they mean tests have been conducted on the pages and confirmed that it truly is more than 600 years old but despite the attempts of the best code breakers in the world it's so far proven impossible to decipher the code in which these words are written the illustration suggests that it talks about complex botanical and biological understanding as well as a surprising grasp of mathematics astronomy and a number of other disciplines quite why the author felt the need to hide the contents from casual observers is not yet clear but perhaps one day someone will be able to decipher it all and finally unlock the manuscripts mysteries watch our binge watching playlist if you'd like to watch all of our most popular top 15 videos grab a drink grab a snack and get ready to binge you

Channel: Top Fives

Views: 756,596

Rating: 4.8127589 out of 5

Keywords: weird discoveries

Id: 4weucULNOFQ

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020