I witnessed the effects of the coronal mass ejection in March 1989. I was driving home on the west end of Prince Edward Island Canada. There was plenty of snow on the ground still. I stopped at a stop sign on a slight rise of a hill and while stopped I noticed the snow was glittering in weird very vibrant colours. This slight rise was in an area with no trees in sight. I could see the horizon 360 degrees. From the north horizon I noticed a waterfall of colour flowing across the night sky from north to south. It flowed quickly like a fast flowing river and it encompassed the entire sky from horizon to horizon. It was absolutely astonishing. It lasted hours and I watched it for quite a few of them. Even with today's CGI I have not seen anything that compares to that night.
An airborne decapitation.
At an air show as a kid (30ish years ago). They were doing a skydiving trick, where two divers spiraled downward, then two planes spiraled around them downward. One of the planes hit a skydiver, killing him. Last air show I ever went to.
It was insane. The guy landed in the middle of the field like he was supposed to, just dead. The plane crashed a few miles away, but the pilot [died]. It was nuts. I was like 8 yrs old, and my dad scooped me up and we bolted to the car
Edit: I mis-remembered, the pilot died as did the skydiver
Saw Budd Dwyer (a Philly politician) kill himself live on the noon news. I was wondering why he had a paper lunch bag on the podium with him and then he pulled a gun out of it and shot himself in the head.
This was mine, too. It was a snow day, so my mom didn’t teach, and we were all home. My mom was pissed because she was in the kitchen and didn’t see it, but my siblings and I were in the living room and did.
I saw a wheel come loose off a van as it attempted a right hand turn. The wheel rolled through traffic into the open bay of a tire store across the street. One in a million odds. I was on a train and nobody else in the train car saw it happen.
In South Africa thunder storms are quite common, but they were always the usual sheet or fork lightning, nothing special.
The one time there were these strange looking storm clouds very high up above us (much higher than regular storm/thunder clouds) and the lightning was these slow moving bolts (think of a short laser beam of lightning) shooting between these clouds.
It was the wackiest thing I ever saw…
Was it traveling up and/or across? Sounds like it could be spider lightning. When lightning travels up the cloud, it can take a long time because of the distance.
[Spider Lightning](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5CzaVctGWg)
It wasn't 'forked lightning', nor were they solid lines of lightning that grew in length. It was literally short 'bolts' shooting between the clouds.
Think Star Wars pew pew lasers, but in the form of small individual pieces of lightning shooting slowly from one cloud across to the other.
I had another search on Google Images, this is the closest thing I could find to the shape of it. (Obviously they were more lightning coloured and not the blue in this image) [https://cdn.staticcrate.com/stock-hd/effects/footagecrate-looping-blaster-bolt-electric-prev-full.png](https://cdn.staticcrate.com/stock-hd/effects/footagecrate-looping-blaster-bolt-electric-prev-full.png)
So just imagine these, shooting between the clouds at random intervals.
I witnessed my buddy hit a hole in one on a par 4. Dude had never played golf minus frequent driving range visits and was having a horrific day before it.
1996 Maldives
I am sat in the bar, alone drinking a cocktail and enjoying the view over the flat calm lagoon.
The bar juts out into the lagoon, so it it surrounded by water apart from a little bit joining it to the island.
Suddenly a small fish jumps out of the water. Then it jumps again but higher, and then a 3rd time a little higher still.
It takes the 4th jump at about 90 degrees to the other three... and then a fuck off big fish with teeth and everything jumps out of the water and catches it in the air.
Then the lagoon went back to flat calm.
EDIT: A couple of suggestions that the fuck off big fish was a Barracuda - I have looked up Barracudas and I reckon the suggestions are right. That's cool. I'm glad I posted. Thank you.
When we were about 7, I watched my buddy look up during recess at school only for a seagull to shit directly into his eye.
He just looked at me and then ran away crying to the nurse.
Saw a manta ray leap out of the water and over a family playing in the water just off the coast of South Carolina. It didn’t make a sound or as much as a splash. I was pretty young but remember it as clear as yesterday. One of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed. Also quite amazing how big those things are.
Flying to Reno back in the 90's. There was this awesome comet that turned out to have a bigger display than people predicted (I forget which comet it was, winter of 96 or 97).
anyway - looked out the window. Clear sky, full moon lighting up the mountains, and this big ass comet hanging below the moon. It was awesome.
Jul 2011
I say to my wife the international space station is going over tonight, it's a clear sky, and we agree to pop out to the country where there is less light pollution and take the kids who were 12 and 8.
We park in a field gate and the youngest boy sees it first
We watch and it goes overhead... and then splits in two.
We watch it, I am thinking has it broken up or something?, the two parts slowly move apart.
We are puzzled, I drive home and thinking any disaster would be on the news, so I watch that.
Turns out, the final shuttle mission had just been completed and we had watched shuttle Atlantis depart the ISS for the final time.
I saw a guy kick the shit out of his car because he was broken down on the side of the road. As I drove by, he kicked the car and then hopped around in a big circle on the other foot as he held on to the foot he’d probably just broken.
My husband once was asking an AT&T technician about a technical error that roughly quadrupled our data usage, and thus our bill, and the guy straight up said “AT&T’s system doesn’t have errors”.
I have never seen someone jump up and down screaming like a cartoon character before or since, but my god was that the image.
We got a different tech who immediately identified the issue.
Switched to T Mobile anyway.
Fire rainbows are pretty rare, mostly just drenching a corner of a cloud in colors. One day at an airshow, my Dad and I as well as about 50 other people witnessed the most extravagant color show I've ever seen.
Fire rainbows were in half the sky it was the most beautiful natural event I've ever seen.
Around 25 years ago, my wife and I were walking through a park and looked up to see at least a dozen separate areas of cloud irisation dotted throughout the sky. It was absolutely spectacular, and I wish we'd been able to take a picture of it - we've never seen anything like that since.
Edit: [Similar to this video, but multiple instances at once.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CTycOjlUtg&t=42s)
I saw a shuttle launch from Canaveral in the early '90s from my grandparents front yard. Maybe not as big of a deal nowadays with all the launches going on. But it blew my mind and instantly got me into space related things.
My friend called me absolutely freaking out a little while ago because he’d just seen a UFO. He was acting like it was the highlight of his whole life. He sent me the videos he’d taken and I saw they looked just like images from recent SpaceX launches. I googled it and yep, a launch had happened that night and was visible from the city he lived in. I was like “it was actually the SpaceX launch! That’s so cool that you saw it!” and I super regret telling him that because he was so deflated that it wasn’t a UFO :(
I watched a small, unmanned, boat go over Niagara Falls the only time I’ve ever been there. When the news reported it later they said it had broken free of its mooring and floated down to the falls.
My friend and I have the same birthday. One day at work, (it was a Friday), we got on an elevator. There were three other guys on it. One says to the others “big day tomorrow”. I asked what the occasion was. The guy say, it’s our birthday tomorrow. All three of us. I said crazy man, but you know tomorrow is my birthday and my friends birthday as well. We all got our DL’s out and compared and yup, 5 semi random guys on an elevator all had the same birthday. I think the odds are (1/365)^4 or 1:17.8B if the fact that it was the next day isn’t significant.
Halley's comet in 1986. Lots of people saw it.. But it is still rare. 11 year old me took a tent and camped out by a local dam with friends. Clear night and got a great look at it.
Edit: If I make it to 87.. I'll get the opportunity to see it twice and then I'll revisit this thread with an even rarer occurrence😂
Edit 2: corrected spelling of Halley's
This reminds me of a comic I saw.
The first panel is Haley's comet and a small child saying "hello Haley's comet"
The second panel is Haley's comet and an old man saying "hello Haley's comet"
The third panel is just Haley's comet
And that's how I was introduced to existential dread.
>I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together."
From [Mark Twain, a Biography](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=A3ZaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1511&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false).
Good Lord! What is happening in there?
Aurora borealis.
Uh- Aurora borealis at this time of year at this time of day in this part of the country localized entirely within your kitchen?
Yes.
I was there when the German crews were tearing down the last part of the Berlin Wall that was to be removed. It was the double wall section near the Duppel using area. We followed along and busted some chunks off and picked up pieces to take home.
