Let's see where this thread goes: amazing things you've seen

[catherine]

By the way, I do think porcelain Victorian prosthetic eyeballs are really amazing... and what's more amazing is that they are now a decorative item.

[KayLR]

The House on the Rock

[JaneV2.0]

On Thanksgiving night 2011, I was in my upstairs hallway when I noticed a strawberry-colored fireball in the sky. As first I was concerned that it would crash into the house, but it seemed to be stationary. So I just stood there, gaping at it. It was a bit beyond the trees, maybe over the lake--it looked about the size of a beach ball. Then i scrambled to find binoculars or a camera, and found neither. While I was scrambling, it disappeared. A while later, it reappeared at the same spot, then it began to slowly move north, and out of sight. Later, I looked up Chinese lanterns, flares, and other likely candidates, but it didn't look or act like any of those. In my Googling, I came across a post on a local forum by another person who saw it from an area north of the lake:

"So it shrunk very small, then disappeared - thought it must have been a light on a plane.
Then, it reappeared -- and it was just again, hovering there, then it descended straight down, slowly. I could see the glow behind the trees."

I still have no idea what it is, but apparently it's a pretty common sight.

[CathyA]

I posted this back when it happened, but I still think back on it with amazement. We have a mound of dirt near the house, covered with ivy. It's a huge ant hill. We usually never see them though.
One day I went out and noticed tons of ants everywhere on the sidewalk. Then I realized it was a battle. There were big ants and small ants, and they were having a fight to the death. I saw little ants dragging away the big ants. It went on for probably 1-2 hours. Then all that was left were dead bodies. The small ants appeared to be the victors. Then......the next day.........the big ants were back in bigger numbers and they were slaughtering the smaller ants. I was witnessing another world. It was sooooo amazing.

I've also seen the northern lights right here at home (or close by) about 5 times. Just amazing.

Also.....on our way home from my DD's basketball practice a number of years ago, we saw 3 lights close together in the sky. They just hovered for a while, then, they just totally disappeared. DD and I hadn't said anything to each other........but after it was gone, this little, scared voice from the back seat said "mom........" We have no idea what it was. Thought maybe a UFO and we took the back way home, hoping to find E.T.

[bae]

The most amazing thing I've seen very recently was an incredible Coast Guard rescue crew "land" a helicopter on a postage-stamp-sized beach. By "land" I mean "touched down a wheel for a reference point, and then hovered in place, on the ground". While we loaded patient and paramedic and gear. The pilot had only a couple feet of clearance to some tree-like obstacles, and the site was on a slope, the ground surface loose grapefruit/basketball-sized rocks. The beach itself was at the base of a several hundred foot tall 60->90 degree cliff face, with the cliff made up of loose shale, with pieces falling off, with downdrafts sweeping down the cliff face.

It was a stunning display of skill.

[Dhiana]

Early in March there was a very, very old woman who would stop and stare at our house each time she walked by. People often stare as we are the foreigners in the neighborhood but this was unusual.
I decided the next time she went by that I would go out as if to water my plants and say, 'hi.' Instead, the next time she stopped by she rang the door bell!

It turns out she wanted a cutting of plum blossoms from the trees we have out front It took her itty, bitty, 90+yo self DAYS to work up the guts to ring my doorbell, hoping she would be understood even though she knew no English.

[pinkytoe]

Most memorable would be my dd just born...looking at me. A crytallized moment. Mountain thunderstorms are pretty neat too.

[KayLR]

Just thought of another. For a while my grandson (who lives with autism) was really into birdwatching. I bought him his own copy of the Willamette Valley bird identification book. It must have, oh, 300 pages or so. At the time he was maybe 7 or 8 years old.

The next weekend he had the book memorized. You could cover the name of the bird on each page and he could tell you what it was.

[catherine]

Amazing thing I read about in the book 1776. I can't get over this. I hope I retell it correctly.

At the start of the Revolution, the citizens of Boston knew they were in for battle with the British, but they had no ammunition. They didn't know what to do. So Henry Knox, a common bookseller in Boston, said, "Hey, what about all that ammo just sitting there at Fort Ticonderoga? Let's go and get the cannons and cannonballs that are up there."

