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Exploring eerie backyards can be very exciting and
curious activity. For various reasons, people sometimes have to take a
spade and dig up their property. Stumbling across some rusty rummage
buried under ground comes as no surprise but there have been findings
that left their finders in absolute amazement. From whale fossils to a
million dollars in gold coins, check out these some crazy things found
in a backyard.
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10 million dollars in gold coins
As I sit here and type this I’m tempted to go and dig up my own back
yard. A Californian couple were walking their dog on their property when
they saw a top of a rusty canister sticking out of the ground. The
canister contained a bunch of gold discs which they took home where they
discovered that the discs were well preserved $20 gold coins dating back
to 1890s. They discovered seven more cans containing 1,427 coins with a
face value of $27,980. After seeking help to restore the coins and
evaluate them, it was learned that they were worth about US$10 million. |
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Loaded Machine Gun
Hidden between the garage and fence, a Calgary, Canada, man came upon a
plastic bag, inside which was a pillowcase. Inside that pillowcase was a
loaded machine gun with a cell phone. The details of what and why have
not been uncovered. |
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Cemetery
A man in New Orleans decided he could use a swimming pool in his back
yard, and so he began digging it up. What he found was a cemetery dating
back to the 1700s. Thirteen caskets in all were found. However, it was
not the first time bodies have been discovered underground in the area.
In 1984, 36 corpses were found when an apartment complex was being
built. |
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Mastodon vertebrae
Two young boys building a dam in the creek that flows through their
backyard when one of them noticed a weird-looking rock sticking up from
the ground. They figured it might have been a bone of some sort and so
called in professional assistance. A palaeontologist from the Cranbrook
Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills later authenticated the bone as
a vertebrae from a mastodon some 13,000 years old. |
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150,000 dollars in cash
Whilst it isn’t quite ten million, I’m still thinking of abandoning the
keyboard and grabbing a shovel. In 2011, an unemployed 51-year-old man
from Illinois was picking broccoli in his backyard garden when he found
$150,000 stashed in a bag. After reporting it to police, an 87 year old
neighbour had claimed to have got rid of the bag because it was cursed.
In the end, the money was split but the unemployed man died just days
before receiving his share.
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1000-year-old human remains
A man from Salt Lake City found some human bones when he was attempting
to dig a pond in his own back yard. After calling police, it was
discovered that the bones were not of a recent murder, but once belonged
to a Native American who lived in Utah about 1,000 years ago.
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650-year-old treasure
Doesn’t it make you think of pirates? But what were pirates doing in an
Austrian man’s back yeard? The treasure trove was found to be around 650
years old and contained more than 200 rings, belt buckles, gold-plated
silver plates and other pieces, many of which were encrusted with
pearls, fossilized coral and other ornaments.
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Dinosaur bone
A man from Ipswich, U.K. was building a fence in his backyard when he
found a large and unusual bone. He sat it in his shed for a whole
sixteen years until 2013 when he decided, all of a sudden, to submit it
to the local museum. It was examined and found to the bone of a
250-million-year-old pliosaur. Weirdly enough, the ancient animal was
not native to that area or anywhere near it. |
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Whale fossil
Way back in 1978, a Californian man found a big rock that he soon
realised was a bone. He thought it may have been an important find but
an expert assured him that it was not. So he put it aside for 35 years
until learning of a similar find in the area. He presented the bone to
another expert who confirmed that it belonged to a baleen whale which
lived around 15 million years ago.
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Cheetah
If you find a cheetah in your own back yard, I hope you’re quick on your
feet. A nine year old boy in the UK had initial trouble explaining to
his mother that there was a big cat in the back yard, but she soon went
to check at the boy’s insistence and discovered that there was indeed a
cheetah there who had escaped from an animal sanctuary nearby. Keepers
soon came to the rescue.
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