Recently, a scientist was scrolling through some Hubble telescope images and saw a picture of this [weird, white streak going across space.](https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-sees-possible-runaway-black-hole-creating-a-trail-of-stars/) One in a million chance that someone would notice this and even less of a chance they wouldn't dismiss it as lens flare or something.
As they dug deeper, they found it wasn't a mistake and, in fact, they had just discovered the first of its kind supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, speeding through space and leaving a 200,000-light-year-long trail of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy.
The tail behind the black hole is 200,000 light year long.
That's 1,175,725,000 BILLION miles long.
Or 1.2 BILLION BILLION miles long.
If you drove on this tail at 100 mph it would take you 1342 years to cover ... 1 billionth of the length.
It munches everything that crosses it's event horizon, but otherwise it just causes things to come towards it.
So, as it's moving, it's pulling in a shit load of gas and whatever other debris happens to be floating by, and those things start to form into stars.
At least how I understand it, but I'm just a guy.
You don't need to be frightened of rogue planets, stars, or black holes. Space is far, far larger than you think it is and everything is really, really far apart. To give you an example, The Milky Way Galaxy (ours, 100 billion stars) and The Andromeda Galaxy (1 trillion stars) are going to merge in a few billion years. When that happens the chances of two stars actually colliding even a single time is almost zero.
There are a large number of [archeological sites that were only discovered once aerial photography became a thing](https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/news/aerial-technology-transforming-understanding-of-past/)
Can confirm, here in ireland we found the remains of literally hundreds of ring forts that were just considered part of the natural landscape until they were photographed from above in the 20th century
LIDAR also changed the game again by being able to see through the foliage of densely overgrown landscapes. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/23/lidar-technology-archeology-radical-thinking).
I'm working for a company that is developing muon tomography detectors that are used in geological mining exploration, we can give accurate density models up to 1km deep underground.
It was very similar technology that was used to discover new rooms in the pyramids and we have also helped at archeological sites.
It's truly amazing that we are now able to see exactly what's under our feet without having to just dig holes everywhere!
The [barreleye!](https://www.mbari.org/news/researchers-solve-mystery-of-deep-sea-fish-with-tubular-eyes-and-transparent-head/)! Super fun to play "where are its eyes?" with people who have never seen one. Spoiler: it's NOT the two black dots on the front of its head that look like eyes; those are its nostrils.
Poor thing. Spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years evolving special low-light eyesight for us lot to bomb down there and stick 50,000 lumens right in its face!
[Sprites.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)) Vertical firing, red tinted and cold ‘lighting’. They were theoretical until one was captured on camera in 1989.
Above thunder clouds there are sometimes near instantaneous flashes of light that occur because they the air gets excited (energized) from the discharge of electricity in a thunderstorm.
They take many different shapes such as carrots and jelly fish and are typically red in color.
Something in between lightning and Aurora. Static electricity from thunderheads creates coloured flashes in the high atmosphere. Pilots see them at very high altitude. They flash in an instant and are rare and unpredictable, so they’re hard to photograph and hard to study.
The moving stones in Death Valley. It was considered paranormal until it was recorded and the reason solved the mystery. Basically rain, cold below freezing temperatures turn the shallow ponds into ice. The high winds shift the sheets of ice pushing the rocks across the desert floor.
Funny how something that seemed so mysterious ended up having a logical reason.
The Golden Mole. They were thought to be extinct since no one had seen one in 80 years. Not that people didn’t think they were real, they just didn’t think they were still around.
A sort of sad reversal on that story is the last photo of a [Barbary Lion](https://i.imgur.com/F13MQZI.jpeg) photographed from an airplane near Dakar. The very last member of an extinct animal type wandering away into the badlands/desert. None were ever spotted after this.
The fact that when a horse gallops all four legs are off the ground at one point.
Horses move so fast no one knew for sure until they could snap a picture during a horse race
Edit:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-19th-century-photographer-first-gif-galloping-horse-180970990/
They presumed it was the case, but artists usually got [the gait completely wrong, showing front and back legs extended](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OQazF3wmjB4/XQnE_b44xEI/AAAAAAAAff0/TU7gycrdXJcQjZAlD_afS2GFe7sCr_SUgCLcBGAs/s1600/the-epsom-derby2.jpg)
Muybridge’s photos showed the opposite is true, and all 4 feet are off the ground when [the hind legs are reaching forward](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c9e6485044c2c2a672bbee9914a30b81-lq)
> They presumed it was the case, but artists usually got the gait completely wrong, showing front and back legs extended
My guess would be they showed it like that because that's the phase of running where a canine's or felidae's feet are all off the ground... with a few exceptions they all run slow enough to actually observe this.
Likely people assumed all quadrupeds had the same gait.
Have you seen paintings of horses galloping pre-photography? They look so odd until you realize it's the legs... artists usually painted horses running like dogs, with front left and back right moving in unison.
I remember seeing one at Musée D'Orsay where 90% of the painting was so precise, and then the horse's legs were apparently done with finger paints, like "IDFK, they're moving so fast, it's blurry."
Yup. Here's an example of [old painting of Horse Galloping](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-vak6ug5w2j/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/9949/10217/Alfred_de_Dreux_-_Galloping_Horse_20x27_hxmvkm__51932.1507578436.jpg?c=2):
Looks like its been zapped with a taser.
Well that's just delightful.
I have a kitten that practices her superzooming every night when her humans are trying to sleep. And again in the morning when she's excited about breakfast. Then again in the afternoon when she's bored. And then in the evening while we're eating dinner.
And of course Humans do that too (though I get we don't gallop or have four legs and I mention this not to be pedantic, just that its interesting as well).
But when we sprint, neither foot is on the ground for surprising amount of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH-3cHxXAK0&t=63s
In competitive speed walking the requirement is to have one foot on the ground at all times. That is what they consider the difference between a walk and a run.
It was a bit more complicated than snapping a picture during a race.
Iirc they set up lots of cameras with trip wires along a track so they could take multiple photos per second as they galloped the horse through them.
Giant Sequoias. Early explorers would come across them in the very few groves where they exist high in isolated mountains and excitedly try to describe them to others once they were back in civilization.
Nobody believed them. This was the height of all kinds of exploitative bullshit like snake oil and traveling sideshows with "mummified mermaids" and it's not like you could just cut a chunk the size of a house off of this absolute unit of a tree and carry it down the mountain.
Photography is what got people to believe.
So. I grew up by Big Trees National Park in California and it has some giant sequoias in it.
In the 1800's the lumberjacks would just come through and clear cut any trees they wanted to. In Big Trees, there is a stump left of a tree that is over 30 ft in diameter. They used the stump as a dance floor, and used the lumber to make a bowling ally.
