
The convenience of flight comes with a few expected inconveniences. First, your seat is never going to feel like it's big enough for you. Second, the person either in front of or behind you is going to put their feet up or lean their seat too far back. And, third, you have to roll the dice with the TSA checkpoints.
They scan you, check your baggage, send you on your way. Installed as a form of protection, they do their jobs before you even arrive at the airport, keeping very obvious weapons and dangerous minded individuals from boarding your flight.
Most of the time.
Reddit user, False_Philosophy_412, asked:
"What’s the weirdest reason you were stopped by TSA?"
Most of the time, the agents are doing their best job to figure out what's on your body with a machine that may not be accurate 100% of the time.
It Already Has A Name
"Crotch anomaly".
"I was wearing normal joggers, nothing in my pockets."
"The lady behind me loudly said 'yeah it's called a penis'"
wot_in_ternation
Packing A Different Kind Of Heat
"This happened to me too. Tsa agent asked to search me with the back of his hand and I said “okay sure.” The back of his hand hit my unit and he said “what’s that?” to which my only response was “That’d be my penis.” The TSA woman next to him started laughing at him and his face went pale before he said 'you’re clear, move along.'"
DarkSlayerKi
Keyword: "Random"
"I have maintained a decent beard and have a darker skin complexion for a white dude. I am "randomly" selected for a search or shoe swab every single time I fly."
batkevn
You can assume a lot of these are simple misunderstandings, agents doing their best to make sure everyone gets on the plane safely.
Still, it's got to feel bad to open up a loved one's ashes in a public setting.
Mad Respect For Your Wardrobe
"Not in the USA but in France, I got stopped on the way through customs by an agent who said something fast and aggressive-sounding in French. My French isn't great, so I just looked puzzled and said I didn't understand. The guy quickly beckoned another guy over and explained to him in rapid-fire French what was going on. The second guy turned to me and said "He says your T-shirt is really cool and can you tell him where you got it?". It was a Star Wars T-shirt that I got as a birthday present, so I couldn't even tell him where it came from. Luckily, he didn't arrest me."
99thLuftballon
Sinister Teddy
"My niece has a teddy bear. She has had this teddy bear essentially since she was born. The doggo has bitten a hole into its belly, so we sew onto it like a lion head sticker, to keep its guts inside. One time we were on holiday visiting family, and she left it there, luckily I was staying a bit longer so I could grab it on my way back."
"An adult man with a teddy bear that had its guts torn open and fixed with a lion bandaid apparently looks pretty suspicious, so they shoved the poor guy into x-ray 3-4 times. She is still in ownership of the teddy bear and it is still in decent shape."
Gacsam
It's A Weapon For A Certain Type Of Person...
"I had a nutcracker in my carry-on. Like a legit, festive Christmas soldier nutcracker - it was a gift for my mom's birthday (she collects them). I was only flying in for 2 days for my grandmas funeral so didn't check any luggage. They stopped me and questioned me for 30 minutes. Kept insinuating I was going to use it as a weapon."
Pamplem0usse__
Spider Truck. Spider Truck. Does Whatever A...
"When the Andrew Garfield Spiderman's first came out they did some amazing merch for them."
"My Stepdad is a HUGE Spidey fan, so I picked him up the corniest Spiderman film merch when in the US, one of those being like a whirling cement truck thing? It was a big tonka sized thing and the only bag it would fit in was my carry-on. They stopped me and said "Is that a spiderman toy?" and I took it out and showed them. They said it was the best thing they'd seen all day."
CharacterSuccotash5
No Smuggling Of Animals
"Glass jellyfish"
"Like those blown glass ones that are super cool at art galleries."
"I got pulled aside into a small room because they thought I was smuggling sea life. Was an interesting time."
Aelsar
When Things Look Like Other Things
"One time my dad had a few rocks of petrified wood in a bag, and had his phone charger right next to it."
"They almost went DEFCON 1 and did radio people to show up and act if it went down. But they opened the bag and saw it was rocks and a charger. They told him that it looked absolutely identical to what they had been taught a bomb looked like."
AudiieVerbum
One Last Look For Ol' Mom
"My mom passed away unexpectedly in California. I flew out to pick up her ashes and there was a terror alert at LAX. It was unreal; the military was in the airport with what looked like machine guns. I was out of my mind with grief and drugged to the gills. I was dealing with a bad back, and had to fly from California to a small town in Virginia for the memorial service. Security was heightened and everyone was being searched. I only had a small carry on and my mom’s ashes. When I got to the TSA, the agent wanted me to open my mother’s box of ashes! "
"I refused and insisted they x ray the box instead. It showed nothing inside ( duh- ashes) which convinced the TSA agent that it had some sort of cloaking device and was hiding a bomb. Again he insisted that I open the box that held my mom’s ashes. I was beginning to lose my sh-t. I called my husband who works in nuclear power and explained what was going on. He told me to tell the TSA agent to place a coin under the box and send it through the X-ray again. He did and thank goodness he saw the coin. Otherwise I would have been arrested for assaulting a stupid TSA agent."
