UNUSUAL THINGS FOUND IN A BACK YARD
Added on: 21st Nov 2014
10 MILLION DOLLARS IN GOLD COINS
A couple from Sierra Nevada, California experienced
what all treasure hunters dream about. When walking their
dog on their property, they saw a top of a rusty canister poking
out of the ground. The canister contained a bunch of
gold discs and they took it home. They found out the discs
were well preserved $20 gold coins dating back to 1890s.
They hurried back to the location of their find and discovered
a total of eight cans containing 1,427 coins with a face value of
$27,980. Coin dealer Don Kagin and numismatist David McCarthy
helped them restore the coins and evaluate them. The hoard of
coins was estimated to be worth about 10 million dollars.
ANCIENT STONE
When an amateur historian Stephen Davis from England was
researching the history of his own home, he came across a
reference to an ancient stone that was thought to have marked a
burial plot from the Bronze Age dating back to about 2,500 B.C.
According to the description found in the historical documents,
Davis began to search for the stone. After some time, he
really found the stone in his backyard, completely covered with ivy.
At the time of the find, the Historic Buildings and Monuments
Commission for England was expected to pronounce the stone a
“scheduled ancient monument.”
CHURCH BELLS
In 2013, a man from Czech Republic was digging up his backyard
to install some pipes when he stumbled across unusual metal objects.
After excavation, he found out it was 2 large church bells about
400 years old. Later, it turned out that the bells were stolen 11 years
earlier from a nearby church. The thief who buried them might have
attempted to hide them but for some reason, didn’t get
to retrieve them.
LOADED MACHINE GUN
Earlier this year, a man from northeast Calgary, Canada
made a disturbing discovery in his backyard. Between his
garage and the fence, he found a plastic bag containing a pillowcase.
When he looked inside, to his surprise, there was a fully-loaded
machine gun along with a cell phone. How the gun ended up
in his backyard or who it belonged to is still not clear.
1700'S CEMETERY
When Vincent Marcello from New Orleans, Louisiana decided to
dig a plot in his backyard for a swimming pool, he ended up
discovering a historic cemetery that dates back to the 1700s.
The workers unearthed 13 caskets with human remains. 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.
MASTODON VERTEBRAE
Two boys named Eric and Andrew from Detroit, Michigan were
building a dam in the creek that flows through their backyard when
Eric saw a strange-looking rock sticking up from the ground.
Supposing it might have been a bone, the family called in a
Paleontologist John Zawiskie at the Cranbrook Institute of Science
in Bloomfield Hills who later authenticated the bone as a vertebrae
from a mastodon some 13,000 years old.
ALLIGATOR SWIMMING IN A POOL
In Florida, alligators found in backyards are not unheard of but
alligator taking a dip in a backyard swimming pool is another story.
This is exactly what Sharon Bente and her husband from Bradenton
saw when they heard a noise in their backyard in the middle of the night.
The 8-feet gator was swimming in circles along with a little floating toy.
The couple called the Sheriff´s Office and the gator was later taken to
a farm in Arcadia.
150,000 DOLLARS IN CASH
In August 2011, Wayne Sabaj, an unemployed 51-year-old man from
Illinois was picking broccoli in his backyard garden when he found
$150,000 stashed in a nylon bag. He reported the discovery to the police
with the understanding that if the money was not claimed by anyone else
by the end of 2012, it would be his. Soon after, an 87-year-old
Sabaj´s neighbour, Dolores Johnson claimed the money saying
she had got rid of the money because it was “cursed“. The court
gave a part of the money to Johnson´s daughter with a portion of it
set to go to Sabaj as a reward. However, Sabaj died just
10 days before receiving the prize.
1000-YEAR-OLD HUMAN REMAINS
A man from Salt Lake City, Utah was digging up a pond in his
backyard when he made a gruesome discovery – human bones.
Frightened by the unexpected find, he called the police that
later sent the bones to the state medical examiner to be tested.
Results concluded 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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