1Blue babe
In 1979, a mummified steppe bison named Blue Babe was discovered in Alaska. While preparing the specimen for display, the research team decided to stew and eat part of the 36,000-year-old mummy's neck to "celebrate the accomplishment".
2. Scientists discovered an eel had lived inside a shark's heart in "a facultatively parasitic relationship" in 1997.
3. Written 4500 years ago, The Diary of Merer is the oldest papyri ever discovered. It details the daily life of workers who built the Great Pyramid of Giza.
4. Scientists have discovered an underwater 'lake' in the Gulf of Mexico with water five times as salty that is highly toxic. For animals (and people) who swim into it, these toxic concentrations can be deadly. Only bacterial life, tube worms, and shrimp can survive in it.
5. In 1978, over 500 silent films were discovered buried in the Yukon permafrost in Canada. It also including footage of the scandalous 1919 World Series.
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6Opah fish
In 2015, the opah fish was discovered to be the first fully warm-blooded fish that circulates heat throughout its body much like mammals and birds.
7. Oleg Losev was a Russian inventor sans degree who discovered the LED, as well as negative resistance oscillators, amplifiers, and superheterodyne receivers all 25 years before the transistor. His only job title was a technician.
8. In 2013, a California couple discovered a trove of gold coins in their backyard while walking their dog. Tucked away in eight buried cans were 1,427 rare mint-condition coins dating from 1847 to 1894. A rare coin expert who represents the finders appraised the U.S. coins at $11 million.
9. In 2014, a potentially new state of matter called "disordered hyperuniformity" was discovered in the eye of a chicken.
10. In 1872, a ship known as the Mary Celeste was discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic. The last log entry was 10 days before her discovery and when another ship happened upon her, all of the provisions and belongings of the crew were perfectly intact, but the crew were all missing.
11Time capsule room
In 2014, a priest discovered a sealed room in an old church in Liverpool. The room hadn't been open since before World War 2. It was full of children's toys, books, and candy.
12. The "suicide palm" was recently discovered in Madagascar that flowers itself to death. The plant grows for decades before exploding with nectar-rich blossoms that deplete the plant's nutrients and cause it to die.
13. Scientists have discovered why some people can thrive on less sleep than others. A particular gene variant (BHLHE41) is responsible, and those with it can also handle extended periods of sleeplessness better.
14. In 1965, Chinese archeologists discovered a 2400-year-old bronze sword (Sword of Goujian), untouched by corrosion, beautifully decorated and still sharp enough to cut with a touch.
15. In 2011, three hunters in Oregon were discovered dead around their campsite with no marks or signs of a struggle. The only unusual thing was the discovery of a dead newt in the coffee pot that was later found to produce Tetrodotoxin, a poison 10,000 times more potent than cyanide.
16Homeobox
Before he died in a car wreck, Walter Gehring discovered a segment of DNA, called the homeobox, that has the exact same parts in organisms as diverse as fungi and humans, further indicating that all species evolved from a common ancestor.
17. Biologists at Osaka University in Japan have discovered a new way to grow the many separate tissues that make up the human eyeball, including retinas, corneas, the eye's lens, using stem cells extracted from a small sample of adult skin.
18. In 2016, a Bronze Age burial site about 5 miles from Stonehenge was discovered by a badger.
19. After scientists discovered that deep-sea dragonfish had chlorophyll in their eyes, Pentagon began funding research for inexpensive night-vision eye drops.
20. The oldest existing photograph of a US President (John Quincy Adams) was discovered when it was bought for 50 cents in an antique shop.
21Charles Henry Turner
Charles Henry Turner was an African-American scientist who earned his Ph.D. in 1907. He discovered that insects could distinguish pitch, that cockroaches can learn by trial and error and that honeybees can see color.
22. In 2014, a new species of vine (Boquila trifoliolata) was discovered in Chile that can mimic the leaves of many different host trees. It can change the size, shape, color, orientation, and even the vein patterns of its leaves to match the surrounding foliage. It's the only known plant that can do this.
23. The sugar industry paid to play down the link between sugar and heart disease while falsely promoting saturated fat as the culprit. Documents discovered by a researcher at UCSF show how decades of misinformation shaped improper nutritional advice and caused the rise of heart disease in America.
24. German archaeologists at Herxheim (in southwest Germany) discovered 7,000-year-old mass graves containing at least 500 people who were ritually butchered and eaten by an unknown cannibalistic culture as part of a "...standard, repetitive and strongly ritualized practice."
25. In 1911, a colony of Adélie penguins was discovered to have homosexual and necrophilic behaviors. It was at that time considered too indecent for publication. The findings were finally published in 2012.