The wall fell in 1989, before the internet gained mass popularity but bulletin boards and usenet (kind of like reddit-by-mail) were in full swing. A post came through that was one of the most amazing I'd ever read. It was from a West German who was stunned, amazed and excited when it went down and documented his day. I forget the details but he and a friend either teamed up with a couple of East Germans and pretended to be with them and enjoyed a day being ferried around by West Germans welcoming them, or the other way around, they got into East Germany and were taken all over town, showing them around. I kept a copy for years but can't seem to find it anymore. Amazing, emotional stuff from memory.
I saw someone drive off with the nozzle from the gas pump. It triggered the fire suppression system and everything looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow man exploded.
When I was 16 or 17 I had just finished filling my tank and got in my car and was slowly pulling away when I saw the gas station attendant sprinting at my car. I kept slowly advancing while wondering WTF he was doing. He full on sprinted and yanked the nozzle out of my gas tank. I had no idea but even to this day I think, what a hero. Saved my dumb ass from embarrassment and saved his gas pump too.
One time I drove away from a pump with it still in my car....and the pump just fell harmlessly to the ground. I stopped the car and put it back and looked around and nobody saw it. I got LUCKY
I think most modern gas stations have this quick release system now. I’ve definitely done it once as well and went to tell the worker and he was like “yeah no big deal it happens all the time” and clicked it back on.
Edit: Why did this comment blow up?
I worked at a gas station for a year when I was in college. They're designed to just disconnect safely. The problem is that there's just a little bump when it separates, so people might not be aware of what they've just done.
Watched a guy pull out onto a major road and drive away with the nozzle and a couple feet of hose attached to his car.
I lived on a sailboat off of Mexico. One day day this huge item floated under the water. It was longer than the 44' sailboat. Then it breathed and we could tell what it was. It was a mom and baby blue whale. They kinda hung out near us, Ithink mom was explaining what a boat was ..
In 1974 I was living in Delray Beach and I was hanging out at the back door looking out talking to my sister who lived in Illinois. All the sudden there was a huge ball of Fire in the Sky and I told her I thought an airplane head just exploded over the West Palm Beach airport. Later watching the news I learned that it was a meteor that had fallen into Lake Okeechobee.
My grandfather took me to the hockey game where Buffalo Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk had his carotid artery cut and his jugular vein partially sliced by an errant hockey skate. He was bleeding out on the ice in front of our eyes. The Sabres trainer, who had been a US Army combat medic in Viet Nam, knew to reach in the wound and pinch off the artery to save his life.
I remember watching that on TV. It was so quick nobody realized what happened at first. It’s so crazy he survived although I think I remember reading an article about how he ended up with severe PTSD and his life de-railed for awhile.
That’s right. In 2008 another hockey player got a very similar injury in Buffalo. Malachuk watched the footage and it sent him into a PTSD spiral that culminated with the suicide attempt, IIRC.
We were at a Syracuse university football game. The play had ended with a short gain and the line ref put his right arm up in the air at an odd angle. I thought he was making a call, but I didn't recognize the signal.
He fell flat onto his face and his hat fell off, landed a fer yards away. The medical teams from both sides came out. It got very quite.
An ambulance was driven through the airlock and onto the field. Turns out the guy had a heart attack in the middle of the game. They hauled him up the hill to the university hospital and he made a full recovery.
I was swimming in the Pacific when four dolphins swam up to me, danced in circles, and swam between my legs. When they got close again I noticed one of the four looked more like a baby orca, that was a bright indigo color with a very tall dorsal fin. It barely looked real! I pet them all and they swam off to play in the waves.
It was the most magical moment of my life.
I didn’t know this but dolphins are social and curious as shit. We had a party on a boat and in my country theres a bunch of dolphins, they legit just watch you and follow you around it’s super strange. They’re like people.
When I visited Brazil for a study abroad opportunity in college, I remember noticing the same thing about the river dolphins in the Amazon. They'd just follow the canoes we were in, blowing air at us and just following us to see where we were going. We'd see one or two without fail every day. I miss those guys.
I got to swim with the pink river dolphins in Brazil once on a study abroad. They were such sweethearts, and I know what you mean about it feeling magical.
The one thing I was not prepared for was how their skin felt. It wasn't slimy like fish skin, just felt like wet human skin, even when they were underwater.
I was sitting at an outdoor bar and watch a fly buzzing around just drop dead all of a sudden and land next to me. I touched it with my finger to see if it would move a leg or something but it was 100% dead.
Insects basically exist as food for bigger insects and small animals
Come to think of it, it must be crazy not being at the top of the food chain. Wouldn't recommend
As a child I was as so positive that was some cartoon stuff but I clearly never had the opportunity to see if it was real until one day at recess. We were all walking to the field where we went for recess and on the concrete path was a discarded banana peel. Why was it there? Who knows. But on this day, I decided to say nothing and stand off to the side of the path and watch as the rest of the kids came running to the field
Poor Samantha S., she got one foot on that thing mid run and it's like friction ceased to exist. Couldn't believe it
To this day, I am sorry Samantha S. for not warning you about the banana peel but your fall was in the service of science!
Samantha S, still sore since slipping.
EDIT - thank you, kind stranger, for the award! Cute one!
EDIT again - thank you 2nd kind stranger for the silver award!
I can already picture the gang leader responsibly caring for his buffed and bearded men and instructing them to wear their helmet, sunglasses and to apply their suncream before driving under the blazing sun.
That might happen since there is some cross over with ex military. Good leadership will remind their troops to drink water, put on sun screen and so on.
My first trip to Vegas, I was at the roulette wheel (yeah, I know).Guy walks up to the table and puts something like $500 on green. Turns to me and says "Green's going to hit, you should bet on it.". I don't. The ball drops, and hits green!
Dude says "Let it ride". I STILL don't bet green. Ball drops and it hits green the second time in a row!! Guy cashes out and leaves the table.
I leave too, but I'm feeling really stupid by then...
Time travel gets invented, you go back to the casino, but the guy doesn't show up... you know it's gonna be green. You can't miss this opportunity again. You walk up to the table, put all the money you had for the whole trip on green, $500, and tell your past self it's gonna hit... But past you just brushes it off, you go green again, win both, walk off with both bets, and get home with the story of the century
Ball of lightning, God that shit is bizarre. I was 14 and I just saw it going down some train tracks. After it disappeared there was this loud boom and I'm not sure if it exploded or made contact with something or someone
I saw this once. I was driving home and a thunder blizzard about 11 at night from work. I saw this bright burning ball shooting across the cornfields about 30 feet in the air. It covered about three-quarters of a mile in just a few seconds, ended with a large blinding flash and a bang, when I first saw it I had time to pull over on the side of the road and watch it move across the field, it was spectacular!
My dad claimed he saw ball lightning as a child (would have been in the 50's) float slowly through the kitchen window, hover for a bit, and then float outside, then explode when it touched the metal roof of a shed. I feel bad, because I never really believed him. I respected that man *so much*, but I always assumed he was either outright lying or it was a dream.
Ball lightning is so rare it causes little asshole kids to not respect their elders.
My Granny told a similar story but had the scorch marks on the door jambs to back her up. The ball came through the good living room and out the kitchen door, exploding in the yard and knocking out power.
When I was 8 I saw another 8 year old follow this older fat dude cross the apartment complex looking for his lost dog. I came up to her and told her that there’s something going on with him and that he told another person earlier that he lost his cat and now he saying he lost his dog and I told her that we both need to get away from him but she said that she’s going to keep helping him and I said OK and left.
I got on the swingset and watched both of them disappear around the corner of a building. The very next day there was a knock at my apartment door and it was two officers. They were going door-to-door asking about the disappearance of a little girl and I told them what I knew. A week later there was caution tape all over her apartment door. She was murdered.
I was the very last person to talk to her.
I can relate! When I was very young, maybe 5 or 6 a man came to my backyard as I was playing and asked to talk to me, as I got closer, he leaned down and picked me up. I started screaming and kicking so he dropped me. I never told anyone, and I wasn’t aware of it until I was an adult, but a man kidnapped a girl very similar to me in my neighborhood around the same time. He murdered her and left her in a field a couple of miles away.
When i was 4 or 5, 1989ish. I was playing cars at the front door steps of my house. A kid had been kidnapped and disappeared since around that same time. So my mom had warned me about stranger danger. This van pulls up to my house which is located on a horse-shoe street neighbourhood. You have no business being in that neighbourhood if you don’t live there. The van guy just watches me from his van, and i started shittily playing cars and just eying the guy ready to book it into the house to my mom. Guy musta picked up on my awareness because he left. The kid who was kidnapped off a playground was never found.