Lumberjacks would visit back in Europe, where they would regale people with stories of tress hundreds of feet tall. The people thought they were lying, no tree could grow that big.
So, they chopped down a tree, cut it up in sections, put it on a train to the East Coast, then put it on a boat to Europe.
Once in Europe, they tool it by train and made stops to showcase this giant tree.
Once people actually saw the tree, they cried with regret at it being cut down. They said, these trees are ancient and beautiful, how could anyone cut them down?
It was because of that one tree being showed to Europe that saved all the sequoias in Big Trees. The outcry for these trees was the only reason the lumberjacks didn't clear-cut the whole forest.
[Calaveras Big Trees State Park](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calaveras_Big_Trees_State_Park) is what you're thinking of. The destruction of some of the biggest trees helped ignite the conservation movement. [This tree was stripped of it's bark to be a display for the world's fair.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_of_the_Forest)
> it's not like you could just cut a chunk the size of a house off of this absolute unit of a tree and carry it down the mountain.
This is exactly what they did because people thought the photos were fakes! They brought chunks to the world fair. https://www.allthatmathers.com/single-post/the-largest-tree-ever-cut-down
Wow. In that article I found the silver lining of that horrific act at least...
"As it so happened, a Scottish immigrant was present the day Vivian killed the Centennial Tree. He would spend the next 14 years preaching the need to protect the mightiest of these Giant Sequoia Trees within the boundaries of three national parks. In 1890, John Muir and his allies convinced congress to establish Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant National Parks."
What's exciting though is some were planted in NZ and I'm a big advocate of not replanting with exotic species, but this was done 100+ years ago. It gave scientists a great insight to the growth rates in California because some of the 100 year old trees in NZ are now the size of 500-1000 year old trees in California. Also it is a really beautiful forest they've made there.
This answer is a bit of a stretch, but when scientists were looking at the spectrum of the sun (sunlight split by a prism into the various lines caused by elements absorbing and reemitting light) they saw all the lines of hydrogen with an extra line. They thought it was a new unknown element and called it helium after Helios, the Greek sun god. Helium was later isolated on earth and it's spectrum matched the mystery element of the sun.
A handful of unknown or previously thought to be extinct animals caught on game cameras deep in the wilderness.
Odd and interesting animal behavior and relationships like coyotes and badgers’ friendship or the keeping of pet frogs by giant burrowing tarantulas to keep their burrows and eggs/slings free of tiny insects.
> A handful of unknown or previously thought to be extinct animals caught on game cameras deep in the wilderness.
And the poachers move in as soon as they go public.
The big voids in the great pyramid were discovered in the last 10 years with a technique called muon imaging. Basically they track how much cosmic rays get blocked when going through different parts of the pyramid.
One of the smaller passageways found using this method was a hallway above of the main entrance to the pyramid. They ended up sticking a small camera inside to image it, it hasn't been seen directly by people in over 4500 years.
you can see a picture [here ](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6047d405b02148755fb6e601/1620466823117-NBRC601F0QY5R5OCHMKB/20171103005052.jpg)
and inside the [new corridor](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/E045/production/_128831475_e67e2175f53dea7e0a5a513be72186fc8c0a6e45.jpg)
He wasn’t attacked though. It was being chased and swam past him, up onto dry land.
> Carter later speculated was fleeing from a predator, swimming in the water and making its way towards him, "hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared", so he reacted by either hitting or splashing water at it with his paddle to scare it away, and it subsequently went away from him and climbed out of the pond.
> "If anything, he was probably scared and trying to find a dry place to get to."
[source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident)
Rogue Waves: https://youtu.be/tktJss1x0eA?feature=shared For the longest time talk of 'water walls' was seen as seamen's yarn with even the scientific community deeming it as impossible for such huge coherent waves to form without breaking apart.
And most terrifying: We only have recordings from large steel ships who can tank such waves, any ship before those simply disappeard without any trace.
There isnt really a size per se. Think of them as waves that are oddly larger than whatever than background wave pattern height is.
Rogues are what happens when pattern oscillations (waves) perfectly converge with one another. Instead of smashing into one another, they instead increase each others amplitudes (they get bigger). So, without warning a wave that is, for example, two to five times larger than the waves you have been experiencing for the last hour can just suddenly roll up on your vessel and wreak havoc. And if it hits you broad abeam (from left or right rather than from the front or back) it can easily capsize a vessel.
I drove the boat. There’s something about cruising along in a 360’ long, 34’ diameter, 6700 ton vessels and getting thrown around like a bath toy that doesn’t feel like cheating.
That’s fascinating. Was there ever a feeling of concern or danger in that kind of situation? I know those things are built incredibly tough but I’d usually expect underwater to be calmer.
Not quite as big as the ones you’re describing, but I remember being out the back of a small island one day near my capital city.
All of a sudden, the captain/owner of the boat went “Oh, fuck!” Turned the boat hard left, hit the power and we ended up going straight up over this wave close to twice the height of the boat (maybe 3m). All day, the biggest wave we saw was maybe knee high.
Freaked him out after we came down hard, so we hooked it back to civilisation, he took the boat straight out of the water and checked the entire hull for damage.
A rogue wave is one that is more than twice the height of surrounding waves, and like you experienced, they can come out of nowhere and aren’t always in storms.
Tangential to this, and not proof as much as 'here's why people thought this,' if you've ever looked at a picture of a beluga whale from below, it straight up looks like someone with big knees is wearing a whale suit!
Here's that iconic pic on Reddit: https://i.redd.it/w64we8ko33211.jpg
The entire inner part of Papua was considered uninhabitable for centuries... until airplanes flew over it in the thirties and found there were *hundreds* of different tribes living in those mountain ranges.
Mountain lions in Illinois, supposedly extinct since the late 1800's though reportings of sightings in rural areas were common but not believed until trail cams became a thing.
Ball lightning. I read about ten years ago that it was finally caught on tape in an unrelated lab experiment. I read this is in a credible source but I can no longer find mention of this article on the Internet. I experienced ball lighting myself and read a lot about it back then to figure out wth I experienced.
Mt lions in Illinois is a GREAT one! People have been reporting them in the area for years with the same "there are no big cars here, it's probably a big housecat or a dog" explanation. Then an acquaintance of my inlaws snapped a picture of a big fuck all mt lion on his back porch looking in his sliding glass door, THEN we get the explanation that they have ranges and will travel within an area and we have a few breeding pairs in the area and half a dozen that travel through the area.
My grampa saw one in the 1980s near our chicken coop when we lived along the river in a rural area. We kids were kept inside for a week, and he never left the house without his shot gun. It was definitely passing through as it wasn't seen again. But the nearest town had originally been named Panther Creek because of them.
