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Fortean Flotsam: Odd Objects Washed Ashore

Pete Younger

Venerable and Missed
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jul 31, 2001
Messages
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UFO.. So what was it, anyone care to speculate.

Link is dead. No archived version found.
See later (circa March 2020) salvaged versions of related news articles about this beaching.
 
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It would have been nice to have seen a photo. If it had numbers, it must have a terrestrial origin, unless those 'numbers' were in an unknown script. But if that had been the case, the article would surely have mentioned it.

It probably has quite a mundane origin, but what that is I couldn't hazard a guess.

Carole
 
Why wasn't their first thought that it could be a mine?
I would have used extreme caution and not been
swimming up to it and tugging on it!!!

That being said: deep sea flotation device?
(Keep something in a net steady at 300 meters?)

Since it was empty, it must have been designed to float.

TVgeek
 
Photo and video

I no sooner post one reply, when I find this:

abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/orb020614.html
Link is dead.
See subsequent post below for the MIA webpage's content.


TVgeek
 
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It seems to have been floating in the water for some time as you can see the water mark around it's circumference.
 
Weren't there a bunch of those in a jungle somewhere?

If I remember right, there was a whole bunch of them sitting in the middle of a jungle, so the best explanation I can come up with is a natural phenomenon of some kind. After all, pebbles are round :p
 
A load of balls (FT 162 p20)

In this month's FT, there's a story about balls being washed up in South Carolina. They're 3ft in diameter, metallic, generally smoothed but slightly dimpled, and have identification numbers stamped on them.

Anyone got any idea what they are? I'm tempted to say they're some kind of marine version of the weather balloon rather than anything ET.
 
I'm sure I saw something on the MB not long ago on a similar subject. I'll try and dig it up.
 
Well, I found the news story.
Link is dead. See subsequent post below for the MIA content.


[Edit]
More here from Ananova and Rense.

And something about a religious slant on the story
here.
 
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We discussed this a while back... here is the thread:

[Threads now merged - ryn]

I haven't read it in a while, so I don't remember if a conclusion
was reached or not!

TVgeek
 
That's what I was going to say, shame the original link doesn't work anymore.
 
I've merged this thread with the original one, so we are now in News Stories.

As PY says (above) the original link no longer works, but plenty of others have been given more recently.
 
hachihyaku said:
Weren't there a bunch of those in a jungle somewhere?

If I remember right, there was a whole bunch of them sitting in the middle of a jungle, so the best explanation I can come up with is a natural phenomenon of some kind. After all, pebbles are round :p

These sure don't look like natural phenomena:

http://mcguinnessonline.com/sphere/
 
Hasn't anyone opened one up yet to see if there's anything inside?

Could be interesting as the claim that they weigh "several hundred pounds" and measure 3ft across should mean that they shouldn't be floating at all!

I stand to be corrected on this 'cos I just thought about WW2 mines....:(
 
the fine Bertolucci film Indiana Jones New Riders of the Lost Ark.

at the start he's running away from Ze Chermans and theres these big stone balls chasing him in the jungles of Peru (the country, not Bobby. Thats another film).

well thats it innit? The Big Chasing Orbs of Peru

in the end he buys a submarine and escapes. Canny film
 
Reading the Reports Helps Some

It says in the news story that the sphere in SC broke in half as it was being moved and seawater spilled out.

In the Rense material, by far the most thorough report, two letters indicate it's a pipeline pig, used to clear air and clogs from pipelines, and another asserts it's a practice mine.

Both make sense.
 
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A giant, smiling Lego man was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort on Tuesday.

Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5-metre (8-foot) tall model with a yellow head and blue torso.

"We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water," said a stall worker. "It was a life-sized Lego toy."
Photo

A woman nearby added: "I saw the Lego toy floating towards the beach from the direction of England."

The toy was later placed in front of the drinks stall.

http://tinyurl.com/39t3j7
 
There's a photo of what appears to be the same Lego figure in a comments blog for the July 2007 'Dance Valley 2007' event in the Netherlands.