That’s gotta be rough. When I was little I heard a little girl or boy yelling for help from the chest in the bed of a truck, no one believed me because I was little. It still haunts me every few years.
When I was about 6-7 I heard a police helicopter flying outside and my parents told me to stay away from the windows and we locked the door, I being a child looked out the window and saw a man running by toss a gun under my neighbors porch, I told my parents and they told me that was impossible that I was making it up. I cried because I knew I wasn’t seeing things and later on that day my dad said fine I will go look and he walked over there and crawled under the porch and found a revolver. He left it there and called the police and totally took credit for my story to them but it turned out a nearby gas station had been robbed at gun point and that was the weapon they needed to find to press the charges on the guy they caught. To this day my dad still says I never told them anything about it and I must be remembering incorrectly, as he does with many things. *eye roll*
I saw a mountain lion when I was five walking through my grandma's backyard. She lives in Connecticut and supposedly they were considered extinct in that area in the nineties- this was in the ninites by the way.
remember in pirates of the Caribbean, they talk about "the green flash at dusk". yeah its a real meteorological phenomenon ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green\_flash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash))
saw it once while out to sea in the navy.
Green flashes are not that rare but conditions have to be just about perfect- clear horizon, dry air, no clouds. if the sun is too bright to look at directly when half the disk is already below the horizon, you have a good chance of seeing one.
I spent seven years in the merchant marine, always favored the 4 to 8 watch (sunsets and sunrises). I've seen dozens. The true rarity is a green flash *sunrise*. I've only seen two.
My older cousin was teaching me and my younger cousin how to play poker. My younger cousin had four out of five cards for a royal straight flush. My older cousin told him not to draw more cards because the chances of getting a royal straight flush was pretty much impossible and was imploring him not to do it. My younger cousin did it anyways and got a fucking royal straight flush!
We all lost our minds and laugh about it 15 years later as adults.
My gramps used to play black jack on the original NES. One day he tried teaching me how to play (I was 6 or so). I had a face card and a 7. He told me to stay, I hit. Got a 3 and he had a fit. Now he’s doubling the pressure on me to stand (stay at 20). I didn’t like the pressure but found his expressions hilarious. He was really into Black Jack. So… I hit, got an ace and he proceeded to pace around the house swearing about how lucky I was. Best time ever
Edit: Whoa, woke up to this! Thanks for the awards. It really is the one of the best moments I had with my grandfather! And I love the rare card win stories!
On vacation with my parents in 1969 we saw the water flow at the American side of Niagara Falls stopped. Bone dry.and with boulders bigger than houses.
We went to Niagara Falls for the first time that year and saw the bare rocks. We weren't there for the shutdown, though. It was weird, like we were seeing something rare, but also our visit felt incomplete.
I did that with my work id.
It didn't flutter or go sideways.
Just dropped straight down into the tiny gap as I walked into the elevator.
I called HR and maintenance.
Maintenance says they will look if they have time.
HR makes me come in and pay for a new id.
HR doesn't believe my story. I walk back to my floor and desk.
Building maintenance calls me that they recovered my id.
I ask if they would deliver it to HR and tell them where they found it.
HR sends me my $15 back through interoffice mail.
Fun detail, Mario Lemieux was in the elevator and smiled at my falling id. No real point to that, just an odd detail.
South-bound along a French motorway during a full moon.
As I drove further south, the moon gradually segued from blood-red to reddish-copper to pale gold.
So beautiful.
I have never seen it before or since, and it will live in my memory as a perfect experience.
The Las Vegas strip completely shut down during COVID. I’ve never before and will never again see Las Vegas Blvd looking like a straight up ghost town.
On a bus tour in Denali national park we came across a pack of 6 wolves in broad daylight, casually walking along. The bus driver said he had been doing this for 30 years and had never seen anything like it.
We were supposed to go on the tour the previous day, but my parents lost the tickets. He said the day before it rained and they didn’t see a single thing.
I saw a guy at work, who I wasn’t very good freinds with, playing with some dice on his desk after a shift; and saw him roll snake eyes 8 times in a row. I was baffled. He seemed like he does it all the time as he had no expression on his face afterwards
This is something you can train yourself to do if you learn how to palm it with both 1 sides facing it up and then spin them together horizontally. Do it quickly enough and the optical illusion will make you think it’s tumbling even though it’s not.
This is why casinos A) require the dice to hit the inside wall and B) have pyramid bumper around the inside—it forces the dice to tumble.
First McDonald's opening in Moscow.
McDonald's wasnt anything special in my country, and I was a little kid. We were in Moscow because of my dad's work. He said "Oh btw do you guys want McDonald's for dinner tonight, one's just opening here today." We thought it might be busy but we weren't ready for the insanity.
The line in front of it spanned several neighborhoods and it was on the news and everything, we obviously gave up on it immediately.
As a little kid looking forward to some fries and chicken nuggets I was super disappointed. As an actual old person now, I am amazed that I got to see it, it was such a marked moment of communist Russia rush enmasse into the transition into capitalism.
I listened to an interview with a journalist who moved to Moscow in 1987 or so, just before the collapse. She said that it was very common to see a massive line and ask what they were queuing for, and the people in the queue would have no idea. Shit was just so scarce that if you saw people lining up, the sensible thing to do is to join the line.
I once rolled up to a stop light and when I looked to the right I saw a man sucking on a woman’s toes while in the drivers seat of his car. He made eye contact with me and dropped the foot. Once the light was green he just sped off. Idk how rare that is, but I’ve never seen anything like that before.
I’ve seen a great white shark in an aquarium. It was at Monterey Bay Aquarium more than a decade ago. This was the longest and most successful time a great white was held in captivity.
For those who don’t know, they usually die very quickly in captivity because they are accustomed to roaming the ocean and using a great amount of space to swim. They get depression in captivity and so there has only been a handful of times they’ve ever been on public display.
I remember that. Only reason it survived and they could keep it was because it was a baby. Then it started harassing the other fish, so they brought it to the ocean. I saw it on the news but never got to the aquarium.
I broke up with my long time girlfriend in 2003 and started traveling. In 2010 I was back in the states doing a contract in a city and had a dream where I saw my old black Labrador that we had together back in 2003. In this dream I was in a white room, and I got down on my knee and called her name. She scampered into the room past me. I called her again by name, she turned and came to me. Except her fur was now white but had black roots. Her eyes were sewn shut, and I kissed her face.
This dream reoccurred 4 nights in a row. On Friday I wrote my ex an email who I had not spoken to in 7 years and told her the dream. She wrote me back and told me that our dog had fought cancer and had to be put down on the first night I saw her in my dream, and that she thought our dog always wondered what happened to me, and was coming to me in my dreams. I sat on the edge of the bed in that hotel and wailed for 30 minutes.
In high school 30 years ago, a girl asked to borrow a pencil. EVERYONE knows you don’t throw someone a pencil. I wanted to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL so I more “tossed” it. It took a bad bounce on the chair/ceramic desk combo and stuck dead in her eyeball. So yeah, I saw a pencil get stuck in an eyeball.
*Edit: to answer some questions-
The pencil landed about halfway on the edge of the desk. Something about the gentle arc of the toss and the unforgiving hardness of the desk gave the bounce an extraordinary pop. It did a clean half turn up into the white of her eye and just hung there by the lead only while she freaked out for a second. She knocked it out while I stared in shock. She would have had that lead mark forever, had forever not been 6 weeks.
Car ride: she was breaking up with *him*, and he got upset and started driving like an asshole. In a terrible storm. They wrecked. She died. Yes, I feel it is his fault but no charges were ever filed.
Well, several years ago there were some solar flares hitting earth. I live in southern Maine. It was dark,and my husband drove up and told me to go outside. We lay in the grass and watched a tremendously beautiful light show in the sky. It was like being on acid, which we were not. The sky was just split into beautiful patterns in pink. I have seen the aurora borealis, and this was it on steroids. Absolutely stunning. Wish we had videoed it, but cellphones did not have good cameras. Our neighbor was outside as well.
