When you walk down the beach, you might collect shells or interesting pebbles, or perhaps a few bones that have washed up on shore. Or if you're having a very strange day, you might find something more interesting along the beach — something much, much weirder.
LEGO figures
A storm sent 62 containers (or 4,756,940 pieces!) of LEGO figures to the ocean on February 13, 1997, from aboard the Tokio Express, a container ship en route from Rotterdam to New York City. The pieces are still washed ashore onto the beaches of Devon, Cornwall and Ireland.
(via Lego Lost At Sea)
Some bottles of hundred-year-old whisky along the coast of Llyn, Northern Wales, UK
From a sailing ship named Stuart that was shipwrecked in 1901. Thousands of bottles were washed ashore in the next few months, but these are still being found today.
(via Rhiw)
A swivel gun, found by a 13-year-old boy on a Northern Territory beach in Australia
(via The Australian)
A 6 ft (1.82 m) U.S. Navy training mine, Miami Beach, Florida, December 2011
(via NBC Miami)
Message in a bottle, dropped to the sea in March 1936, washed up in November 2012 on a beach in New Zealand
6 backpacks filled with cocaine, found between 19th and 21st of November 2013
78 kgs of white powder have been found on a beach near Tokyo, Japan, worth about $70 million.
(via Softpedia)
E. T.
A custom-made life-sized replica has been stolen from the home of Margaret Wells in Cosham, Hampshire, UK in September 2011. In January 2012 a body was spotted by some locals off the coast of Old Portsmouth, and called the Coast Guard. They've realised really quickly that it was the good old alien and give him back to Mrs. Wells. She said:
I always knew E.T. would come home. He has lost a finger and looks a bit roughed up. But he has a smile on his face.
(via Daily Mail)
57 love letters from WWII, washed up on the New Jersey shoreline during Hurricane Sandy in November 2012
All were sent from Dorothy Fallon to Lynn Farham between 1942 and 1947.
80,000 pairs of Nike sneakers, which fell off from the cargo ship P&O Nedlloyd Auckland in the Northeastern Pacific, May 1990
The first pairs were found six months later on the shores between British Columbia and Oregon, but some are still swimming through the Pacific.
(via Listverse)
Smooth glass pieces on Glass Beach, near Fort Bragg, California
The area was used by Californians as a landfill site until 1967. There were some cars, household appliances and tons of glass. The area was cleaned many times, but North Coast Water Quality Board couldn't fix the problem, so the ocean waves did it. The millions of glass particles left there were turned into smooth glass pebbles.
Doritos
In December 2006 a container ship carrying Doritos was caught in a storm, and thousands of bags of Doritos ended up strewn on a North Carolina beach.
(via Hampton Roads)
Thousands of sneakers
After a ship called Mondriaan lost a few of its containers during a storm, thousands of pairs of trainers were washed up on Terschelling Island, The Netherlands.
(Photo by Marleen Swart/AP)
Thousands of alien-like jelly creatures on beaches in Washington, Oregon and California, August 2014
These bizarre blue animals are known as by-the-wind sailor or little sail (Velella velella).
(via Q13Fox)