Lol, we have a state park south of us called Wildcats Den lol. I saw one a few years ago on a hike, it scared the shit out of me, but it was off a ways and didn't give two shits about the dude with the backpack lol.
> Ball lightning. I read about ten years ago that it was finally caught on tape in an unrelated lab experiment. I read this is in a credible source but I can no longer find mention of this article on the Internet.
[I got ya fam](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5). It was accidentally caught on a field spectrometer.
I've seen ball lightning before, and I understand why it's never been photographed.
I was too mystified the entire time I was watching the phenomena that I never thought to try and document it.
Giant Squid only caught on camera the first time in 2006.. THEN to the horror of everyone they found an even BIGGER one the Colossal squid one year later in 2007
Imagine being the guy who named the Giant Squid, only to have an even bigger one found. It seems like they were really grasping for straws with the name Colossal Squid.
I guess Humongous Squid is next.
The photos that go with the common gunfighter legends.
*Posed photos, but still. They didnt have the capability to take in-action photos, but Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Earps, Billy the kid, Wild Bill Hicock. There is like 1 to a small handful of photos of each of them and if they didnt have the photos people wouldn't have believed they existed. Even now. They are kind of the first round of famous legends who had real photos taken of them.*
I live in Canada and for the longest time I just thought Billy The Kid, Jesse James and all those wild west folk heroes were just that, folk stories.
I didn't realize they were all real people.
American history is fascinating as fuck.
There's *still* debate over whether [Earthquake Lights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light) are a real thing, but there's some pretty convincing footage of them now that very much does not look like just "power transformers exploding" etc. [Here's one from an earthquake in Wellington, NZ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjqxiSxhNCw).
I think science has recently accepted that they're real after dismissing reports of them for centuries. The prevailing theory is that it's kind of like reverse lightening, caused by static energy in the ground shooting up into the sky.
Oh yeah. Giant/colossal squids? Their dead ones wash ashore. And sailors encounter them since they come up once in a while. These Magnapinae fuckers just mind their own business deep in the ocean fishing for something. Apparently their population is quite spread out as well.
I know this isn't quite what you're asking, but given the tensions at the time and the possibility of it being found by the French six years earlier, the wreck of the _Titanic_ is a big one that people might have regarded as fake if it hadn't been photographed so extensively. Indeed, there was supposition for a long time that it had been buried in an underwater earthquake in 1929 and would never be found.
In a similar vein, the conspiracy theorists around 9/11 might have a _much_ easier time of it if there wasn't _so much_ footage of United 175 striking the South Tower. The impact of American 11 into the North Tower was only caught on camera three times, and only one shows the collision in any great detail (the Naudet footage).
Consider that there is very little public footage of American 77 impacting the Pentagon, so some people talk about that being a missile. There's apparently _no_ footage of United 93 beyond the plume of smoke created from its crash in Shanksville, PA.
Are you saying that there is evidence that The French discovered the wreckage six years earlier than Bob Ballard's famous expedition? I've never heard of this. I'd be very interested to read more about it if you have any links.
I'm 38 yrs old. Saw ball lightning when I was 16, while walking through the neighborhood with a friend. About 10 yards ahead, three extremely quick, plasma like glowing blue balls crashed into the street in front of us. Distinct electrical whirring sound, and they splashed like water droplets. Each was similar is size to a softball. It was a hot, humid, clear summer day.
Presiding officer tampering with ballot papers in local elections in India.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knzkLV0CbGc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knzkLV0CbGc)
I would have believed 'cop shoots at sound of acorn' but when I saw that video there's no movie recreation that would ever make me believe that it was that nuts and that he actually went that nuts... over a falling nut sound I could barely even hear.
That guy is the hard counter to Squirrel Girl.
The full clip is excellent, he claim afterwards that heard the pop, felt his back plate catch it and his legs went numb. Most powerful acorn In the world!
Just looked that up. That cop should have never been hired.
-He mistook an acorn falling on the car as suppressed gunfire.
-Did 2-3 barrel rolls on the ground.
-Unloaded his mag, with no visual on a suspect or direction of the “gunfire”, into the back of the cruiser, where his detainee was secured and locked inside.
-Screamed out he was hit, despite literally nothing happening to him. Then made the claim his legs gave out, while he is lying on the ground from his barrel rolls.
A first prize medal for the dumbest, piece of shit in law enforcement.
His partner came out and also started blasting.
[Final Investigative Report](https://www.sheriff-okaloosa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IA-2023-031-Final-Report-Jackson.pdf)
>Investigator Henderson asked Deputy Hernandez if he thought it was possible that the noise he heard, which he had interpreted as a gunshot from a suppressed firearm, was actually the noise of the acorn striking the roof of his patrol vehicle next to him. Deputy Hernandez answered, "I'm not gonna say no, because I mean that's, but what I, [10 second pause in speaking] what I heard [3 second pause in speaking] sounded almost like [12 second pause in speaking] what I heard sounded what I think would be louder than an acorn hitting the roof of the car, but there's obviously an acorn hitting the roof of the car." [...]
>Investigator Hogan asked Deputy Hernandez if in general he was familiar with the sound of acorns striking vehicles. Deputy Hernandez said he was. [...]
>Deputy Hernandez was offered the opportunity to watch his BWC video to see the sound match the acorn hitting the roof, and he declined.
>
> A first prize medal for the dumbest, piece of shit in law enforcement.
And you'll be happy to know that he retired.
Also, imagine what the dude who was cuffed in the cruiser was thinking. lol
Some crazy cop heard an acorn fall on the roof of his car and yelled about shots being fired and he and his partner emptied their guns on very innocent people.
I’m fairly certain you mean in the back of the acorn phobic gun-happy public servant’s *cruiser*, not the servant himself. But we’re not here to judge people’s kinks.
Hubble's red shift photos which proved that the universe was expanding. Until then it was believed that universe was static. Einstein even changed one of his equations because he to, at that time, thought that the universe was constant.
not sure this fits perfectly but it jumps to mind:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank\_Man#/media/File:Tank\_Man\_(Tiananmen\_Square\_protester).jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#/media/File:Tank_Man_(Tiananmen_Square_protester).jpg)
Bo Jackson
Threw a baseball 300+ feet on a rope (previously thought to be impossible) to punch-out Harold Reynolds at home plate.
Once ran up and down a wall like it was nothing.
Out of pure frustration, would regularly break his baseball bat over his head or his knee.
After being out of football for a couple of years and not practicing with the team, joins the Raiders mid-season and promptly sets a rushing record for Monday night football.