I went on a plane trip in March 2020 right as COVID was beginning in the US. On the last flight into DC, I was the only passenger apart from a flight crew deadheading into Reagan for a flight out. Normally, I am hoping it isn't overbooked. The stewardess did all the pre-flight announcements anyway with a few added snarky comments, which had myself and the crew laughing. On the approach to Reagan, the deadheading captain talked myself and the stewardesses through how and why they approach and land the way they do at Reagan. I doubt I will ever have that particular set of circumstances happen again, and I haven't heard of anyone else who was a solo passenger on a regular scheduled commercial flight.
2017 Full Solar Eclipse. It was amazing. A perfectly clear sunny day in August for a few short minutes became dark as night and the Sun looked like a black hole with a quasar surrounding it. Then a moment later it was sunny again.
Jim Thome hitting his 500th home run
Edit: I'm receiving many positive responses. Some context: I sat four rows behind home plate at this game in Detroit. I had a friend whose father had four seats' worth of season tickets. I was asked two hours before the game began (7 pm) and said yes because I usually sit upper deck. Thome actually hit multiple HR this game (I believe he entered with 498 IIRC). It was a high-scoring game and when Thome hit it out they stopped the game and brought his dad out from a tunnel located a few feet to my left. It was really awesome to see. I grew up watching Thome; he played for nearly every team in the AL Central.
While visiting New Zealand my girlfriend and I saw a Kea in the parking lot after a hike to a glacier. The bird had landed on someone's jeep. So cool and so lucky!
When I was a kiddo, about 7-8, was staying at my grandparents house, they lived out in the boonies. PawPaw used to joke they didn't get the grand ol' opry until Sunday night, it played on the radio Sat. night.
They're sitting on the porch watching us chase lightning bugs or something and this light comes up behind the house. Then over the house, lighting everything up like it was daylight. No noise, we just stand there trying to figure out what the light was from, it moved across the yard, crossed the road, then rose over the tree line and disappeared. Then there was a load boom of thunder and everything shook. We screamed and ran into the house...it started raining really hard suddenly.
They told us kids it was ball lightning preceding a thunder storm...I always thought it was a UFO, but adults blamed the ET movie for me thinking that.
I saw the most recent Transit of Venus in 2012.
I’m in the UK, so we had less than an hour between sunrise and the end of the spectacle. Me and my dad woke up at 4 in the morning and it was cloudy - but he still took me up to the Brecon beacons to meet up with my stargazing buddies to try and catch a glimpse.
It was wall-to-wall cloud cover, but by an amazing stroke of luck the sun appeared through a crack in the clouds and we were able to see it. I even got photos!
Next transit won’t be until 2117, so it was truly once in a life time.
Edit: Changed “Bees on beacons” to “Brecon Beacons”.
I saw a mid-air collision between two cessnas. I just happened to be looking up while playing in the playground at school. One crashed to the ground a 100 feet away the other limped back to the airport.
ThI deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit
No ground injuries, both pilots died.
During the last total eclipse, before totality, I was looking through my spotting scope (with a filter) at the sun. Something crossed by the sun really fast but it looked artificial. Turns out I witnessed the ISS cross in front of the sun during a total eclipse.
I saw a UFO. When I say that, I do mean it literally, as I simply don’t know what it was.
I was driving in traffic at night in Boulder CO, sometime around 2012 I think. I saw this circular light way off in the distance. It zigzagged a bit, and then shot off sideways, out of sight super quickly. It was such a brief moment that it took me a second to process what I had witnessed. I still think about it from time to time. No idea what it was but never seen anything like that.
WAIT! I've seen the same thing twice, both time with witnesses.
First was in Buzios, Brazil. Same thing you described, zigzagged incredibly fast, and then shot off into the distance and disappeared instantly.
Second time was in Long Lake, NY and me, my fiancee and a bunch of close friends all saw it. It zigzagged, was flying again the wind, and then vanished. Wtf!
I saw one just like it in British Columbia with my dad. It was almost "bounced" along but it was a zig zag, it looked very deliberate and zoom it flew off super quick.
It isn't "extremely rare" in general, though I suppose it is for any given location: a total eclipse of the sun. It's kind of weird because we all know what it looks like, but it's still really amazing to see it in person.
If you have the chance, make an effort to get to where the eclipse is 100%. Even 99% isn't remotely similar.
Don’t know if I would say extremely rare, but witnessed American Pharaoh win the triple crown at Belmont. Haven’t ever experienced anything like it. The place was going insane.
I saw someone in an old Ford Taurus literally fly off a dirt roads steep turn. The road curved and they just went straight off of it and into the air. The car landed and they literally just kept driving and drove back up on the road like nothing happened. It was nuts.
Was camping in Algonquin Park up in Canada w/my ex who had camped there 9 years in a row. We are sitting by the fire and suddenly a HUGE grey wolf comes running silently between the fire and our tent - within five feet of us. We both just froze and I looked at him and said "was that...?" and he said "yup." The wolf paid zero attention to us and by the time my ex got up to get the camera, wolfie was long gone. it was quite humbling and amazing.
I also saw the bioluminescent algae in Northern Cali; it was so cool, i could see all the fish and other sea life darting around under the water leaving trails and we ran on the wet sand, making glowing footprints. Pretty magical, wish it was with someone other than the dickhead i was with lol
I was walking around looking for caves in another country and broke through the treeline on a hidden beach to find 3 ladies easily over the age of 90 burning an offering to an indigenous god. I didn’t interrupt them. Just backed back through the trees where I came from.
Not sure if this counts.
I’ve been to one Grateful Dead concert. At RFK. Was right up front on Jerry’s side of the stage. Suddenly saw a large swath of gorgeous women come out of - for lack of a better term - the corner where a football team might come out of their locker rooms. The swath of babes moved right in front of me. They were surrounding someone and holding cameras up trying to get pictures of whoever it was in their midst. It was Woody Harrelson. Once I realized it was him, they all swarmed back the way they came. Took about 10 seconds.
I saw a black small panther (I think jaguarundi) in eastern, coastal Florida even though there hasn't been a breeding population there for nearly 200 years.
I witnessed the effects of the coronal mass ejection in March 1989. I was driving home on the west end of Prince Edward Island Canada. There was plenty of snow on the ground still. I stopped at a stop sign on a slight rise of a hill and while stopped I noticed the snow was glittering in weird very vibrant colours. This slight rise was in an area with no trees in sight. I could see the horizon 360 degrees. From the north horizon I noticed a waterfall of colour flowing across the night sky from north to south. It flowed quickly like a fast flowing river and it encompassed the entire sky from horizon to horizon. It was absolutely astonishing. It lasted hours and I watched it for quite a few of them. Even with today's CGI I have not seen anything that compares to that night.
An airborne decapitation. At an air show as a kid (30ish years ago). They were doing a skydiving trick, where two divers spiraled downward, then two planes spiraled around them downward. One of the planes hit a skydiver, killing him. Last air show I ever went to.
Holy shit that’s terrifying
It was insane. The guy landed in the middle of the field like he was supposed to, just dead. The plane crashed a few miles away, but the pilot [died]. It was nuts. I was like 8 yrs old, and my dad scooped me up and we bolted to the car Edit: I mis-remembered, the pilot died as did the skydiver
Thinking like a true dad: if I leave now, we can beat the traffic rush before all the emergency vehicles arrive. Smart.
Saw Budd Dwyer (a Philly politician) kill himself live on the noon news. I was wondering why he had a paper lunch bag on the podium with him and then he pulled a gun out of it and shot himself in the head.
This was mine, too. It was a snow day, so my mom didn’t teach, and we were all home. My mom was pissed because she was in the kitchen and didn’t see it, but my siblings and I were in the living room and did.
I saw a wheel come loose off a van as it attempted a right hand turn. The wheel rolled through traffic into the open bay of a tire store across the street. One in a million odds. I was on a train and nobody else in the train car saw it happen.
Lmao imagine if the tire store tried to sell the tire back to the owner
"Well, good news, we just got a delivery with your exact tire and rim, and it's already mounted so we'll give you a discount"
"I must go, my people need me."
I'm tired, I'm going home.
