20 People Found Some Mysterious Things and Asked Online Users for Help

The world around us is full of amazing riddles even for those that seem to have cracked all of them. The things some people use every day may seem strange for those that have never seen them before. Fortunately, today you just need to ask for help online to get to the bottom of some of these mysteries.

We at Bright Side love learning new things about the unexpected finds from people that online users were able to easily explain.

1. “Hollow silver oval found in our kitchen drawer, we don’t remember buying it.”

Answer: It’s to rub on your hands after chopping onions or garlic. It gets the smell off.

2. “Found these things on the beach. They felt like jellyfish but they look different.”

Answer: These are egg masses laid by the predatory Conical Snail that lives in the sand. Each contains hundreds of snail eggs.

3. “What is the hollow part of this for? Never seen anything like it before. Cat for size reference.”

Answer: Possibly a phone table with storage space for the phone book.

4. “Found on the street in a residential area in Australia. Top button makes a loud ‘click’ when pressed in. The device seems to be mostly hollow.”

Answer: Most likely a dog “clicker” for training them.

5. “My contractor brings this with him into my house every day and I’m not sure what it is. It says ‘Uruguay’ on the front”

Answer: “Yerba Mate teacup, they are all over in South America.”

6. “Cups on lanyard found on a Lake Michigan beach (glasses for scale)”

Answer: Kayak plugs. Keeps water from entering holes intentionally built within the boat.

7. “My mother says this cast iron thing is for pouring oil, but my grandmother says she’s wrong and can’t remember what it’s for. Help?”

Answer: It’s used to melt down lead.

8. “Kitchen tool. No idea what it’s for.”

Answer: It’s a shrimp peeler.

9. “Wooden object mounted on a metal base purchased at a vintage store”

Answer: it’s for cheese making. You run it down the mixture after you add the rennet.

10. “Found in a storage cupboard at work. The black bits come out. The number order is... weird?”

Answer: Those plastic bits appear to be different models of “caps” to use for a human to manipulate some kind of mechanism, like the buttons for selecting the speed of a fan.

11. “My wonderful boss is retiring and while cleaning out her desk today, she pulled out this mystery item. She’s been trying to identify it for over 10 years!”

Answer: These are table shuffleboard disks.

12. “This hollow bumpy thing was in my quarantine care package. On either end are 5 small holes arranged in a pentagon.”

Answer: A hand massager, really common for older people. Pressure points are really important to Korean people.

13. “This shower knob is behind the bathroom door. We just bought this house and have no idea what it is for. Water rushes through pipes when we turn it on but we have no idea where the water is going.”

Answer: It’s a valve of the evaporative cooler that cools down the air.

14. “My dad found this in his house when he got back from vacation. Looks like a syringe, but the middle (green) bit has no hole at the end.”

Answer: It’s a pill dispenser for pets, the pill goes into the claws and you use the plunger to shoot the pill to the back of the throat.

15. “A gift to the Sultan of Brunei. What is it?”

Answer: It’s a coconut meat grater. You husk, then cut it in half, and rub the inside on the metal part. The meat is grated and falls into a bowl.

16. “Arrived in the mail for me. Small glass tubes with 2 tiny ball bearings in them. No idea and not something I ordered.”

Answer: Rattles that you can put inside of fishing lures so they make noise to attract fish.

17. “Found in a London apartment I rented”

Answer: It’s a ham holder — Serrano or Iberico.

18. “A miniature mask I found in NZ”

Answer: Balinese ‘yawning’ dance mask. It looks like a miniature version of the actual masks used in Balinese dance performances.

19. “Weird gadget in epoxy with suction cup. My boyfriend doesn’t remember where it came from. Does anybody recognize this?”

Answer: It’s for photography. You might want to light a subject with multiple flash photography lights, and this is one way to synchronize them.

20. “Weird metal worm squiggle, found in the kitchen. What is this thing?”

Answer: It’s a bookmark.

Have you ever found weird things and didn’t understand what they were for?