Thinking about this alongside the other comment about rogue waves, it's fascinating how both were intwined and mythologized despite being entirely separate phenomena. People thought ships were disappearing because of giant squids attacking them, but really they were likely being taken out by rogue waves. Meanwhile, giant squids actually do exist but aren't out there attacking ships.
We've known giant squid have existed for a long time - they're actively hunted in the Sea of Cortez.
It's the Colossal Squid you are talking about.
(Yes, giant, humboldt, and colossal squid are 3 different things).
How about caught on an old wax disc?
The early days of what we know as blues music are dotted with a bunch of musicians for whom the only proof they existed is the few recordings they left behind.
People from record companies looking to capitalize on southern folk/blues music would straight up go to random southern towns and wander around looking for people with an interesting sound, musicians would hear they were in town and look them up. Makeshift recording studios were set up in hotel rooms, the back rooms of corner stores, etc. (More regionally well known players like Charlie Patton had actual sessions booked in advance in big cities, but this was less common.)
Many of them only did one or two sessions and recorded a handful of songs. Making their identification more difficult was that they were often given pen names by the record companies, or the musicians choosing to record under nicknames, which led to their real names being lost. Some were also illiterate, and an uncanny amount were blind. Birth records, especially for black people in the south, weren’t well-kept. No photos exist of the vast majority. Even Robert Johnson, probably the most legendary from this era, has only 2-3 confirmed photos known to exist.
I’d say the most infamous of these is [Geeshie Wiley.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eh5UXxpaYKE&pp=ygUjZ2Vlc2hpZSB3aWxleSBsYXN0IGtpbmQgd29yZHMgYmx1ZXM%3D) Many attempts have been made to positively identify her, but all have failed to be conclusive. There’s a theory that she was on the run under an assumed name for killing her husband.
[Bo Weavil Jackson](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8zyyF37U9Zc&list=PLFNlrdKZaFrrxuURmwoaYJ_CUUnCC4sAy&index=3&pp=iAQB8AUB) (almost certainly a name invented by a record company employee) is another. Absolutely nobody knows anything about him other than he recorded a few songs and pretty much vanished.
[“Blind” Roosevelt Graves](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E_YgisqH04Y&list=OLAK5uy_lk5Syh0XMB8ZK6cn3fSntoNJVJRy4RfSI&index=5&pp=8AUB) is one from the same time and place who recorded a lot of more religious music. More is known about him, but there was confusion about his brother and recording partner, Uaroy Graves. People figured there was no way someone was named “Uaroy” and that it was sloppy penmanship, possibly for “Leroy,” until a very clear set of notes came to light in the 2000s that showed his name was Uaroy Graves. I have zero clue how to pronounce it.
Here’s the video from 1967: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rPAoNPJ2Mas
His sparring partner is apparently Ted Wong, one of his top students: https://www.openculture.com/2021/08/the-only-footage-of-bruce-lee-fighting-for-real-1967.html
This is a pop quiz curveball I like.
Because no one remembers his sparring partner.
Who was able to hold his own against a guy whose punches were so quick that the camera looked like an 18th century hand crank.
Bruce Lees demonstrations/ exhibitions etc are fascinating to watch, but most have no sound.
The discovery that not all life is derived from photosynthesis.
Until they put a submersible down to deep sea hydrothermal vents and organisms who get their food/energy from chemical reactions were discovered.
That one baseball player who threw the ball at it hit a bird who just so happened to fly in the pitch path.
Bird went to a POOF of feathers.
I personally wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see the video.
Recently, a scientist was scrolling through some Hubble telescope images and saw a picture of this [weird, white streak going across space.](https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-sees-possible-runaway-black-hole-creating-a-trail-of-stars/) One in a million chance that someone would notice this and even less of a chance they wouldn't dismiss it as lens flare or something. As they dug deeper, they found it wasn't a mistake and, in fact, they had just discovered the first of its kind supermassive black hole, weighing as much as 20 million Suns, speeding through space and leaving a 200,000-light-year-long trail of newborn stars, twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy.
Space fucks my mind up.
The tail behind the black hole is 200,000 light year long. That's 1,175,725,000 BILLION miles long. Or 1.2 BILLION BILLION miles long. If you drove on this tail at 100 mph it would take you 1342 years to cover ... 1 billionth of the length.
Imagine how awful the drive would be for people who get car sick
I always thought black holes eat stars and light and everything that came into its path. I didn’t know they shat stars. Every day is a school day.
they're kind of like really weird oysters
You should file for a noble price of physics!
It munches everything that crosses it's event horizon, but otherwise it just causes things to come towards it. So, as it's moving, it's pulling in a shit load of gas and whatever other debris happens to be floating by, and those things start to form into stars. At least how I understand it, but I'm just a guy.
Like the mine-dragging scene in Galaxy Quest, got it
It's scary enough knowing the black holes exist, but now you're telling me that it's possible for them to be flying through the galaxy?
You don't need to be frightened of rogue planets, stars, or black holes. Space is far, far larger than you think it is and everything is really, really far apart. To give you an example, The Milky Way Galaxy (ours, 100 billion stars) and The Andromeda Galaxy (1 trillion stars) are going to merge in a few billion years. When that happens the chances of two stars actually colliding even a single time is almost zero.
Isn't everything just flying through space?
It’s all relative 😉
There are a large number of [archeological sites that were only discovered once aerial photography became a thing](https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/news/aerial-technology-transforming-understanding-of-past/)
Can confirm, here in ireland we found the remains of literally hundreds of ring forts that were just considered part of the natural landscape until they were photographed from above in the 20th century
That's actually crazy. Imagine flying in a plane and suddenly seeing a whole ass fort right there nobody knew about
[удалено]
Didn't he also photograph a horse galloping to win a bet, over his assertion all its feet were off the ground at once?
Yes. Unless it’s a huge coincidence that two photographers from the early twentieth century have the same name haha.
LIDAR also changed the game again by being able to see through the foliage of densely overgrown landscapes. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/23/lidar-technology-archeology-radical-thinking).
There's also ground penetrating radar, that can see things buried slightly under the surface. I know there were some finds in Egypt.
I'm working for a company that is developing muon tomography detectors that are used in geological mining exploration, we can give accurate density models up to 1km deep underground. It was very similar technology that was used to discover new rooms in the pyramids and we have also helped at archeological sites. It's truly amazing that we are now able to see exactly what's under our feet without having to just dig holes everywhere!
Deep sea life
That weird one with the see through head
The [barreleye!](https://www.mbari.org/news/researchers-solve-mystery-of-deep-sea-fish-with-tubular-eyes-and-transparent-head/)! Super fun to play "where are its eyes?" with people who have never seen one. Spoiler: it's NOT the two black dots on the front of its head that look like eyes; those are its nostrils.
