These 49 Bizarre Items Never Would Have Been Identified If The Internet Hadn't Come To The Rescue (2025)

"It's a Georgian/early Victorian mourning ring. The initials belong to the lost loved one. They were typically made from gold (18k+) and enameled in black. Yours looks like it was made around the 1820s-1840s."

—u/batbrat

"It looks like a plantation/planters chair. You’d put your sore, swollen legs up on the arms after sitting on a horse all day, like a pregnant woman with her legs up in the same fashion. This is why the back is sloped as well. If you sit up straight, it wouldn’t be comfortable to put your legs up like that, but in a reclined position, it’s good for blood flow and air flow. Here's an example photo."

—u/ChesterDaMolester

"Yup, that's a fossil. Tree trunk impression."

—u/jimoconnell

"You have found a very beautiful example! Here'sanother example."

—u/RedPanda1188

"It's a fridge, or an old-timey cold room. Basically, a room covered with dirt for insulation."

—u/mdroflmaozedong

"Root cellar/Wurzel Keller."

—u/Derpandbackagain

"15 years of impeccable service of theUSSR Ministry of Internal Affairs."

—u/HIGHTECH_DUDE

"This is an Impeccable Service Medal from the USSR, specifically KGB service. Perhaps Paps was a Cold War era spy..."

—u/Jestercopperpot72

"Aide de memoir."

—u/Artbrutist

"More specifically, see this one, which is almost identical to the days of the week typed and has a similar clasp on Etsy: Victorian Aide Memoire Notebook. The product description says it's a 'fabulous antique early Victorian chatelaine aide memoire from the mid-1800s. Made of sheets of bone, it would have hung on a lady's chatelaine chain or been kept securely in her pocket, and she would have used it to make notes and appointments for the week to come. It has six pages for the days Monday to Saturday, because, of course, a lady would never have made appointments on a Sunday!"

—u/DrKenNoisewaterMD

"Looks like a polypore fungus that is exuding excess moisture, called guttation. Like this."

—u/jackrats

"An image search shows similar items that were used as charge coins. Pretty cool if it is one."

—u/ifdeadpokewithstick

"Here's one that matches the original poster's. It's from a now-defunct store called Nathan Snellenburg — definitely a charge coin. Here's ablogand subsequentFlickr linkwith a pic of one that seems to match, but it's unclear what store it comes from. And here's a New York Times article about charge coins."

—u/littleheaterlulu

"It's a hook used to hoist furniture to the upper floors of the building. A pulley is hung from it to assist. The bell shape is likely just to protect from rain."

—u/jackrats

"This is a strap and handle for carrying books."

—u/jackrats

"It appears to be an antique tonsil guillotine. The pincers near the end grip the tonsils, and the end part slices the tonsils off. Yeah, it looks painful."

—u/sandiercy

"It's a plaque for the head tube of a bicycle frame from the Ajax cycle brand. That's why it's slightly convex.

The cycles with this logo were made in the town of Albert in the Somme region between 1906-1913, just before WWI broke out; two years later, both thefactoryand town were practically leveled by German artillery fire, and nearly a million men were killed at the Battle of the Somme there a year after."

— u/Menthalion

"It's the top of an expandable purse; yours is just missing the actual fabric purse part. Here's one expanded with the purse."

—u/SilverScimitar13

"That is a Shore Scleroscope! It's an instrument that was used to test the hardness of metals. It does so by dropping a weight down the tube and measuring how high it bounces back, hence the numbered marks.

Here's a low-resolution video of one being used."

—u/MisterLochlan

"This is for removing a cork from a wine bottle if it falls all the way in. Here's the patent from 1985. The inventor lived in Vancouver, where I also live; perhaps that's why I recognized it. I've seen these around. Pretty sure my mom and dad had one."

—u/S-Kiraly

When the original poster asked how it worked, u/Splint33333 replied, "You just put the thing inside the bottle and the bottom part (with the larger bit) under the cork. Then, you lift up, pushing the cork against the neck of the bottle until it flies out. There is a 'DIY' version with a simple string and a knot version on YouTube."

"Looks like a blade as used in cockfighting."

—u/xmastreee

"Rooster blade."

