Whether you believe in C.S. Lewis’s claim that, “Extraordinary things only happen to extraordinary people”, many extraordinary things happen around us all the time. It’s just that nobody informs us about them. The following articles will serve as a reminder that extraordinary things go on all the time.
Here are fifteen incredible stories about the most unexpected things ever found.
15 Scientists recreated a 9th-century formula from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript. This ancient eye remedy has onion and garlic and kills antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus aureus or MRSA.
Scientists recreated a 1,000-year-old treatment for eye infections using nothing but onion, garlic, and part of a cow’s stomach. They found the medicine could kill antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus aureus, also called MRSA.
The remedy, found in an old English manuscript called Bald’s Leechbook is currently in the British Library.
Anglo-Saxon expert Dr. Christina Lee from the University of Nottingham has translated the recipe for the ‘eye salve’:
Finely chop equal amounts of garlic and onion/leek, then crush in a mortar for two minutes
Add 25ml of English wine, such as from a historic vineyard near Glastonbury
Dissolve bovine salts in distilled water
Combine all ingredients and then keep chilled for nine days at 4-degree celsius
The findings were presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for General Microbiology in Birmingham.(source)
14 In 2010, a 3-year-old boy found a 16th-century golden pendant estimated to be worth $4 million. This happened while he was playing with his father’s metal detector for the first time.
Three-year-old James Hyatt found an unusual and valuable item while playing with his father’s metal detector. After the father-son duo dug into the spot identified by the detector, they 500-year-old gold pendant that was estimated to be worth $4 million dollars.
The pendant weighs a third of an ounce and has a gold purity of 73%. The pendant seems to have a picture of Virgin Mary engraved on it. It is also decorated with the Five Wounds of Christ. According to a BBC report, the Hyatts said they’ll share the money with the field’s owner if the pendant is sold.(source)
13 Jersey-based conservatory Garden State Tortoise noticed a baby tortoise having trouble hatching, and found twin tortoises.
While human twins aren’t anything unusual, twin tortoises are definitely one of the most unexpected things ever found.
New Jersey-based conservatory Garden State Tortoise took social media by storm on October 12th, 2015 by posting a video of the hatching of two tortoise twins from a single egg. The organization wrote in their Facebook post:
“Last night, I noticed a Western Hermann’s tortoise (T. h. hermanni) having an issue breaking out of its shell. I don’t like to intervene but I’m glad I did this time. The egg contained TWINS. Perfectly formed, sharing the same yolk sac, the slightly larger of the two was the one trying to break out. Both are healthy and as of this morning the yolk sac is about 85% absorbed.” (source)
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12 The 4-year-old son of a Dallas zookeeper found 100 million year old dinosaur bones while playing fossil hunt.
A 4-year-old boy discovered 100 million-year-old dinosaur bones in Mansfield, Texas. Dallas Zoo officials said the areas were covered in water millions of years ago. The bones were sent to Southern Methodist University in Dallas for further study.
The dinosaur bones were first found in September beside a construction site near the Mansfield retail center. Since then experts have been excavating there near the Sprouts grocery store on Matlock Road and Debbie Lane.
A Dallas zookeeper, Tim Brys, who lives nearby his son Wiley, aged 4-years, always enjoyed a fossil hunt.
“We commonly go collect fossils as something we can do together to be outside. Wiley enjoys coming with me on my trips,” Brys explained.
“We were finding some fish vertebrae in the hillside, and then Wiley walked a little ways ahead of me and came back with a piece of bone,” he added. That’s luck!(source)
11 Scientists have found some of the oldest water on planet Earth. This 1.5-billion-year-old water was extracted from a mine 1.5 miles beneath Ontario, Canada.
Scientists have analyzed some of the oldest water on Earth. This water which poured out of boreholes from a mine 1.5 miles beneath Ontario, Canada might even have life. Moreover, the similarity between the rocks that trapped this water and those on Mars has confirmed the possibility of finding water on Mars.
The research team also found that the water is rich in gases like hydrogen, methane, and isotopes of noble gases such as helium, neon, argon, and xenon. The crystalline rocks surrounding the water are around 2.7 billion years old.
Nobody believed the water was that old until scientists confirmed with new techniques that it was at least 1.5 billion years old, but could in fact be significantly older. Profession Ballentine of the University of Dallas said,
“We’ve found an interconnected fluid system in the deep Canadian crystalline basement that is billions of years old, and capable of supporting life. Our finding is of huge interest to researchers who want to understand how microbes evolve in isolation, and is central to the whole question of the origin of life, the sustainability of life, and life in extreme environments and on other planets,” (source)