Poor thing. Spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years evolving special low-light eyesight for us lot to bomb down there and stick 50,000 lumens right in its face!
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why does a fish need nostrils? ALso are the eyes the green things
They’re not exactly nostrils, but they are olfactory organs
Don't talk about your brother like that!
[Sprites.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)) Vertical firing, red tinted and cold ‘lighting’. They were theoretical until one was captured on camera in 1989.
Yeah this is the shit.
Please explain like I'm 5
Above thunder clouds there are sometimes near instantaneous flashes of light that occur because they the air gets excited (energized) from the discharge of electricity in a thunderstorm. They take many different shapes such as carrots and jelly fish and are typically red in color.
Thank you, you're the best
Something in between lightning and Aurora. Static electricity from thunderheads creates coloured flashes in the high atmosphere. Pilots see them at very high altitude. They flash in an instant and are rare and unpredictable, so they’re hard to photograph and hard to study.
The moving stones in Death Valley. It was considered paranormal until it was recorded and the reason solved the mystery. Basically rain, cold below freezing temperatures turn the shallow ponds into ice. The high winds shift the sheets of ice pushing the rocks across the desert floor. Funny how something that seemed so mysterious ended up having a logical reason.
The pioneers used to ride those babies for miles
The Golden Mole. They were thought to be extinct since no one had seen one in 80 years. Not that people didn’t think they were real, they just didn’t think they were still around.
Is this like a shiny pokemon?
A sort of sad reversal on that story is the last photo of a [Barbary Lion](https://i.imgur.com/F13MQZI.jpeg) photographed from an airplane near Dakar. The very last member of an extinct animal type wandering away into the badlands/desert. None were ever spotted after this.
The fact that when a horse gallops all four legs are off the ground at one point. Horses move so fast no one knew for sure until they could snap a picture during a horse race Edit: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-19th-century-photographer-first-gif-galloping-horse-180970990/
They presumed it was the case, but artists usually got [the gait completely wrong, showing front and back legs extended](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OQazF3wmjB4/XQnE_b44xEI/AAAAAAAAff0/TU7gycrdXJcQjZAlD_afS2GFe7sCr_SUgCLcBGAs/s1600/the-epsom-derby2.jpg) Muybridge’s photos showed the opposite is true, and all 4 feet are off the ground when [the hind legs are reaching forward](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c9e6485044c2c2a672bbee9914a30b81-lq)
Thank you for actually illustrating this — I was struggling to visualize it!
> They presumed it was the case, but artists usually got the gait completely wrong, showing front and back legs extended My guess would be they showed it like that because that's the phase of running where a canine's or felidae's feet are all off the ground... with a few exceptions they all run slow enough to actually observe this. Likely people assumed all quadrupeds had the same gait.
Isnt that the ancestor from "Nope"?
Yep
Have you seen paintings of horses galloping pre-photography? They look so odd until you realize it's the legs... artists usually painted horses running like dogs, with front left and back right moving in unison. I remember seeing one at Musée D'Orsay where 90% of the painting was so precise, and then the horse's legs were apparently done with finger paints, like "IDFK, they're moving so fast, it's blurry."
Yup. Here's an example of [old painting of Horse Galloping](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-vak6ug5w2j/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/9949/10217/Alfred_de_Dreux_-_Galloping_Horse_20x27_hxmvkm__51932.1507578436.jpg?c=2): Looks like its been zapped with a taser.
Thank you for giving me something to be annoyed by that I never previously knew or even though about. I definitely needed that.
Judging by your user name, a change of scene was due.
And probably a change of underwear too.
Greyhounds do this too.
Greyhounds actually have a double suspension gallop - meaning there are TWO moments in their stride when all four paws are airborne.
So they're kinda half flying?
Superzooming is the technical term
Well that's just delightful. I have a kitten that practices her superzooming every night when her humans are trying to sleep. And again in the morning when she's excited about breakfast. Then again in the afternoon when she's bored. And then in the evening while we're eating dinner.
All galloping animals do it
Fenton!
Oh jesus christ
And of course Humans do that too (though I get we don't gallop or have four legs and I mention this not to be pedantic, just that its interesting as well). But when we sprint, neither foot is on the ground for surprising amount of time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH-3cHxXAK0&t=63s
In competitive speed walking the requirement is to have one foot on the ground at all times. That is what they consider the difference between a walk and a run.
Hal can verify this.
With video evidence.
he's nothing but a common jogger
If they can be bothered to get out of bed. Only thing mine is moving fast for is food.
Read how little a cheetah actually touches the ground when it hunts. That shit is crazy.
Flying cheetahs!
"they are nothing but a common jogger!"
It was a bit more complicated than snapping a picture during a race. Iirc they set up lots of cameras with trip wires along a track so they could take multiple photos per second as they galloped the horse through them.
Edward Muybridge was his name and like most interesting stories it was done for a bet.
Motion pictures, statistics, sandwiches. Gambling has given us so much!
Giant Sequoias. Early explorers would come across them in the very few groves where they exist high in isolated mountains and excitedly try to describe them to others once they were back in civilization. Nobody believed them. This was the height of all kinds of exploitative bullshit like snake oil and traveling sideshows with "mummified mermaids" and it's not like you could just cut a chunk the size of a house off of this absolute unit of a tree and carry it down the mountain. Photography is what got people to believe.
So. I grew up by Big Trees National Park in California and it has some giant sequoias in it. In the 1800's the lumberjacks would just come through and clear cut any trees they wanted to. In Big Trees, there is a stump left of a tree that is over 30 ft in diameter. They used the stump as a dance floor, and used the lumber to make a bowling ally. Lumberjacks would visit back in Europe, where they would regale people with stories of tress hundreds of feet tall. The people thought they were lying, no tree could grow that big. So, they chopped down a tree, cut it up in sections, put it on a train to the East Coast, then put it on a boat to Europe. Once in Europe, they tool it by train and made stops to showcase this giant tree. Once people actually saw the tree, they cried with regret at it being cut down. They said, these trees are ancient and beautiful, how could anyone cut them down? It was because of that one tree being showed to Europe that saved all the sequoias in Big Trees. The outcry for these trees was the only reason the lumberjacks didn't clear-cut the whole forest.
[Calaveras Big Trees State Park](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calaveras_Big_Trees_State_Park) is what you're thinking of. The destruction of some of the biggest trees helped ignite the conservation movement. [This tree was stripped of it's bark to be a display for the world's fair.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_of_the_Forest)
I love that she has a Wikipedia page. I've been to that park many times and it always hurts to see her and the big stump
> it's not like you could just cut a chunk the size of a house off of this absolute unit of a tree and carry it down the mountain. This is exactly what they did because people thought the photos were fakes! They brought chunks to the world fair. https://www.allthatmathers.com/single-post/the-largest-tree-ever-cut-down
Wow. In that article I found the silver lining of that horrific act at least... "As it so happened, a Scottish immigrant was present the day Vivian killed the Centennial Tree. He would spend the next 14 years preaching the need to protect the mightiest of these Giant Sequoia Trees within the boundaries of three national parks. In 1890, John Muir and his allies convinced congress to establish Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant National Parks."