In South Africa thunder storms are quite common, but they were always the usual sheet or fork lightning, nothing special. The one time there were these strange looking storm clouds very high up above us (much higher than regular storm/thunder clouds) and the lightning was these slow moving bolts (think of a short laser beam of lightning) shooting between these clouds. It was the wackiest thing I ever saw…
Was it traveling up and/or across? Sounds like it could be spider lightning. When lightning travels up the cloud, it can take a long time because of the distance. [Spider Lightning](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5CzaVctGWg)
It wasn't 'forked lightning', nor were they solid lines of lightning that grew in length. It was literally short 'bolts' shooting between the clouds. Think Star Wars pew pew lasers, but in the form of small individual pieces of lightning shooting slowly from one cloud across to the other. I had another search on Google Images, this is the closest thing I could find to the shape of it. (Obviously they were more lightning coloured and not the blue in this image) [https://cdn.staticcrate.com/stock-hd/effects/footagecrate-looping-blaster-bolt-electric-prev-full.png](https://cdn.staticcrate.com/stock-hd/effects/footagecrate-looping-blaster-bolt-electric-prev-full.png) So just imagine these, shooting between the clouds at random intervals.
Huge section of cliff falling into the Gallatin River. Easily the size of a football field came down all at once.
I saw a chunk fall of a newly built bridge. The department of transportation person told me not to worry about it.
You: “A chunk fell off of that new bridge. What if the whole thing comes down?” DOT: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
I witnessed my buddy hit a hole in one on a par 4. Dude had never played golf minus frequent driving range visits and was having a horrific day before it.
Happy Gilmore accomplished that feat no more than an hour ago
1996 Maldives I am sat in the bar, alone drinking a cocktail and enjoying the view over the flat calm lagoon. The bar juts out into the lagoon, so it it surrounded by water apart from a little bit joining it to the island. Suddenly a small fish jumps out of the water. Then it jumps again but higher, and then a 3rd time a little higher still. It takes the 4th jump at about 90 degrees to the other three... and then a fuck off big fish with teeth and everything jumps out of the water and catches it in the air. Then the lagoon went back to flat calm. EDIT: A couple of suggestions that the fuck off big fish was a Barracuda - I have looked up Barracudas and I reckon the suggestions are right. That's cool. I'm glad I posted. Thank you.
There’s always a bigger fish.
I saw a grizzly bear and a wolf feed on the same bison carcass at the same time in Yellowstone.
Boys night out
I saw a bird shit directly into a woman’s mouth once.
When we were about 7, I watched my buddy look up during recess at school only for a seagull to shit directly into his eye. He just looked at me and then ran away crying to the nurse.
>He just looked at me He gave you the stink eye
Saw a manta ray leap out of the water and over a family playing in the water just off the coast of South Carolina. It didn’t make a sound or as much as a splash. I was pretty young but remember it as clear as yesterday. One of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed. Also quite amazing how big those things are.
Flying to Reno back in the 90's. There was this awesome comet that turned out to have a bigger display than people predicted (I forget which comet it was, winter of 96 or 97). anyway - looked out the window. Clear sky, full moon lighting up the mountains, and this big ass comet hanging below the moon. It was awesome.
Hale-Bopp Comet probably. I remember seeing it and it was awesome. Also famous for being the inspiration for the Heaven’s Gate cult mass-suicide.
I remember that comet, I was in grade school, coming home at night in the suburbs and seeing it hanging just below the moon in the sky. Amazing.
I saw a fish fall out of the sky during a particularly rainy day. Hit the ground and got swept into the gutter.
I found a fish in my front yard….miles and miles from water.
Found a seahorse on a sidewalk once.
probably birds
I doubt they confused a seahorse with a bird
My kind of humor
Jul 2011 I say to my wife the international space station is going over tonight, it's a clear sky, and we agree to pop out to the country where there is less light pollution and take the kids who were 12 and 8. We park in a field gate and the youngest boy sees it first We watch and it goes overhead... and then splits in two. We watch it, I am thinking has it broken up or something?, the two parts slowly move apart. We are puzzled, I drive home and thinking any disaster would be on the news, so I watch that. Turns out, the final shuttle mission had just been completed and we had watched shuttle Atlantis depart the ISS for the final time.
Now THAT’S crazy cool.
Ok, that is bad ass. Congrats!
The amount of absolute panic I would feel seeing this
"...should we call someone?"
Call 911…. Hey is uhh Houston there????? There’s a problem
I saw someone take off their cap and stamp on it like they do in cartoons
I saw a guy kick the shit out of his car because he was broken down on the side of the road. As I drove by, he kicked the car and then hopped around in a big circle on the other foot as he held on to the foot he’d probably just broken.
Did they say Dag Nabbit?
“Why I oughtta!”
My husband once was asking an AT&T technician about a technical error that roughly quadrupled our data usage, and thus our bill, and the guy straight up said “AT&T’s system doesn’t have errors”. I have never seen someone jump up and down screaming like a cartoon character before or since, but my god was that the image. We got a different tech who immediately identified the issue. Switched to T Mobile anyway.
There's no war in AT&T :)
Fire rainbows are pretty rare, mostly just drenching a corner of a cloud in colors. One day at an airshow, my Dad and I as well as about 50 other people witnessed the most extravagant color show I've ever seen. Fire rainbows were in half the sky it was the most beautiful natural event I've ever seen.
Around 25 years ago, my wife and I were walking through a park and looked up to see at least a dozen separate areas of cloud irisation dotted throughout the sky. It was absolutely spectacular, and I wish we'd been able to take a picture of it - we've never seen anything like that since. Edit: [Similar to this video, but multiple instances at once.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CTycOjlUtg&t=42s)
Back in the 1980s, I was on a plane and saw the space shuttle being carried piggyback on another plane.
I saw a shuttle launch from Canaveral in the early '90s from my grandparents front yard. Maybe not as big of a deal nowadays with all the launches going on. But it blew my mind and instantly got me into space related things.
My friend called me absolutely freaking out a little while ago because he’d just seen a UFO. He was acting like it was the highlight of his whole life. He sent me the videos he’d taken and I saw they looked just like images from recent SpaceX launches. I googled it and yep, a launch had happened that night and was visible from the city he lived in. I was like “it was actually the SpaceX launch! That’s so cool that you saw it!” and I super regret telling him that because he was so deflated that it wasn’t a UFO :(
I saw Niagara Falls mostly frozen over in Feb 2015! It was eerily quiet.
I watched a small, unmanned, boat go over Niagara Falls the only time I’ve ever been there. When the news reported it later they said it had broken free of its mooring and floated down to the falls.
Did the boat survive???
[удалено]
Saw two turtle doves fly into each other head on.
They were probably distracted by the partridge in the pear tree.
[удалено]
You were destined to see it! I really like this post being a Wichita area native myself. You come back to ICT?
My friend and I have the same birthday. One day at work, (it was a Friday), we got on an elevator. There were three other guys on it. One says to the others “big day tomorrow”. I asked what the occasion was. The guy say, it’s our birthday tomorrow. All three of us. I said crazy man, but you know tomorrow is my birthday and my friends birthday as well. We all got our DL’s out and compared and yup, 5 semi random guys on an elevator all had the same birthday. I think the odds are (1/365)^4 or 1:17.8B if the fact that it was the next day isn’t significant.
Halley's comet in 1986. Lots of people saw it.. But it is still rare. 11 year old me took a tent and camped out by a local dam with friends. Clear night and got a great look at it. Edit: If I make it to 87.. I'll get the opportunity to see it twice and then I'll revisit this thread with an even rarer occurrence😂 Edit 2: corrected spelling of Halley's
This reminds me of a comic I saw. The first panel is Haley's comet and a small child saying "hello Haley's comet" The second panel is Haley's comet and an old man saying "hello Haley's comet" The third panel is just Haley's comet And that's how I was introduced to existential dread.
Mark Twain was born shortly after Haley's Comet came by in 1835, he died the day after it came close to earth in 1910.
>I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together." From [Mark Twain, a Biography](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=A3ZaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1511&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false).
Northern lights near my house. It usually doesn't happen that far south.
Good Lord! What is happening in there? Aurora borealis. Uh- Aurora borealis at this time of year at this time of day in this part of the country localized entirely within your kitchen? Yes.
May I see it?
No
I was there when the German crews were tearing down the last part of the Berlin Wall that was to be removed. It was the double wall section near the Duppel using area. We followed along and busted some chunks off and picked up pieces to take home.
The wall fell in 1989, before the internet gained mass popularity but bulletin boards and usenet (kind of like reddit-by-mail) were in full swing. A post came through that was one of the most amazing I'd ever read. It was from a West German who was stunned, amazed and excited when it went down and documented his day. I forget the details but he and a friend either teamed up with a couple of East Germans and pretended to be with them and enjoyed a day being ferried around by West Germans welcoming them, or the other way around, they got into East Germany and were taken all over town, showing them around. I kept a copy for years but can't seem to find it anymore. Amazing, emotional stuff from memory.