It was winter, and cold and snowy, and he and a bunch of regular people (just imagine any bunch of city people like you/your DH and your friends) WALKED to Fort Ticonderoga and grabbed the cannons and cannonballs. On the way back, they figured they'd cross Lake Champlain (or was it Lake George?) to save time/miles (it was frozen over), and one of the cannonballs fell through the ice.

If that were me, I'd say, "whoops! Oh, well, one less cannonball." But no, they worked and worked to get that cannonball out of the lake!! And then walked back to Boston with all that heavy crap!!! Think about it... there was no I-90. There were no two-lane highways with diners and Marriotts along the way. There was wilderness, and mountains. And they managed to get tons and tons of stuff (literally) all the way from Ft. Ticonderoga to Boston. Wow.

I think that's totally amazing. When you think of people who resist walking to the store from the other end of the parking lot and where we actually came from, we are pathetic. Those early colonialists really, really were amazing.

[Spartana]

Amazing thing I read about in the book 1776. I can't get over this. I hope I retell it correctly.

At the start of the Revolution, the citizens of Boston knew they were in for battle with the British, but they had no ammunition. They didn't know what to do. So Henry Knox, a common bookseller in Boston, said, "Hey, what about all that ammo just sitting there at Fort Ticonderoga? Let's go and get the cannons and cannonballs that are up there."

It was winter, and cold and snowy, and he and a bunch of regular people (just imagine any bunch of city people like you/your DH and your friends) WALKED to Fort Ticonderoga and grabbed the cannons and cannonballs. On the way back, they figured they'd cross Lake Champlain (or was it Lake George?) to save time/miles (it was frozen over), and one of the cannonballs fell through the ice.

If that were me, I'd say, "whoops! Oh, well, one less cannonball." But no, they worked and worked to get that cannonball out of the lake!! And then walked back to Boston with all that heavy crap!!! Think about it... there was no I-90. There were no two-lane highways with diners and Marriotts along the way. There was wilderness, and mountains. And they managed to get tons and tons of stuff (literally) all the way from Ft. Ticonderoga to Boston. Wow.

I think that's totally amazing. When you think of people who resist walking to the store from the other end of the parking lot and where we actually came from, we are pathetic. Those early colonialists really, really were amazing.

Wow! Those tenacious soon-to-be-Americans :-)! Kind of reminds me of a scene fro Dr. Zivago (I think that was the movie) where the starving refugees where trudging across a frozen lake with nothing but bare reminents of their former lives.

This also brings me to an amazing sight I saw. I was in the Coast Guard on a patrol boat working the Muriel (Cuban) boat lift. While on patrol some 100 plus miles from Key West, we came upon a smallish motorboat (about 45 ft long) that was crammed with over 150 Haitians on board. It had broken down and been adrift for over 5 weeks with almost no food or water in the hot Caribbean sun. As we approached the boat this mass of starving, emaciated and near death people started to strip off their clothes en mass. We were like "WTF?" Then they all opened up little plastic bags that had their "Sunday Best" and began to put those on. These people, who had nothing, who had left their homeland in dire straights, only to find themselves in an even worse life and death situation (and many had died and were laying inside the boat which was actually being circled and followed by sharks) wanted so much to be presentable and respectful of us. I was very moved and touched by that small gesture in the face of the hardship they had suffered. Of course, after we brought them onboard, we took them to a larger CG ship and their fate was probably deportation.

Bae you're right about those CG helo pilots. Pretty amazing stuff they do. I was on a larger cutter that had a helo attached to it and watching the pilot try to land on deck in rough seas with waves crashing over everything was pretty amazing. Of course we salty sailors had an ongoing friendly rivalry with the "Airdales" (aviation) about who had it rougher - being on a ship or at a cushy land air station. The winner was always the helo crew stationed on a ship :-)!

Another amazing thing I saw was the northern lights while on a ship out on the middle of the Bearing Sea in winter while on watch at night. I have never experienced anything as haunting and beautiful as that in my life.