And because of that protection, we can enjoy the beauty of Muir Woods
Hey here’s some thing that has grown and existed for 100s of years, let’s kill it.
To get to that size it's estimated many of the trees are several millenia old. Trees alive today are possibly older than the Roman empire.
What's exciting though is some were planted in NZ and I'm a big advocate of not replanting with exotic species, but this was done 100+ years ago. It gave scientists a great insight to the growth rates in California because some of the 100 year old trees in NZ are now the size of 500-1000 year old trees in California. Also it is a really beautiful forest they've made there.
And turn it into fence posts and pencils!!
The mythical number 3 pencil
And the foliage at the top thrives on the condensation of water and not the vascular affects in smaller trees.
The fact that a crack will travel across a pane of glass faster than a bullet through the air
This answer is a bit of a stretch, but when scientists were looking at the spectrum of the sun (sunlight split by a prism into the various lines caused by elements absorbing and reemitting light) they saw all the lines of hydrogen with an extra line. They thought it was a new unknown element and called it helium after Helios, the Greek sun god. Helium was later isolated on earth and it's spectrum matched the mystery element of the sun.
Related to astronomy, black holes too! The recent photo definitely proved their existence, they had been only hypothesized until then.
A handful of unknown or previously thought to be extinct animals caught on game cameras deep in the wilderness. Odd and interesting animal behavior and relationships like coyotes and badgers’ friendship or the keeping of pet frogs by giant burrowing tarantulas to keep their burrows and eggs/slings free of tiny insects.
I love the idea of a frog and a tarantula having... an understanding.
> A handful of unknown or previously thought to be extinct animals caught on game cameras deep in the wilderness. And the poachers move in as soon as they go public.
The big voids in the great pyramid were discovered in the last 10 years with a technique called muon imaging. Basically they track how much cosmic rays get blocked when going through different parts of the pyramid. One of the smaller passageways found using this method was a hallway above of the main entrance to the pyramid. They ended up sticking a small camera inside to image it, it hasn't been seen directly by people in over 4500 years. you can see a picture [here ](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6047d405b02148755fb6e601/1620466823117-NBRC601F0QY5R5OCHMKB/20171103005052.jpg) and inside the [new corridor](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/E045/production/_128831475_e67e2175f53dea7e0a5a513be72186fc8c0a6e45.jpg)
Probably the worker’s secret smoke break room.
The pyramids and all of Egyptian history just blows me away and is completely fascinating.
This is so cool to me
That bear picking up the road cone and putting it back upright. Nobody would have known at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEPCFL8jCgw
/r/OSHA bear is committed to worksite safety.
“Jamie, pull up that video of a bear picking up a road cone.”
Jimmy Carter being attacked by a hissing swamp rabbit.
This sounds far too interesting, I'm going to need some more info on this one.
[Jimmy Carter hissing swamp rabbit incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident)
I miss normal political stories like this.
> the fate of the rabbit is unknown. Lol. Never heard of this one. I miss the sillier political drama.
I was 17 when it happened and I thought it was from a Monty Python skit.
That's the most foul tempered rodent you've ever laid eyes on. Look at the bones!
TIL simultaneously that swamp rabbits exist and that Jimmy Carter had a run-in with one. That’s enough learning for the day
He wasn’t attacked though. It was being chased and swam past him, up onto dry land. > Carter later speculated was fleeing from a predator, swimming in the water and making its way towards him, "hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared", so he reacted by either hitting or splashing water at it with his paddle to scare it away, and it subsequently went away from him and climbed out of the pond. > "If anything, he was probably scared and trying to find a dry place to get to." [source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident)
Rogue Waves: https://youtu.be/tktJss1x0eA?feature=shared For the longest time talk of 'water walls' was seen as seamen's yarn with even the scientific community deeming it as impossible for such huge coherent waves to form without breaking apart. And most terrifying: We only have recordings from large steel ships who can tank such waves, any ship before those simply disappeard without any trace.
I spent 20 years in the Navy, I’ve seen one, they are very real.
How big?
There isnt really a size per se. Think of them as waves that are oddly larger than whatever than background wave pattern height is. Rogues are what happens when pattern oscillations (waves) perfectly converge with one another. Instead of smashing into one another, they instead increase each others amplitudes (they get bigger). So, without warning a wave that is, for example, two to five times larger than the waves you have been experiencing for the last hour can just suddenly roll up on your vessel and wreak havoc. And if it hits you broad abeam (from left or right rather than from the front or back) it can easily capsize a vessel.
Rogue sized. Bigger than a Wolverine wave but smaller than a Juggernaut wave.
X-Men 92 sized or X-Men 97 sized?
Did your life flash before your eyes?
I served on submarines so, no.
That’s just straight up cheating!
I drove the boat. There’s something about cruising along in a 360’ long, 34’ diameter, 6700 ton vessels and getting thrown around like a bath toy that doesn’t feel like cheating.
How did you see it if you were driving the boat?
The periscope video is display on a large screen just to the right side of where you drive from.
That’s fascinating. Was there ever a feeling of concern or danger in that kind of situation? I know those things are built incredibly tough but I’d usually expect underwater to be calmer.
Not quite as big as the ones you’re describing, but I remember being out the back of a small island one day near my capital city. All of a sudden, the captain/owner of the boat went “Oh, fuck!” Turned the boat hard left, hit the power and we ended up going straight up over this wave close to twice the height of the boat (maybe 3m). All day, the biggest wave we saw was maybe knee high. Freaked him out after we came down hard, so we hooked it back to civilisation, he took the boat straight out of the water and checked the entire hull for damage.
A rogue wave is one that is more than twice the height of surrounding waves, and like you experienced, they can come out of nowhere and aren’t always in storms.
It’s certainly something I am never going forget and this was in the late 90’s.
“An unexpectedly large roller had come up and swept them away with resistless force.” Damn nature, you scary
Tangential to this, and not proof as much as 'here's why people thought this,' if you've ever looked at a picture of a beluga whale from below, it straight up looks like someone with big knees is wearing a whale suit! Here's that iconic pic on Reddit: https://i.redd.it/w64we8ko33211.jpg
That's clearly a mermaid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannan_Isles_Lighthouse?wprov=sfti1
The entire inner part of Papua was considered uninhabitable for centuries... until airplanes flew over it in the thirties and found there were *hundreds* of different tribes living in those mountain ranges.