—u/TaikongNiuzai

"I present to youthe vintage Health-O-Meter scale. Yours is just the top bit; it attaches to the bottom part and floats above it. When youstep on it, the weight is shown in the glass bit, ostensibly. It could be the guts are frozen or whatever. Anyway, it's a bathroom scale, in effect."

— u/houtex727

"Vintage school desk frame."

—u/sarg368

"Boot scrapers."

—u/jackrats

"When those were installed, horses were probably the main transportation option, and in addition, nobody carried dog poop bags. I have seen quotes that NYC in 1900 dealt with 2.5 million pounds of horse poop per day! Vibram hadn't been invented, so I would guess not a lot of lugged soles. That would make these both very necessary and probably fairly effective."

—u/Random_Excuse7879

"It's a cranial cap. You put it under the head to absorb leaking brain goo."

—u/pervocracy

"You would place that on the pillow of a casket for someone who has had a cranial autopsy done (removal of the brain). It is to absorb any liquid that may seep through the sutures used on the scalp. Better in this than all over the pillow because it would most likely be blood. I've been a mortician for 40 years."

—u/BarnacleVisible7526

"Funeral Director/Embalmer here. Agree with the other posters. Could be wrong, but this one looks used. Would not recommend touching bare-handed. We use numerous chemicals that an alive person should not touch directly."

—u/Michaelpooponu

"It's a vestigial device deliberately installed into a great number of imported shirts so that they classify as a specific article of clothing, which avoids a tariff."

—u/Technical_Anteater45

"It’s called a ‘nurse pocket,’ and it’s there for reasons others commented."

—u/71Crickets

"Dewpan for animals to drink from. The pyramid sits in a tray and warms during the day. The air cools at night, and condensation forms and runs down to be collected in the tray."

—u/Tacoza

"Pedometer pen. Put it in your shirt pocket, and it counts your steps."

—u/twelvepeas

"FB Minden might stand for"Feuerbestattung" Minden- Minden crematory. I think you stumbled over a chamotte marker from a crematory that was used to track the identity of a body as it turned to ashes and was buried at sea."

— u/ParaspriteHugger

The original poster, u/tinaa26, replied, "Thank you. I was assuming it might be something like that when I Googled it. I will put it back in the sea."

"I am a commercial diver. I do construction underwater in Manhattan. We recently used these exact cages on a project called The Billion Oyster Project. It’s a conservation effort to restore the NYC oyster population.

What they did was fill these box cages with oyster shells. Then we welded them together. Then, they put a box of either live oysters or oyster shells seeded with juvenile oysters on the top of this box pyramid. Then we lowered them by crane down to the river bottom and staked them into the mud.

We also installed concrete habitats seeded with juvenile oysters. Our location was the Gansevoort Peninsula, just south of The Little Island and just west of the Whitney Museum."

—u/PugetSoundingRods

"It's a handle for a 2-liter bottle to make pouring easier."

—u/alchemy_junkie

"I think that's Star Jelly... Great find! Believe it or not, no one knows where it comes from. Only some wild speculations."

—u/Spec_Ops_141

Also,u/Mael_Coluim_III shared more information about star jellieshere and here.

"It’s a Geiger counter."

—u/thenewtestament

"It’s a coal furnace damper. It would have rods or a chain connected to the furnace in the basement or other room."

—u/sugar_its_eli

"I think this is the exact same one."

—u/alwaysinthebathtub

"If there’s a hole in a cannonball, it’s for a fuse to light the explosives inside. You should put that downimmediatelyand potentially contact law enforcement about ordnance disposal."

—u/George__Hale

The original poster, u/RaedwaldRex,later updated, saying, "Thank you. Rather stupidly, I shook it to hear anything inside, but I didn't hear anything. Which, in hindsight, was probably very stupid. I'll give 101 a call (the UK police non-emergency line) and see what they suggest." They later added, "Two nice army chaps have been and confirmed it's safe. Even let me keep it. I'm now off to bed."

"Murphy in-a-dor bed."

—u/adube1320

"It's for a variation on the Murphy bed... one of the corners fit on that hinge so it could pivot out of the way into the closet. The closet has to be bed-width. Here's a picture of the hinge in my closet without the fancy patented plate at the bottom.

Murphy beds were invented in San Francisco, and you see their remnants in a lot of old buildings and variations."

— u/tyinsf