Due_Judgment_9518
Ever been stopped by the TSA for something silly? Tell us about it in the comments.
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People Explain Which Things Someone Can Learn In Under One Minute That'll Change Their Life
As much as academic scholars are held in high esteem for their higher education, so should those who have learned and applied valuable knowledge simply just by living.
Those with street cred have just as much of an advantage at succeeding in life, thanks to specific experiences that can't be taught in a classroom.
Curious to hear examples of what those might entail, Redditor WiSe_genX asked:
"What can you learn in 1 minute that will be useful for the rest of your life?"
Class is now in session.
A diploma isn't a requirement for being able to apply these life-saving facts.
A List
"Maybe not useful 'the rest' but very much so when it is"
"How to spot a drowning victim"
"Edit:"
"The basic warning signs of skin cancer"
– BirdsLikeSka
Worth A Try
"CPR: Lay person flat on their back on a hard surface, place your hands one on top of the other with arms straight, compress chest down to hell to the beat of 'Stayin Alive,' don't be afraid to crack ribs."
"Edit: Oh, and remember that if someone needs CPR, they're dead. You are working on a corpse. If they don't survive, it's because most people can't wake the dead with their bare hands. Talk to someone if you have to, but don't beat yourself up over it."
– mossadspydolphin
Take The Side Exit
"If you're caught in a riptide, swim parallel to the shore to escape it."
– trowaway7342
It's Easy To Lose Sight Over This
"Always wear some type of eye protection when dealing with anything that can cause eye damage. From connecting battery jumper cables to yardwork and everything in between."
"Protect your eyes. You only have two of them."
"Always unplug/remove the battery from your power tools before performing any kind of maintenance."
– wishIhadlistened
The kitchen can be a danger zone unless you're armed with these very simple bits of wisdom.
Damaged Goods
"A wet oven mitt is worse than useless."
– Robobvious
Get A Grip
"A falling knife has no handle. Can be very useful in preventing kitchen emergencies."
– theiciestb*tch
Fighting Fire
"Learn how to operate a fire extinguisher. Many people don't bother but so many lives are saved and so many fires are stopped by them. It takes a minute and can save your life, as mine was saved when my mother put out a house fire with one. Also always keep some in your house and make sure you know where they're located."
– liyexa7217
Let It Fall
"Also hot things. I pull out some weighty dishes out of our 550°C furnace at work and every time before I pull them out I repeat over and over in my head 'Don't catch it if it falls. Don't catch it if it falls.' I also usually put my free hand in my back pocket or behind my back."
– 1800generalkenobi
It doesn't take long to listen and apply these helpful instructions.
First, We Assess
"Pause and think before you respond."
– sparkj
Don't Be Impulsive
"Don’t put it down, put it away."
– Wishyouamerry
Make It Easier To Get Assistance
"How to properly as ask for tech support - 'Hi, this is [name]. I have a problem with [software/hardware name (to the best of your knowledge)]. I'm trying to [thing you're trying to do] and the result is [result] instead of [expected]. It started at [rough time frame] after [something significant you've done beforehand].'"
"How to do it badly: 'My keyboard doesn't work.'"
"How to do it better: 'Hi, I'm Noy. I have a problem with my laptop's keyboard. The L key no longer functions. It started yesterday after I spilled coffee on it.'"
"Your IT department thanks you."
– Noy2222
There is much value in the lessons shared here that can change your life or those of others.
Now that plenty of helpful information was shared here, the next time you're about to be swallowed by a riptide, swipe left!
We all pride ourselves in knowing random bits of trivia.
While "useless knowledge" is the common parlance for these little fun facts we, often randomly, know, that seems an unfair label.
After all, who knows when a subject comes up in conversation, and you might be the only one who can answer a group question.
All thanks to the fact that you know a random piece of knowledge almost no one else on Earth seems to know.
Redditor Just_Free_Tea7 was curious to learn some of these obscure pieces of trivia, leading them to ask:
"What is a fact that you think barely anyone else knows?"
Don't be fooled by their cuteness
"The nuke stockpile in Washington State is guarded by trained dolphins that seek out and clamp a balloon on unfamiliar divers."- Gothsalts
A possible STD symptom no one mentions.
"Boanthropy is a psychological disorder in which a person believes they are a cow and try to live their life as one."
"Medical explanations suggest late-stage syphilis as one of the causes?"
"Cool."- j451k4·
You mean, that wasn't flipper's real voice?