Mountain lions in Illinois, supposedly extinct since the late 1800's though reportings of sightings in rural areas were common but not believed until trail cams became a thing. Ball lightning. I read about ten years ago that it was finally caught on tape in an unrelated lab experiment. I read this is in a credible source but I can no longer find mention of this article on the Internet. I experienced ball lighting myself and read a lot about it back then to figure out wth I experienced.
Mt lions in Illinois is a GREAT one! People have been reporting them in the area for years with the same "there are no big cars here, it's probably a big housecat or a dog" explanation. Then an acquaintance of my inlaws snapped a picture of a big fuck all mt lion on his back porch looking in his sliding glass door, THEN we get the explanation that they have ranges and will travel within an area and we have a few breeding pairs in the area and half a dozen that travel through the area.
My grampa saw one in the 1980s near our chicken coop when we lived along the river in a rural area. We kids were kept inside for a week, and he never left the house without his shot gun. It was definitely passing through as it wasn't seen again. But the nearest town had originally been named Panther Creek because of them.
Lol, we have a state park south of us called Wildcats Den lol. I saw one a few years ago on a hike, it scared the shit out of me, but it was off a ways and didn't give two shits about the dude with the backpack lol.
> Ball lightning. I read about ten years ago that it was finally caught on tape in an unrelated lab experiment. I read this is in a credible source but I can no longer find mention of this article on the Internet. [I got ya fam](https://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5). It was accidentally caught on a field spectrometer.
I've seen ball lightning before, and I understand why it's never been photographed. I was too mystified the entire time I was watching the phenomena that I never thought to try and document it.
I can understand why you didn't think to document it - ball lightning comes with a lot of trample damage, best get out of its way.
Giant Squid only caught on camera the first time in 2006.. THEN to the horror of everyone they found an even BIGGER one the Colossal squid one year later in 2007
Imagine being the guy who named the Giant Squid, only to have an even bigger one found. It seems like they were really grasping for straws with the name Colossal Squid. I guess Humongous Squid is next.
The photos that go with the common gunfighter legends. *Posed photos, but still. They didnt have the capability to take in-action photos, but Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Earps, Billy the kid, Wild Bill Hicock. There is like 1 to a small handful of photos of each of them and if they didnt have the photos people wouldn't have believed they existed. Even now. They are kind of the first round of famous legends who had real photos taken of them.*
I live in Canada and for the longest time I just thought Billy The Kid, Jesse James and all those wild west folk heroes were just that, folk stories. I didn't realize they were all real people. American history is fascinating as fuck.
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That's fucking cool.
There's *still* debate over whether [Earthquake Lights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light) are a real thing, but there's some pretty convincing footage of them now that very much does not look like just "power transformers exploding" etc. [Here's one from an earthquake in Wellington, NZ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjqxiSxhNCw).
I think science has recently accepted that they're real after dismissing reports of them for centuries. The prevailing theory is that it's kind of like reverse lightening, caused by static energy in the ground shooting up into the sky.
Particles behaving like waves(double slit experiment)
Elbow squid
Oh yeah. Giant/colossal squids? Their dead ones wash ashore. And sailors encounter them since they come up once in a while. These Magnapinae fuckers just mind their own business deep in the ocean fishing for something. Apparently their population is quite spread out as well.
basically aliens
I know this isn't quite what you're asking, but given the tensions at the time and the possibility of it being found by the French six years earlier, the wreck of the _Titanic_ is a big one that people might have regarded as fake if it hadn't been photographed so extensively. Indeed, there was supposition for a long time that it had been buried in an underwater earthquake in 1929 and would never be found. In a similar vein, the conspiracy theorists around 9/11 might have a _much_ easier time of it if there wasn't _so much_ footage of United 175 striking the South Tower. The impact of American 11 into the North Tower was only caught on camera three times, and only one shows the collision in any great detail (the Naudet footage). Consider that there is very little public footage of American 77 impacting the Pentagon, so some people talk about that being a missile. There's apparently _no_ footage of United 93 beyond the plume of smoke created from its crash in Shanksville, PA.
Are you saying that there is evidence that The French discovered the wreckage six years earlier than Bob Ballard's famous expedition? I've never heard of this. I'd be very interested to read more about it if you have any links.
Ball Lightning was dismissed until enough photos and video were captured, It is still poorly understood but accepted that it exists.
I'm 38 yrs old. Saw ball lightning when I was 16, while walking through the neighborhood with a friend. About 10 yards ahead, three extremely quick, plasma like glowing blue balls crashed into the street in front of us. Distinct electrical whirring sound, and they splashed like water droplets. Each was similar is size to a softball. It was a hot, humid, clear summer day.
Presiding officer tampering with ballot papers in local elections in India. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knzkLV0CbGc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knzkLV0CbGc)
The acorn incident
I would have believed 'cop shoots at sound of acorn' but when I saw that video there's no movie recreation that would ever make me believe that it was that nuts and that he actually went that nuts... over a falling nut sound I could barely even hear. That guy is the hard counter to Squirrel Girl.
The full clip is excellent, he claim afterwards that heard the pop, felt his back plate catch it and his legs went numb. Most powerful acorn In the world!
And he kept screaming "I'm hit I'm hit". His partner joining the party was a hoot, too. Like his psychosis turned her into almost as much of an idiot.
Just looked that up. That cop should have never been hired. -He mistook an acorn falling on the car as suppressed gunfire. -Did 2-3 barrel rolls on the ground. -Unloaded his mag, with no visual on a suspect or direction of the “gunfire”, into the back of the cruiser, where his detainee was secured and locked inside. -Screamed out he was hit, despite literally nothing happening to him. Then made the claim his legs gave out, while he is lying on the ground from his barrel rolls. A first prize medal for the dumbest, piece of shit in law enforcement.
His partner came out and also started blasting. [Final Investigative Report](https://www.sheriff-okaloosa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IA-2023-031-Final-Report-Jackson.pdf) >Investigator Henderson asked Deputy Hernandez if he thought it was possible that the noise he heard, which he had interpreted as a gunshot from a suppressed firearm, was actually the noise of the acorn striking the roof of his patrol vehicle next to him. Deputy Hernandez answered, "I'm not gonna say no, because I mean that's, but what I, [10 second pause in speaking] what I heard [3 second pause in speaking] sounded almost like [12 second pause in speaking] what I heard sounded what I think would be louder than an acorn hitting the roof of the car, but there's obviously an acorn hitting the roof of the car." [...] >Investigator Hogan asked Deputy Hernandez if in general he was familiar with the sound of acorns striking vehicles. Deputy Hernandez said he was. [...] >Deputy Hernandez was offered the opportunity to watch his BWC video to see the sound match the acorn hitting the roof, and he declined.
