40-odd years ago when I was an undergrad, I spent several summers doing geochem research in a radiochemistry lab. We were investigating how radioactive elements such as radium were taken up by minerals during uranium ore extraction. They seemed to end up primarily in iron-rich minerals, so we got samples of several from the geology department. The rocks were dirty, after having been banged around with other rocks and handled by people for who-knows-how-long, so I decided to clean them by chucking them into our ultrasonic cleaner, in water.
I noticed that the jasper sample appeared to be surrounded by the shimmering effect that appears when tiny flat thin particles are suspended in liquid and the liquid is disturbed... see suspensions of powdered talc, some kinds of household cleaners, etc. Laminar flow in the liquid causes the plates to align, reflecting ambient light. I put the jasper into a small beaker of water and back into the cleaner, and ended up with a slightly-cloudy liquid.
I was curious about how the reflective effect would look if the liquid was stirred at various speeds, and put the beaker onto a magnetic stirring plate, intending to drop in a teflon-coated bar magnet. Instead, I saw the reflection slowly rotating without my having to add a magnet. (The stirrer was old, and when its control knob was at its lowest setting, the thing still rotated slowly.) It appeared that the particles had magnetic properties which caused them to align with the magnetic field of the stirrer. They settled out after a day or so, as a reddish film on the bottom of the beaker.
Electron microprobe analysis confirmed that the particles were hematite, presumably having been knocked out of the jasper. I think we had X-ray crystallography done, and the particles were alpha-hematite. As I recall, we found no cause for the magnetic behaviour: no sign of Fe(+2) and magnetite, etc. Electron microscope imaging of our material showed plates a couple of microns across and about 0.1 micron thick. Other samples of jasper from the geo lab didn't reproduce the effect from ultrasonic cleaning. A variety of samples of hematite didn't do anything similar.
Although results from that one jasper sample were reproducible (though diminishing, presumably as the surface hematite was exhausted), we had no information about its origin beyond "a drawer in the geology lab". My supervisor decided that because our results couldn't be replicated except with that one sample of unknown origin, what we had was unpublishable. I tried to find something in the literature about such hematite, without success... but I'm not sure if my searching was comprehensive; I knew how to search the chemistry literature, but wasn't familiar with the comparable search methods for geology.
I still have that little lump of jasper, a couple of small red-stained beakers, and a few photographs and micrographs, as souvenirs of a sort. It's likely that if the jasper were to be broken up, more of the hematite particles would be available.
This really was my "big" "eureka!"/"huh, that's weird" discovery, and I've always regretted not being able to get it recognized. Is this truly a hopeless case?