"The sound used for a dolphin in nearly every single tv and movie is actually the same Kookaburra bird recording."- HFXmer
You always wonder what goes through their minds...
"Animals and other creatures each perceive time in different ways based on their Critical flicker frequency which is almost like their minds refresh rate."
"Dogs, for example, perceive time as being slower than humans do, and it's perceived as a little faster by cats."- TwilightArcade
Well that's disturbing...
"No one has found a centipede with exactly 100 legs, because all centipedes discovered have an odd number of pairs of legs."
"They have found centipedes with 98,49 pairs, and 102, 51 pairs, but never exactly 100."- ZagreusD
If you take a closer look...
"Raindrops don’t fall in the drip shape popularly conveyed. "
"They fall in the shape of tiny parachutes or hamburger buns."- CBGville
Two iconic roles
"The girl who voiced Lilo in 'Lilo and Stitch' also played Samara in 'The Ring', both released in the same year, 2002."- ThrowRARAw
Um... how is this not better known...
"Before toilet paper was invented, the people of the USA used corn cobs."- Impossible_Cicada_75
"..I don't want to live on the moon..."
"Not sure how many people know this, but the moon has a sort of atmosphere."
"However, it is so thin that it's considered to be an exosphere."- JustAnotherAviatrix
They'r contributions did not go unnoticed
"More pigeons have war medals than horses, dogs or mules."- Global-Program-437
It's easy to laugh off most of this information, as our lives might not be changed one way or the other for knowing it.
But we should always be open to learning something new.
And hey, if we ever find ourselves stuck with scratchy toilet paper, we can at least be grateful it isn't a corn cob.
The world is an ever changing place.
In addition to continuing advancements in technology, human behavior also continues to evolve.
As a result, what might have seemed "normal" 50 years ago might seem far-fetched today, while things which we today consider "normal" might never have even crossed the mind of anyone back then.
Making everything we consider "normal" among the many things in this world that continues to evolve at a rapid pace.
Redditor Primary_Berry_3560 was curious to hear what "normal" everyday things were anything but normal fifty years ago, leading them to ask:
"What is normal now but wasn’t normal 50 years ago (1972)?"
We could just leave whenever we wanted to!
"Knowing where your kids are 100% of the time."- bradland
We're all wired up today!
"No one had a computer in their house in 1972."- tcharp01
Buckle up!
"Car seats for children."
"And most of the time we sat in the back seat with no seat belts available."- Rosemoorstreet
"Wearing seatbelts."
"There were no sensors- seatbelt were just shoved out of the way."
"Carding for cigarettes."
"Machines were everywhere for anyone to use."- factchecker8515
In the old days, we had one chance!
"Watching an entire TV series at a time that's convenient for you."
"VCR's weren't even a thing 50 years ago, so if your favorite show was on Wednesday at 8PM, you were either at home to watch it or you missed out on it forever."- DeathSpiral321
Music on demand!
"Listening to the song you want to where you want to, rather than whatever is playing wherever you are."- jfincher42
Being beholden to a landline!
"I am amazed to think about how disconnected we were."
"I could wake up on a Saturday morning and start calling friends."
"It was possible that not a single one picked up the phone and that was that."
"I would be on my own unless I waited a few hours and tried again."
"Also, in my area, the adults in the house almost always answered the phone so you had to get through them to your friends."
“'Hello, is Johnny home?'”
"'Hi this is his mother, what do you want?'”
“'I was wooooondering if he could come out to play'.”
“'Well he’s doing homework right now but I’ll tell him you called'.”
"As a kid, our times were divided between when we were 100% under adult control, which was when we were physically in their presence, and when we were free which was all other time."- Mrmidhoratio
"Asking 'Where are you?' when someone answers their phone."- brontosproximo
No wonder they were all so tan...
"Regularly wearing sunscreen."- dixius99
It's amazing to see how much the world has changed in such a relatively short amount of time.
Leaving us to wonder what things will be "normal" 50 years from now, which today the very thought of would make us burst out laughing.
Don't mess with the ocean.
Why is that a hard rule for some?
It's like people can't help themselves.
Though it is vast and beautiful, the ocean takes life every day.
RedditorDankestKush420wanted to hear from the people who have survived the darkness of the sea.
They asked:
"Deep sea divers, what are your horror stories?"
I almost drowned from a small but wave on the Florida coast. So a deep dive is a lifelong HELL NO for me. But go ahead... tell us some stories.
Poof. Gone.
"I was watching a documentary about saturation divers the other day. Absolutely scary stuff. They live in a dome under the sea for several days/weeks so they don't have to decompress every day."
"There was this interview where one diver told a story about a colleague just vanishing. He was right behind him at one moment and then was gone in the next. No signs of an accident on the safety line, no sounds, no light signals, he was just gone."
