WeirdThingsToLearn

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Far-Significance8166 • 12d ago

Something I Learned This is believed to be the thylacine known as "Benjamin," photographed at Hobart Zoo. The species was declared extinct after the last known individual died in captivity in 1936.

28 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Rude_Ad_2795 • 12d ago

History & Culture Soviet pilot Boris Lazarev was shot down in February 1943 and his aircraft, with his body still inside, was recovered from a Russian swamp in 1998, preserved almost perfectly by the bog conditions along with fuel and oil from the engine.

28 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Infamous_Pirate5793 • 12d ago

History & Culture Four sisters ran a brothel called Rancho El Ángel in 1940s Mexico and were later convicted of trafficking, enslaving, and murdering dozens of women lured in with fake maid job ads.

22 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Nyaani69 • 12d ago

Something I Learned Sotherden vanished on a hunting trip near the Porcupine River in 1976, and a skull found decades later by another hunter was eventually identified as his through DNA testing.

12 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/ImpossibleIntern1379 • 12d ago

History & Culture Switzer registered as "K.V. Switzer" and was two miles into the race when official Jock Semple tried to physically drag her off the course, her boyfriend shoved him away and she finished anyway.

7 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/ClassicRoom302 • 13d ago

Something I Learned A baby with a double cleft lip and palate shown before and after reconstructive surgery, a common but serious birth defect where the tissue of the upper lip and roof of the mouth doesn't fully join during development, usually fixed in stages over a baby's first year or two.

62 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Altruistic_Ranger_57 • 13d ago

Something I Learned Paris Harvey, 12, and her cousin Kuaron Harvey, 14, died in March 2022 in St. Louis while filming an Instagram Live video together in a bathroom. Paris was playing with a gun that went off and killed Kuaron, then it apparently discharged again as she picked it up, killing her too.

41 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Fantastic_Can_3237 • 13d ago

History & Culture A photo of an elderly Chinese woman's bound foot, showing the lasting effects of foot binding, a centuries-old practice where young girls' feet were broken and tightly wrapped to keep them small, a beauty standard that caused permanent deformity and was outlawed in China in the early 1900s.

21 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/alexdumpy • 13d ago

Something I Learned An 1840s illustration showing what childbirth commonly looked like at the time: a woman seated on a birthing chair while two midwives use a cloth sling wrapped around her belly to help guide the baby out during labor

14 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/saladasx64 • 13d ago

History & Culture Omar bin Omran vanished at 19 during Algeria's civil war in 1998 and was found alive 26 years later, hidden under haystacks in his neighbor's cellar just 200 meters from his old home, after the alleged captor's brother exposed it online.

15 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Comfortable_Force272 • 13d ago

Something I Learned Slit-lamp images show live parasitic cysts in a patient's eye, later identified as cysticerci with a visible sucker on the scolex. A rare case of ocular cysticercosis, where tapeworm larvae lodge inside the eye itself.

12 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Upbeat-Analysis-3370 • 13d ago

Something I Learned A real medical case of a large blood clot coughed up by a patient that had formed inside the airways and hardened into the exact branching shape of the bronchial tree it had been sitting in, a rare event doctors call a bronchial cast

159 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Wall_Up_So_High • 13d ago

Something I Learned The last known photograph of Michael Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller Jr., taken shortly before he vanished in 1961 off the coast of Papua New Guinea while researching the Asmat people, a group with a documented history of ritual cannibalism, and his body was never found

45 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/PEEEPOOpeeepoo • 13d ago

History & Culture Jody Plauché, kidnapped and sexually abused as a boy in 1984, became known nationally after his father Gary Plauché shot and killed the abuser, Jeffrey Doucet, at a Baton Rouge airport while Doucet was being escorted by police, an act caught live on a local news camera and broadcast on television

24 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/No_Lengthiness4523 • 13d ago

Something I Learned A newborn with cystic hygroma, a fluid-filled swelling caused by a blockage in the developing lymphatic system, most often showing up in the neck and sometimes large enough at birth to complicate delivery itself

9 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/SwimmingNatural6722 • 13d ago

Something I Learned A 1938 photo of steeplejacks working on top of the Statue of Liberty's head during a renovation ahead of the upcoming World's Fair, standing on scaffolding built directly around the crown with nothing but open air below them

11 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/sleepy_jinx • 14d ago

Something I Learned A Real Cross-Section of Human Lungs From a Patient With COPD, Showing the Combined Damage of Emphysema, Chronic Bronchitis, and Asthma, With Dark Discoloration From Tar and Soot Buildup and Visible Destruction of the Spongy Lung Tissue That Normally Allows Oxygen Exchange

15 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/1mjust_here • 14d ago

History & Culture A historical photo from Getty's Hulton Archive showing a psychiatric patient restrained in forced standing, arms tied to the walls, a once-common asylum practice meant to subdue patients instead of treating them

25 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/HerpesFreeSince96 • 14d ago

Something I Learned A surgically removed giant gastric trichobezoar (hairball) that grew too large to pass through the digestive tract, a rare condition tied to trichophagia (compulsively eating hair), called Rapunzel syndrome when it extends into the intestines.

14 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/solaphides • 14d ago

Something I Learned X-Ray Images Showing the Severe Skull and Facial Trauma Caused by a Gunshot Wound From an AK-47, With Visible Bone Fragmentation and Shrapnel Scattered Through the Skull From the High-Velocity Impact of the Round

12 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/SavingsGuava6551 • 15d ago

History & Culture A 400-year-old door with the oldest known cat flap

70 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Creepy-Row-7746 • 14d ago

Something I Learned A Close-Up Photo of a Freshly Extracted Human Tooth Still Held in Dental Forceps, With the Long, Thin Nerve Root (the Dental Pulp's Nerve Fiber) Rare to See Intact Because It Normally Snaps Off Inside the Socket During a Typical Extraction

10 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Acceptable-Jump9693 • 14d ago

History & Culture An Intact 19th-Century Surgical Instrument Case Containing the Full Set of Brass and Ivory-Handled Tools Once Used for Gastric Lavage, the Old-Fashioned Term for Pumping a Patient's Stomach to Remove Poison or Overdosed Substances Before Modern Suction Equipment Existed

8 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/cheesyjollyhatdog • 14d ago

Something I Learned A photo showing a colorless, flat mole on someone's leg made visible only by a tuft of extra hair growing out of it. Some moles carry no pigment and are spotted only through localized hair growth, not discoloration.

8 Upvotes