Link*

... And a photo showing this figure and a reference to Dance Valley 2007 (all I can tell - I don't read Dutch ...) appears here:

http://www.egoleonard.com/fotoboek.html

*EDIT: Link shortened by WhistlingJack
 
EnolaGaia said:
...

... And a photo showing this figure and a reference to Dance Valley 2007 (all I can tell - I don't read Dutch ...) appears here:

http://www.egoleonard.com/fotoboek.html
Dance Valley 2007 was een groot succes, ik heb heel veel vrienden gemaakt. Bekijk hier de foto's van een aantal van mijn vrienden.
Dance Valley 2007 was a great success. I made loads of friends, See photos of some of my friends here.
 
I feel awful for saying this, but I can't help being disappointed that the Lego man wasn't actually made out of Lego at all.

I had this picture in my head, before clicking on the link, of a man made from thousands of individual bricks, who had then been set adrift in the Channel. In fact, he's a promotional figure, presumably, designed to be used in shops or exhibitions, who's probably just been stolen by students (it's usually them, isn't it?) and chucked in the sea.

On second thoughts, I'll not be so churlish. It's a great story - what a fantastic thing to find bobbing around in the ocean. Talking of bobbing, if only it had been a Lego Robert Maxwell - that would have been brilliant!
 
Peripart said:
I feel awful for saying this, but I can't help being disappointed that the Lego man wasn't actually made out of Lego at all.

...
I know. Don't be afraid to let loose your inner child. :grouphug:
 
I wonder what that giant Lego man means by the slogan "No real than you are". Should it actually read "More real than you are", or is the Lego man trying to say that nothing (whether made out of Lego or not) is real? And if so, is he right?
 
Charles Fort would spend at least a chapter, contemplating the immense giants and their mighty toddlers, living in aerial citadels, invisible to us, from whence a child's toy could fall to Earth, in such a fashion. :)
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Charles Fort would spend at least a chapter, contemplating the immense giants and their mighty toddlers, living in aerial citadels, invisible to us, from whence a child's toy could fall to Earth, in such a fashion.
Or maybe the 8ft plastic men are real beings? Then this was a corpse washed up at sea, and when we play with Lego, we're actually toying with the dead children of these beings. Oh, the horror!
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
Charles Fort would spend at least a chapter, contemplating the immense giants and their mighty toddlers, living in aerial citadels, invisible to us, from whence a child's toy could fall to Earth, in such a fashion. :)

But surely their toys would be invisible too?

Otherwise we'd see loads of huge toys floating in the atmosphere...?

:p
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/hig ... 164220.stm

Experts are trying to identify a huge metal container that has been washed up on a beach in the Western Isles.

The tank, which is 27m high, has no markings and is thought to have fallen from a ship before being washed up on the west of Benbecula.

It's got numbers on it, so it's definitely terrestrial :)

Edit: Here's the new photo ...

BeerTankFlotsam.jpg
 
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Looks like a giant pencil. Who is brave enough to open it?
 
(boom-boom-boom = 3 strikes on the drum - I've always pronounced it "boomp-ba-boomp")

While I was walking down the beach one bright and sunny day
I saw a great big wooden box a-floatin’ in the bay
I pulled it in and opened it up and much to my surprise
Ooh, I discovered a boom-boom-boom, right before my eyes
Oh, I discovered a boom-boom-boom, right before my eyes

I picked it up and ran to town as happy as a king
I took it to a guy I knew who’d buy most any thing
But this is what he hollered at me as I walked in his shop
Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom, before I call a cop
Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom before I call a cop

I turned around and got right out, a-runnin’ for my life
And than I took it home with me to give it to my wife
But this is what she hollered at me as I walked in the door
Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom, and don’t come back no more
Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom, and don’t come back no more

