Bizarre backyard finds

Bizarre backyard finds
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If you thought it was cool to find a few coins in your yard, just wait until you hear what these people found.

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A nuclear fallout shelter

A nuclear fallout shelter
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In 2013, a California couple closing the deal on a new home found an unexpected feature: a nuclear fallout shelter left perfectly intact from the 1960s. The shelter was (and still is) accessible via a 4.5m rusted ladder and included all the necessities from coffee grounds and argyle sweaters to books and sleeping pills, writes the Daily Mail.

A diamond ring

A diamond ring
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Thirteen years ago, one Canadian woman was devastated when she lost her wedding ring while weeding her garden. But in 2015, the ring resurfaced – on a carrot. “The carrot had grown straight through the ring, enabling it to be plucked out after many years hiding in the soil,” wrote the BBC. Even crazier? This has happened before. “In 2011, a Swedish woman found her wedding ring [on a carrot] 16 years after she lost it,” writes the BBC.

$10 million in gold coins

$10 million in gold coins
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While walking their dog on their property in the Sierra Nevada, one couple saw a rusty can sticking out of the dirt. They decided to check it out and lo and behold, the can was filled with gold coins. They kept digging and found other, similar cans, also filled with gold coins. The bounty totalled more than $10 million. “It was a very surreal moment,” said the man in an interview. “It was very hard to believe at first.”

Stolen church bells

Stolen church bells
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In 2013, a man from the Czech Republic was installing new pipes in his backyard when he discovered large church bells that were hundreds of years old. It turns out, the bells had been stolen from a local church nearly 11 years earlier. Authorities guess the thief intended to hide the bells and go back for them, but for whatever reason, never did.

A bundle of “cursed” money

A bundle of “cursed” money
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Not all these backyard treasure-finders are lucky. In 2013, a US man was picking broccoli in his garden when he found $150,000 in a nylon bag. He brought the money to the police, who told him he could keep the cash if no one came forward for it. In time, his neighbour did come forward – but she didn’t want the money, writes HuffPost. Instead, the woman insisted the loot was “cursed.” The man was able to take half of it (the other half went to the woman’s daughter). But unfortunately, a week before retrieving his money, the man died.

Don’t miss 19 of the strangest unsolved mysteries of all time. 

A dinosaur bone

A dinosaur bone
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When it comes to objects you might find in a backyard, a fossil might not seem too out of the box. But a 40cm, 7kg dinosaur bone? That’s something you’d probably remember. However, one UK man forgot. He found the bone in 1997 and put it in his shed to deal with later. In 2013, he finally brought it to the local museum in Ipswich, writes the Daily Mail. The bone turned out to be 250 million years old.

A graveyard

A graveyard
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If you know anything about New Orleans, you know they have a few interesting ways of dealing with their dead. Which is why one Louisiana man was probably not too surprised when he went to dig a hole for his swimming pool and instead found an 18th-century graveyard. There were a total of 13 caskets of human remains, but the owner wasn’t spooked. “It’s all part of the New Orleans culture,” he told the Daily Mail. “I think they [neighbouring residents] might even like it.”

A highly coincidental newspaper

A highly coincidental newspaper
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“When I was very little my dad was doing some landscaping in our backyard, planning to build a retaining wall, I think,” wrote one Reddit user. “As he was digging he found a newspaper that had been buried. After further inspection of the newspaper, he realised that it was the newspaper from the exact same day he dug it up, from ten years prior.”

Speaking of coincidences, here are 8 of the most bizarre coincidences throughout history. 

A cheetah

A cheetah
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Normal backyard animals include squirrels, deer, chipmunks, racoons and maybe even a bear or moose. But whatever critters your yard attracts, it’s safe to say that finding a cheetah out there would be pretty unusual. Incredibly, that’s exactly what happened in 2008. A nine-year-old boy was playing outside his home in Cambridgeshire, UK when he saw what appeared to be a cheetah. The boy ran inside to tell his mum, while the cheetah began to eat his bike. Apparently, the cheetah, named Akea, had escaped from the nearby zoo. The zoo tried to play down the incident, saying Akea was as tame as a pet dog, and was merely playing with the bike.

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