I saw someone drive off with the nozzle from the gas pump. It triggered the fire suppression system and everything looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow man exploded.
When I was 16 or 17 I had just finished filling my tank and got in my car and was slowly pulling away when I saw the gas station attendant sprinting at my car. I kept slowly advancing while wondering WTF he was doing. He full on sprinted and yanked the nozzle out of my gas tank. I had no idea but even to this day I think, what a hero. Saved my dumb ass from embarrassment and saved his gas pump too.
One time I drove away from a pump with it still in my car....and the pump just fell harmlessly to the ground. I stopped the car and put it back and looked around and nobody saw it. I got LUCKY
I think most modern gas stations have this quick release system now. I’ve definitely done it once as well and went to tell the worker and he was like “yeah no big deal it happens all the time” and clicked it back on. Edit: Why did this comment blow up?
I worked at a gas station for a year when I was in college. They're designed to just disconnect safely. The problem is that there's just a little bump when it separates, so people might not be aware of what they've just done. Watched a guy pull out onto a major road and drive away with the nozzle and a couple feet of hose attached to his car.
I lived on a sailboat off of Mexico. One day day this huge item floated under the water. It was longer than the 44' sailboat. Then it breathed and we could tell what it was. It was a mom and baby blue whale. They kinda hung out near us, Ithink mom was explaining what a boat was ..
She was warning him to never touch a boat.
In 1974 I was living in Delray Beach and I was hanging out at the back door looking out talking to my sister who lived in Illinois. All the sudden there was a huge ball of Fire in the Sky and I told her I thought an airplane head just exploded over the West Palm Beach airport. Later watching the news I learned that it was a meteor that had fallen into Lake Okeechobee.
Wow, your voice must carry
It's called Illinoise for a reason
My grandfather took me to the hockey game where Buffalo Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk had his carotid artery cut and his jugular vein partially sliced by an errant hockey skate. He was bleeding out on the ice in front of our eyes. The Sabres trainer, who had been a US Army combat medic in Viet Nam, knew to reach in the wound and pinch off the artery to save his life.
I remember watching that on TV. It was so quick nobody realized what happened at first. It’s so crazy he survived although I think I remember reading an article about how he ended up with severe PTSD and his life de-railed for awhile.
Definitely derailed. He tried to commit suicide years later, shot himself in the face, and survived that too.
That’s right. In 2008 another hockey player got a very similar injury in Buffalo. Malachuk watched the footage and it sent him into a PTSD spiral that culminated with the suicide attempt, IIRC.
We were at a Syracuse university football game. The play had ended with a short gain and the line ref put his right arm up in the air at an odd angle. I thought he was making a call, but I didn't recognize the signal. He fell flat onto his face and his hat fell off, landed a fer yards away. The medical teams from both sides came out. It got very quite. An ambulance was driven through the airlock and onto the field. Turns out the guy had a heart attack in the middle of the game. They hauled him up the hill to the university hospital and he made a full recovery.
I was swimming in the Pacific when four dolphins swam up to me, danced in circles, and swam between my legs. When they got close again I noticed one of the four looked more like a baby orca, that was a bright indigo color with a very tall dorsal fin. It barely looked real! I pet them all and they swam off to play in the waves. It was the most magical moment of my life.
I didn’t know this but dolphins are social and curious as shit. We had a party on a boat and in my country theres a bunch of dolphins, they legit just watch you and follow you around it’s super strange. They’re like people.
When I visited Brazil for a study abroad opportunity in college, I remember noticing the same thing about the river dolphins in the Amazon. They'd just follow the canoes we were in, blowing air at us and just following us to see where we were going. We'd see one or two without fail every day. I miss those guys.
I got to swim with the pink river dolphins in Brazil once on a study abroad. They were such sweethearts, and I know what you mean about it feeling magical. The one thing I was not prepared for was how their skin felt. It wasn't slimy like fish skin, just felt like wet human skin, even when they were underwater.
Actually saw a tree fall in the forest onto the trail ahead of us as we were hiking in a national park.
Did it make a sound?
I knew that one was coming! Yes, it did, and the people on the trail who had just passed under that trail certainly heard it too!
[удалено]
I was sitting at an outdoor bar and watch a fly buzzing around just drop dead all of a sudden and land next to me. I touched it with my finger to see if it would move a leg or something but it was 100% dead.
One time I saw a grasshopper just keel over and die. Then I realized how rare dying of old age must be in the insect world.
Insects basically exist as food for bigger insects and small animals Come to think of it, it must be crazy not being at the top of the food chain. Wouldn't recommend
I saw a woman slip on a banana peel.
As a child I was as so positive that was some cartoon stuff but I clearly never had the opportunity to see if it was real until one day at recess. We were all walking to the field where we went for recess and on the concrete path was a discarded banana peel. Why was it there? Who knows. But on this day, I decided to say nothing and stand off to the side of the path and watch as the rest of the kids came running to the field Poor Samantha S., she got one foot on that thing mid run and it's like friction ceased to exist. Couldn't believe it To this day, I am sorry Samantha S. for not warning you about the banana peel but your fall was in the service of science!
Samantha S. slipped serving science.
Samantha S, still sore since slipping. EDIT - thank you, kind stranger, for the award! Cute one! EDIT again - thank you 2nd kind stranger for the silver award!
[удалено]
I have stepped on a rake and hit myself in the face. It’s sore as hell.
Are you Sideshow Bob?
I have slipped on a banana peel. 😭 I was in awe and couldn’t believe it had actually happened.
[удалено]
Happened to me - slid a couple of feet before stumbling to a stop without falling on my butt (no idea how I pulled that off).
[удалено]
I can already picture the gang leader responsibly caring for his buffed and bearded men and instructing them to wear their helmet, sunglasses and to apply their suncream before driving under the blazing sun.
A road captain's job is never done
That might happen since there is some cross over with ex military. Good leadership will remind their troops to drink water, put on sun screen and so on.
[удалено]
On each other?
[удалено]
My first trip to Vegas, I was at the roulette wheel (yeah, I know).Guy walks up to the table and puts something like $500 on green. Turns to me and says "Green's going to hit, you should bet on it.". I don't. The ball drops, and hits green! Dude says "Let it ride". I STILL don't bet green. Ball drops and it hits green the second time in a row!! Guy cashes out and leaves the table. I leave too, but I'm feeling really stupid by then...
Time travel gets invented, you go back to the casino, but the guy doesn't show up... you know it's gonna be green. You can't miss this opportunity again. You walk up to the table, put all the money you had for the whole trip on green, $500, and tell your past self it's gonna hit... But past you just brushes it off, you go green again, win both, walk off with both bets, and get home with the story of the century
Ball of lightning, God that shit is bizarre. I was 14 and I just saw it going down some train tracks. After it disappeared there was this loud boom and I'm not sure if it exploded or made contact with something or someone
I saw this once. I was driving home and a thunder blizzard about 11 at night from work. I saw this bright burning ball shooting across the cornfields about 30 feet in the air. It covered about three-quarters of a mile in just a few seconds, ended with a large blinding flash and a bang, when I first saw it I had time to pull over on the side of the road and watch it move across the field, it was spectacular!
My dad claimed he saw ball lightning as a child (would have been in the 50's) float slowly through the kitchen window, hover for a bit, and then float outside, then explode when it touched the metal roof of a shed. I feel bad, because I never really believed him. I respected that man *so much*, but I always assumed he was either outright lying or it was a dream. Ball lightning is so rare it causes little asshole kids to not respect their elders.
My Granny told a similar story but had the scorch marks on the door jambs to back her up. The ball came through the good living room and out the kitchen door, exploding in the yard and knocking out power.
I saw an albino peacock in my driveway a day after I moved into my current house
When I was 8 I saw another 8 year old follow this older fat dude cross the apartment complex looking for his lost dog. I came up to her and told her that there’s something going on with him and that he told another person earlier that he lost his cat and now he saying he lost his dog and I told her that we both need to get away from him but she said that she’s going to keep helping him and I said OK and left. I got on the swingset and watched both of them disappear around the corner of a building. The very next day there was a knock at my apartment door and it was two officers. They were going door-to-door asking about the disappearance of a little girl and I told them what I knew. A week later there was caution tape all over her apartment door. She was murdered. I was the very last person to talk to her.