PenguinSwordfighter
Implosions
"I used to work at a dive shop, a regular customer of mine told me on one of his deep cave dives at around 300 feet his main light imploded, and both of his backup flashlights failed. While this happened he also lost his guide line (read: life line back to the surface)."
"He was in a large room, so he dropped a reel with line on it and swam back and forth basically fishing for the guide line. He eventually hooked it and located it, but then had to make a decision which way to follow the line. The correct choice would lead him to safety, while the wrong choice would lead him deeper into the cave system. He made his choice and slowly followed the line out."
"He reached his first spare air tank that he staged and knew he chose the right direction. He had a long wait at each of his staged decompression tanks. It took him, from what I recall, around 7 hours to properly decompress and make it back out of the cave, all while not being able to see a damn thing."
pwnstar
side-by-side...
"I went on a group dive trip with someone who was pretty experienced, and he was telling us a bunch of stories about his wreck dive down to an old WWII-era Japanese warship sunken in the Pacific. One somewhat morbid but funny story was when his group went into the ship and saw several pairs of shoes strewn about, lying perfectly side-by-side."
"After they all surfaced later, one girl in the group was like, 'Why did they leave their shoes behind like that?' and everyone else just looked at each other like, 'Oh man... who's gonna tell her?' Anyway, the real horror story is about a father and son duo who had decided to go on this trip as a bonding experience. So the thing to note about WWII shipwrecks is that after over half a century, they're pretty much rusted to oblivion."
"One bad kick will effectively disintegrate a perfectly-preserved captain's log, just from the motion of the water. Well, the duo was exploring the inside of the ship, and suddenly someone hears a loud CLANG! The father and son had wandered into an enclosed room, and the door had slammed shut with both of them inside."
"At that point, the guy telling the story paused, and someone else in the group was like, 'Wait, so what happened to them?' And the guy was like, 'What the hell do you mean, man? They got trapped and f**king died!' And in that moment, I decided f**k that s**t - I am never, ever diving down to go check out the inside an old WWII warship lmao."
yungbabo
Unreal
"For as long as I been around the internet 1 diver story stuck with me. Not because of paranormal or unexplainable events. This person's story said they were deep diving with their father and literally saw a Lovecraftian size creature envelope his father ahead. After all was said and done at the surface he come to find out later his schizophrenia had come to while he was deep sea diving. I couldn't imagine seeing something your brain was telling you was real. Especially in that setting."
SunnyvaleRicky
Vortex
"One time when I was on a diving boat with some friends, one of the guys on there told about a story about how he used to be an underwater welder, and one time he and some other guys witnessed someone getting sucked through a hole the size of a tic tac."
Dragon_King3199
Why do people even go that far down?
Everywhere
"I’m by no means a deep sea diver, but I am a licensed diver, sea urchins are massive and everywhere, like you really don’t expect their size and how common they are."
drewdreds
Wrecked
"Did a 60M/200ft dive on a wreck in a shipping channel. The dive boat skipper should call up the harbour master and check if there are any ships scheduled, and if there are not good to dive. Anyway did the dive. 25 mins bottom time so a fair amount of deco."
"During the 12M deco stop we could hear the rumble of a very very very large engine. Hmmm. Kept getting louder. And louder. And louder. During the 9M stop it got REALLY loud we looked at each other, gave two thumbs down and bolted back down to 18M and just hung there figuratively shi**ing our drysuits until it got quieter after a few minutes."
"We then resumed our deco. A small pod of dolphins came in to have a gander at us which was cool. A big f**k off panamax sort-a-size ship had come within 100M of our deco buoy. Never dived off that boat again."
thedugong
Gruesome
Not sure if anyone has mentioned it, but the [Byford Dolphin Diving Bell Accident] (https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/4x1a2c/comment/d6blno6/) is pretty gruesome and scary. Basically, when deep see divers were returning to the surface, they were in a decompression chamber at a very high pressure."
"And there was a catastrophic failure of the decompression room that meant the air depressurized several atmospheres almost instantaneously and killed a couple divers by literally exploding them from the pressure release. Not sure what could be more of a gruesome tale than that."
anon_e_mous9669
The Worst
"Not my story but still wanted to share: it's the story of a diver who was hired to remove and bring back bodies from a bridge that collapsed into semi deep water with numerous cars on it. Some people made it out of their cars and some didn't. But the worst thing that he saw was the bodies of children still stuck in the cars while the parents saved their own lives. The thought of going into murky water to essentially fish up corpses that are like a day old chills me every time I think about it."
sarper97
Nope!
"I went diving to a wreck around 200ft down, and I heard this terrifying roar and saw some creature almost twice the size of a blue whale. Noped right outta there as soon as I saw that, I'm not going there again, I'll stay in my lifepod."
Overgrown_fetus1305
Well that is all I need to hear. I'll stay on dry land, thank you.