I wandered all around the town until I chanced to meet
A hobo who was looking for a hand-out on the street
He said he’d take most any old thing, he was a desperate man
But when I showed him the boom-boom-boom, he turned around and ran
Oh, when I showed him the boom-boom-boom, he turned around and ran

I wandered on for many years, a victim of my fate
Until one day I came upon St. Peter at the gate
And when I tried to take it inside, he told me where to go
Get outta here with that boom-boom-boom and take it down below
Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom and take it down below

The moral of this story is if you’re out on the beach
And you should see a great big box and it’s within your reach
Don’t ever stop and open it up, that’s my advice to you
‘Cause you’ll never get rid of the boom-boom-boom, no matter what you do
Oh, you’ll never get rid of the boom-boom-boom, no matter what you do
 
Fascinating!

Google Earth shows the area in detail (image copyright 2007) but this object wasn't there when the picture was taken!

I should be passing the east coast of Benbecula on my cruise, in May, so this story adds to the interest.

I looked for other accounts of the story, but they all seem to derive from the Beeb report.

However, I did find that Benbecula has a history of mystery objects washed up there:

The Benbecula Blobster
Author : Martin Jeffrey

Benbecula Island is situated on the coast of Scotland and is renowned for its beautiful scenery and washed up sea creatures.

In 1830, a half-woman, half fish was seen swimming nearby Benbecula's shores. Witnesses tried to catch the creature, which disappeared after a local boy struck it with a rock. Two days later the body of the beast washed up two miles down shore.

A local district sheriff examined the body: "the upper part of the creature was about the size of a well-fed child of 3 or 4 years of age, with an abnormally developed breast. The hair was long, dark and glossy, while the skin was white, soft and tender. The lower part of the body was like a salmon, but without scales."

Folklorist R.Macdonald Robertson wrote in 1961 that he had seen the grave of the Benbecula maigdean-mara (mermaid) in a cemetary in Nunton.

In 1996, parascope.com published the following story about Benbecula's new monster....

A British museum is exhibiting photographs of an unidentified seashore object which some speculate is the remains of an unknown aquatic creature.

Louise Whitts, a nanny from Bedlington, England, took the pictures during a vacation in Scotland when she was 16. She and her family were mystified by the 12-foot anomaly covered by sand and seaweed, which they believed might be the corpse of a sea monster.

"It had what appeared to be a head at one end, a curved back and seemed to be covered with eaten-away flesh or even a furry skin and was about 12 feet long. And it smelt absolutely disgusting! But the weird thing was that it had all these shapes like fins along its back -- like a dinosaur or something. We didn't know what it was, although we laughed about it being the Loch Ness Monster."

Whitts and her family did some research on Nessie sightings, which corroborated the details of what they had seen, but they were reluctant to go public with their photographs.

"I said I should take the pictures to the Hancock to see what they thought, but I felt too embarrassed and put them in the back of a drawer," said Whitts, who is now 22.

"Then just a few weeks ago we found them again after some years. This time I did pluck up courage to go to the museum."

The Hancock Museum is a prominent natural history museum located in Newcastle. The institution is known for trafficking in all manner of wildlife -- up to and including the fringes of cryptozoology.

"It's not unusual for people to turn up with pictures of mystery animals, but almost always we are able to identify them," said Alec Coles, curator and keeper of natural sciences at the Hancock.

"Not in this case though -- we haven't seen anything like it before. At first we thought it might be a whale but it doesn't match anything we've got details of -- although obviously we could be much more certain if we had more pictures or even the body itself.

The stretch of Benbecula where Whitts made her discovery had an interesting neighbor. "It was beside some land owned by the Ministry of Defence and there were big notices all over the place saying that if people found anything on the beach they were not to touch it," Whitts recalls. "But they must have been thinking of the bits of metal and propellers and things there were laying about, not a monster like this!"

(c) Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc


http://www.mysterymag.com/theunexplaine ... &artID=147

(The MoD reference probably relates to a missile testing range which once operated in this parts - it may already be mentioned on the FTMB.)
 
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