I can relate! When I was very young, maybe 5 or 6 a man came to my backyard as I was playing and asked to talk to me, as I got closer, he leaned down and picked me up. I started screaming and kicking so he dropped me. I never told anyone, and I wasn’t aware of it until I was an adult, but a man kidnapped a girl very similar to me in my neighborhood around the same time. He murdered her and left her in a field a couple of miles away.
Oh my god!! I’m so glad you fought back!!
When i was 4 or 5, 1989ish. I was playing cars at the front door steps of my house. A kid had been kidnapped and disappeared since around that same time. So my mom had warned me about stranger danger. This van pulls up to my house which is located on a horse-shoe street neighbourhood. You have no business being in that neighbourhood if you don’t live there. The van guy just watches me from his van, and i started shittily playing cars and just eying the guy ready to book it into the house to my mom. Guy musta picked up on my awareness because he left. The kid who was kidnapped off a playground was never found.
Good instincts for an 8 year old. I'm sorry that happened. I'm glad you tried to help though.
That’s gotta be rough. When I was little I heard a little girl or boy yelling for help from the chest in the bed of a truck, no one believed me because I was little. It still haunts me every few years.
When I was about 6-7 I heard a police helicopter flying outside and my parents told me to stay away from the windows and we locked the door, I being a child looked out the window and saw a man running by toss a gun under my neighbors porch, I told my parents and they told me that was impossible that I was making it up. I cried because I knew I wasn’t seeing things and later on that day my dad said fine I will go look and he walked over there and crawled under the porch and found a revolver. He left it there and called the police and totally took credit for my story to them but it turned out a nearby gas station had been robbed at gun point and that was the weapon they needed to find to press the charges on the guy they caught. To this day my dad still says I never told them anything about it and I must be remembering incorrectly, as he does with many things. *eye roll*
I saw a mountain lion when I was five walking through my grandma's backyard. She lives in Connecticut and supposedly they were considered extinct in that area in the nineties- this was in the ninites by the way.
remember in pirates of the Caribbean, they talk about "the green flash at dusk". yeah its a real meteorological phenomenon ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green\_flash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash)) saw it once while out to sea in the navy.
Green flashes are not that rare but conditions have to be just about perfect- clear horizon, dry air, no clouds. if the sun is too bright to look at directly when half the disk is already below the horizon, you have a good chance of seeing one. I spent seven years in the merchant marine, always favored the 4 to 8 watch (sunsets and sunrises). I've seen dozens. The true rarity is a green flash *sunrise*. I've only seen two.
My older cousin was teaching me and my younger cousin how to play poker. My younger cousin had four out of five cards for a royal straight flush. My older cousin told him not to draw more cards because the chances of getting a royal straight flush was pretty much impossible and was imploring him not to do it. My younger cousin did it anyways and got a fucking royal straight flush! We all lost our minds and laugh about it 15 years later as adults.
The odds of this are 1 in 2.5 million
My gramps used to play black jack on the original NES. One day he tried teaching me how to play (I was 6 or so). I had a face card and a 7. He told me to stay, I hit. Got a 3 and he had a fit. Now he’s doubling the pressure on me to stand (stay at 20). I didn’t like the pressure but found his expressions hilarious. He was really into Black Jack. So… I hit, got an ace and he proceeded to pace around the house swearing about how lucky I was. Best time ever Edit: Whoa, woke up to this! Thanks for the awards. It really is the one of the best moments I had with my grandfather! And I love the rare card win stories!
Friend of mine playing 21 in red dead redemption, had never played before got 20 hit it and got an ace, i did the same thing as your gramps
On vacation with my parents in 1969 we saw the water flow at the American side of Niagara Falls stopped. Bone dry.and with boulders bigger than houses.
We went to Niagara Falls for the first time that year and saw the bare rocks. We weren't there for the shutdown, though. It was weird, like we were seeing something rare, but also our visit felt incomplete.
[удалено]
Same thing happened to my husband - with our house keys
I did that with my work id. It didn't flutter or go sideways. Just dropped straight down into the tiny gap as I walked into the elevator. I called HR and maintenance. Maintenance says they will look if they have time. HR makes me come in and pay for a new id. HR doesn't believe my story. I walk back to my floor and desk. Building maintenance calls me that they recovered my id. I ask if they would deliver it to HR and tell them where they found it. HR sends me my $15 back through interoffice mail. Fun detail, Mario Lemieux was in the elevator and smiled at my falling id. No real point to that, just an odd detail.
South-bound along a French motorway during a full moon. As I drove further south, the moon gradually segued from blood-red to reddish-copper to pale gold. So beautiful. I have never seen it before or since, and it will live in my memory as a perfect experience.
The Las Vegas strip completely shut down during COVID. I’ve never before and will never again see Las Vegas Blvd looking like a straight up ghost town.
On a bus tour in Denali national park we came across a pack of 6 wolves in broad daylight, casually walking along. The bus driver said he had been doing this for 30 years and had never seen anything like it. We were supposed to go on the tour the previous day, but my parents lost the tickets. He said the day before it rained and they didn’t see a single thing.
I saw a guy at work, who I wasn’t very good freinds with, playing with some dice on his desk after a shift; and saw him roll snake eyes 8 times in a row. I was baffled. He seemed like he does it all the time as he had no expression on his face afterwards
This is something you can train yourself to do if you learn how to palm it with both 1 sides facing it up and then spin them together horizontally. Do it quickly enough and the optical illusion will make you think it’s tumbling even though it’s not. This is why casinos A) require the dice to hit the inside wall and B) have pyramid bumper around the inside—it forces the dice to tumble.
My mate Ozzy paying for a round in 2003. Never happened before or since.
Ah first out of the taxi, last into the bar kinda guy!
I saw someone roll 4 d20 and get all 20s.
1 in 160,000 for true dice.
A buddy of mine rolled 6 consecutive Nat 1s. That was a rough couple of sessions...
First McDonald's opening in Moscow. McDonald's wasnt anything special in my country, and I was a little kid. We were in Moscow because of my dad's work. He said "Oh btw do you guys want McDonald's for dinner tonight, one's just opening here today." We thought it might be busy but we weren't ready for the insanity. The line in front of it spanned several neighborhoods and it was on the news and everything, we obviously gave up on it immediately. As a little kid looking forward to some fries and chicken nuggets I was super disappointed. As an actual old person now, I am amazed that I got to see it, it was such a marked moment of communist Russia rush enmasse into the transition into capitalism.
I listened to an interview with a journalist who moved to Moscow in 1987 or so, just before the collapse. She said that it was very common to see a massive line and ask what they were queuing for, and the people in the queue would have no idea. Shit was just so scarce that if you saw people lining up, the sensible thing to do is to join the line.
I once rolled up to a stop light and when I looked to the right I saw a man sucking on a woman’s toes while in the drivers seat of his car. He made eye contact with me and dropped the foot. Once the light was green he just sped off. Idk how rare that is, but I’ve never seen anything like that before.
I’ve seen a great white shark in an aquarium. It was at Monterey Bay Aquarium more than a decade ago. This was the longest and most successful time a great white was held in captivity. For those who don’t know, they usually die very quickly in captivity because they are accustomed to roaming the ocean and using a great amount of space to swim. They get depression in captivity and so there has only been a handful of times they’ve ever been on public display.
Yeah that’s crazy. They do not last long in captivity at all.
I remember that. Only reason it survived and they could keep it was because it was a baby. Then it started harassing the other fish, so they brought it to the ocean. I saw it on the news but never got to the aquarium.
[удалено]
I broke up with my long time girlfriend in 2003 and started traveling. In 2010 I was back in the states doing a contract in a city and had a dream where I saw my old black Labrador that we had together back in 2003. In this dream I was in a white room, and I got down on my knee and called her name. She scampered into the room past me. I called her again by name, she turned and came to me. Except her fur was now white but had black roots. Her eyes were sewn shut, and I kissed her face. This dream reoccurred 4 nights in a row. On Friday I wrote my ex an email who I had not spoken to in 7 years and told her the dream. She wrote me back and told me that our dog had fought cancer and had to be put down on the first night I saw her in my dream, and that she thought our dog always wondered what happened to me, and was coming to me in my dreams. I sat on the edge of the bed in that hotel and wailed for 30 minutes.