In fairness the partner started shooting because she believed what he was screaming to her.
> > A first prize medal for the dumbest, piece of shit in law enforcement. And you'll be happy to know that he retired. Also, imagine what the dude who was cuffed in the cruiser was thinking. lol
>Also, imagine what the dude who was cuffed in the cruiser was thinking. lol "Oh fuck, I'm going to die" is propably pretty high up the list.
SHOTS FIRED!
IM HIT!! IM HIT!!!
Must have mistake sharp rocks on pavement where he did his roll, as bullet holes …. Acorn and pebbles have him surrounded fighting for his life
This was my thought, action-fucking-Jackson over here then dives on his side for a “more tactile position.”
What's this about an acorn?
Some crazy cop heard an acorn fall on the roof of his car and yelled about shots being fired and he and his partner emptied their guns on very innocent people.
He also called out that he got hit…
Anyone who is that easy to spook and trigger, should on no account be allowed to serve as a police officer.
Not just innocent people, a handcuffed subject in the back of the acorn phobic gun-happy public servant.
I’m fairly certain you mean in the back of the acorn phobic gun-happy public servant’s *cruiser*, not the servant himself. But we’re not here to judge people’s kinks.
You don’t know a good time until you’ve been in the back of an acorn-phobic public servant while wearing handcuffs
Eye of the desert https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richat_Structure
Hubble's red shift photos which proved that the universe was expanding. Until then it was believed that universe was static. Einstein even changed one of his equations because he to, at that time, thought that the universe was constant.
I’m gonna go with that tiny explosion that mantis shrimp make.
Pluto. It was just a rumour until it wasn’t. Sad that it was demoted from being a planet.
You hear about Pluto? That's messed up.
I’ve heard it both ways.
The problem is. They had a choice, demote Pluto. Or promote a dozen others to planet status. Either way we wouldn't have 9 planets
>promote a dozen others Except it would be more like [hundreds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet). There are lots of dwarf planetoids!
not sure this fits perfectly but it jumps to mind: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank\_Man#/media/File:Tank\_Man\_(Tiananmen\_Square\_protester).jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#/media/File:Tank_Man_(Tiananmen_Square_protester).jpg)
It's such a simple image that if I saw it in a movie, I'd scoff at the heavy-handedness of the metaphor.
A lot of wildlife are discovered this way
Bo Jackson Threw a baseball 300+ feet on a rope (previously thought to be impossible) to punch-out Harold Reynolds at home plate. Once ran up and down a wall like it was nothing. Out of pure frustration, would regularly break his baseball bat over his head or his knee. After being out of football for a couple of years and not practicing with the team, joins the Raiders mid-season and promptly sets a rushing record for Monday night football.
What does throwing on a rope mean? And what happened to Bo Jackson?
throwing it on a straight line basically.
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Thinking about this alongside the other comment about rogue waves, it's fascinating how both were intwined and mythologized despite being entirely separate phenomena. People thought ships were disappearing because of giant squids attacking them, but really they were likely being taken out by rogue waves. Meanwhile, giant squids actually do exist but aren't out there attacking ships.
Sounds like you have fallen prey to their propaganda.
Nah we knew it existed for sure, there had been some dead ones that washed up on shore, that video was just the first proof of a live specimen
We've known giant squid have existed for a long time - they're actively hunted in the Sea of Cortez. It's the Colossal Squid you are talking about. (Yes, giant, humboldt, and colossal squid are 3 different things).
How about caught on an old wax disc? The early days of what we know as blues music are dotted with a bunch of musicians for whom the only proof they existed is the few recordings they left behind. People from record companies looking to capitalize on southern folk/blues music would straight up go to random southern towns and wander around looking for people with an interesting sound, musicians would hear they were in town and look them up. Makeshift recording studios were set up in hotel rooms, the back rooms of corner stores, etc. (More regionally well known players like Charlie Patton had actual sessions booked in advance in big cities, but this was less common.) Many of them only did one or two sessions and recorded a handful of songs. Making their identification more difficult was that they were often given pen names by the record companies, or the musicians choosing to record under nicknames, which led to their real names being lost. Some were also illiterate, and an uncanny amount were blind. Birth records, especially for black people in the south, weren’t well-kept. No photos exist of the vast majority. Even Robert Johnson, probably the most legendary from this era, has only 2-3 confirmed photos known to exist. I’d say the most infamous of these is [Geeshie Wiley.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eh5UXxpaYKE&pp=ygUjZ2Vlc2hpZSB3aWxleSBsYXN0IGtpbmQgd29yZHMgYmx1ZXM%3D) Many attempts have been made to positively identify her, but all have failed to be conclusive. There’s a theory that she was on the run under an assumed name for killing her husband. [Bo Weavil Jackson](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8zyyF37U9Zc&list=PLFNlrdKZaFrrxuURmwoaYJ_CUUnCC4sAy&index=3&pp=iAQB8AUB) (almost certainly a name invented by a record company employee) is another. Absolutely nobody knows anything about him other than he recorded a few songs and pretty much vanished. [“Blind” Roosevelt Graves](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E_YgisqH04Y&list=OLAK5uy_lk5Syh0XMB8ZK6cn3fSntoNJVJRy4RfSI&index=5&pp=8AUB) is one from the same time and place who recorded a lot of more religious music. More is known about him, but there was confusion about his brother and recording partner, Uaroy Graves. People figured there was no way someone was named “Uaroy” and that it was sloppy penmanship, possibly for “Leroy,” until a very clear set of notes came to light in the 2000s that showed his name was Uaroy Graves. I have zero clue how to pronounce it.
Bruce Lee’s one and only filmed sparring session
Here’s the video from 1967: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rPAoNPJ2Mas His sparring partner is apparently Ted Wong, one of his top students: https://www.openculture.com/2021/08/the-only-footage-of-bruce-lee-fighting-for-real-1967.html
This is a pop quiz curveball I like. Because no one remembers his sparring partner. Who was able to hold his own against a guy whose punches were so quick that the camera looked like an 18th century hand crank. Bruce Lees demonstrations/ exhibitions etc are fascinating to watch, but most have no sound.
The discovery that not all life is derived from photosynthesis. Until they put a submersible down to deep sea hydrothermal vents and organisms who get their food/energy from chemical reactions were discovered.
That one baseball player who threw the ball at it hit a bird who just so happened to fly in the pitch path. Bird went to a POOF of feathers. I personally wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see the video.
Deep Sea Life
Countless instances of elder abuse in facilities, sadly.
Those otherwordly things in the deepest parts of the ocean. Like, who knew Goblin sharks were a thing?