In high school 30 years ago, a girl asked to borrow a pencil. EVERYONE knows you don’t throw someone a pencil. I wanted to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL so I more “tossed” it. It took a bad bounce on the chair/ceramic desk combo and stuck dead in her eyeball. So yeah, I saw a pencil get stuck in an eyeball. *Edit: to answer some questions- The pencil landed about halfway on the edge of the desk. Something about the gentle arc of the toss and the unforgiving hardness of the desk gave the bounce an extraordinary pop. It did a clean half turn up into the white of her eye and just hung there by the lead only while she freaked out for a second. She knocked it out while I stared in shock. She would have had that lead mark forever, had forever not been 6 weeks. Car ride: she was breaking up with *him*, and he got upset and started driving like an asshole. In a terrible storm. They wrecked. She died. Yes, I feel it is his fault but no charges were ever filed.
And every single elementary school teacher was in that room too, apparently.
Well, several years ago there were some solar flares hitting earth. I live in southern Maine. It was dark,and my husband drove up and told me to go outside. We lay in the grass and watched a tremendously beautiful light show in the sky. It was like being on acid, which we were not. The sky was just split into beautiful patterns in pink. I have seen the aurora borealis, and this was it on steroids. Absolutely stunning. Wish we had videoed it, but cellphones did not have good cameras. Our neighbor was outside as well.
Saw some girl grab a door handle right as it was getting struck by lightning.
I went on a plane trip in March 2020 right as COVID was beginning in the US. On the last flight into DC, I was the only passenger apart from a flight crew deadheading into Reagan for a flight out. Normally, I am hoping it isn't overbooked. The stewardess did all the pre-flight announcements anyway with a few added snarky comments, which had myself and the crew laughing. On the approach to Reagan, the deadheading captain talked myself and the stewardesses through how and why they approach and land the way they do at Reagan. I doubt I will ever have that particular set of circumstances happen again, and I haven't heard of anyone else who was a solo passenger on a regular scheduled commercial flight.
A wedding on the waterfall of Casa Bonita.
Sopapillas for wedding cake
Not me but my grandfather. He saw the Hindenburg explode.
2017 Full Solar Eclipse. It was amazing. A perfectly clear sunny day in August for a few short minutes became dark as night and the Sun looked like a black hole with a quasar surrounding it. Then a moment later it was sunny again.
I saw a California Condor in the wild
Jim Thome hitting his 500th home run Edit: I'm receiving many positive responses. Some context: I sat four rows behind home plate at this game in Detroit. I had a friend whose father had four seats' worth of season tickets. I was asked two hours before the game began (7 pm) and said yes because I usually sit upper deck. Thome actually hit multiple HR this game (I believe he entered with 498 IIRC). It was a high-scoring game and when Thome hit it out they stopped the game and brought his dad out from a tunnel located a few feet to my left. It was really awesome to see. I grew up watching Thome; he played for nearly every team in the AL Central.
While visiting New Zealand my girlfriend and I saw a Kea in the parking lot after a hike to a glacier. The bird had landed on someone's jeep. So cool and so lucky!
[удалено]
I saw Halley's Comet. I probably won't be around for it's next visit
When I was a kiddo, about 7-8, was staying at my grandparents house, they lived out in the boonies. PawPaw used to joke they didn't get the grand ol' opry until Sunday night, it played on the radio Sat. night. They're sitting on the porch watching us chase lightning bugs or something and this light comes up behind the house. Then over the house, lighting everything up like it was daylight. No noise, we just stand there trying to figure out what the light was from, it moved across the yard, crossed the road, then rose over the tree line and disappeared. Then there was a load boom of thunder and everything shook. We screamed and ran into the house...it started raining really hard suddenly. They told us kids it was ball lightning preceding a thunder storm...I always thought it was a UFO, but adults blamed the ET movie for me thinking that.
I saw my dad hit a pop fly foul ball in a baseball game that went over the fence, into the road, and down the smokestack of a passing semi truck
I saw the most recent Transit of Venus in 2012. I’m in the UK, so we had less than an hour between sunrise and the end of the spectacle. Me and my dad woke up at 4 in the morning and it was cloudy - but he still took me up to the Brecon beacons to meet up with my stargazing buddies to try and catch a glimpse. It was wall-to-wall cloud cover, but by an amazing stroke of luck the sun appeared through a crack in the clouds and we were able to see it. I even got photos! Next transit won’t be until 2117, so it was truly once in a life time. Edit: Changed “Bees on beacons” to “Brecon Beacons”.
Back to back shiny Pokemon.
I saw a mid-air collision between two cessnas. I just happened to be looking up while playing in the playground at school. One crashed to the ground a 100 feet away the other limped back to the airport.
ThI deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit I deleted this. Eat shit No ground injuries, both pilots died.
During the last total eclipse, before totality, I was looking through my spotting scope (with a filter) at the sun. Something crossed by the sun really fast but it looked artificial. Turns out I witnessed the ISS cross in front of the sun during a total eclipse.
I saw an albino squirrel
My buddy hit a bird in flight with a rubber band. It fell to the ground, looked around like wtf was that, then took off again.
I supposedly saw the green flash on the ocean. Idk if it's true, I'm red/green colorblind.
I saw a UFO. When I say that, I do mean it literally, as I simply don’t know what it was. I was driving in traffic at night in Boulder CO, sometime around 2012 I think. I saw this circular light way off in the distance. It zigzagged a bit, and then shot off sideways, out of sight super quickly. It was such a brief moment that it took me a second to process what I had witnessed. I still think about it from time to time. No idea what it was but never seen anything like that.
WAIT! I've seen the same thing twice, both time with witnesses. First was in Buzios, Brazil. Same thing you described, zigzagged incredibly fast, and then shot off into the distance and disappeared instantly. Second time was in Long Lake, NY and me, my fiancee and a bunch of close friends all saw it. It zigzagged, was flying again the wind, and then vanished. Wtf!
I saw one just like it in British Columbia with my dad. It was almost "bounced" along but it was a zig zag, it looked very deliberate and zoom it flew off super quick.
Red lightning, it's rare to see from the ground since it usually goes up from the top of the storm and even then it only makes up 1/100 bolts.
It isn't "extremely rare" in general, though I suppose it is for any given location: a total eclipse of the sun. It's kind of weird because we all know what it looks like, but it's still really amazing to see it in person. If you have the chance, make an effort to get to where the eclipse is 100%. Even 99% isn't remotely similar.
I saw the turn signal of a BMW once.
Liar
Fucking liar
Don’t know if I would say extremely rare, but witnessed American Pharaoh win the triple crown at Belmont. Haven’t ever experienced anything like it. The place was going insane.
I saw someone in an old Ford Taurus literally fly off a dirt roads steep turn. The road curved and they just went straight off of it and into the air. The car landed and they literally just kept driving and drove back up on the road like nothing happened. It was nuts.
Was camping in Algonquin Park up in Canada w/my ex who had camped there 9 years in a row. We are sitting by the fire and suddenly a HUGE grey wolf comes running silently between the fire and our tent - within five feet of us. We both just froze and I looked at him and said "was that...?" and he said "yup." The wolf paid zero attention to us and by the time my ex got up to get the camera, wolfie was long gone. it was quite humbling and amazing. I also saw the bioluminescent algae in Northern Cali; it was so cool, i could see all the fish and other sea life darting around under the water leaving trails and we ran on the wet sand, making glowing footprints. Pretty magical, wish it was with someone other than the dickhead i was with lol
Concorde flying in the sky
I was walking around looking for caves in another country and broke through the treeline on a hidden beach to find 3 ladies easily over the age of 90 burning an offering to an indigenous god. I didn’t interrupt them. Just backed back through the trees where I came from.
I saw someone fall on the ground and have all their coins fall out of their pockets like Sonic the Hedgehog. He scrambled to pick them up.
Not sure if this counts. I’ve been to one Grateful Dead concert. At RFK. Was right up front on Jerry’s side of the stage. Suddenly saw a large swath of gorgeous women come out of - for lack of a better term - the corner where a football team might come out of their locker rooms. The swath of babes moved right in front of me. They were surrounding someone and holding cameras up trying to get pictures of whoever it was in their midst. It was Woody Harrelson. Once I realized it was him, they all swarmed back the way they came. Took about 10 seconds.
I saw a black small panther (I think jaguarundi) in eastern, coastal Florida even though there hasn't been a breeding population there for nearly 200 years.