Hey there, fellow wanderers of the internet!
To my returning readers, welcome back—you already know I thrive on the wonderfully random here in the chaos of my life. To the newcomers, consider this your initiation into the beautifully unpredictable world of whatever I happen to fill my day with. So yes, this would actually go into my journal—if I kept one.
Here’s your random fact: The oldest tea ever discovered was found in a Chinese tomb over 2,100 years ago. Even in death, someone made sure there was tea. If that isn’t proof of how deeply essential it is, I don’t know what is.
So, as you saw yesterday, I was all about collections. But since those dig into history, they led me straight down another rabbit hole. Or should I say, the AuDHD squirrel hole?
History is littered with inventions that could have changed the world—but instead, they faded into obscurity, lost to time and progress. Some were ahead of their era, others were just spectacularly impractical, and a few were so bizarre that it’s hard to believe they ever existed at all.
Take the steam-powered bicycle—a contraption that, theoretically, should have revolutionized transportation. Instead, it was unwieldy, dangerous, and had the delightful tendency to accidentally set riders on fire. Not exactly what you want from a leisurely bike ride.
Now, fast-forward to modern times, and it turns out someone actually built a working steam-powered bike. An Alberta engineer, Todd McBride, recreated a fully functional version using modern bearings, sprockets, and chains while keeping the classic steam-age aesthetic intact. It’s heavy, impractical, and definitely not replacing e-bikes anytime soon, but it works.
Then there was the alarm clock that woke you with smells instead of sound. On paper, it sounds brilliant—aroma-based wake-ups tailored to coffee, fresh bread, or citrus. The problem? If the scent wasn’t strong enough, people just kept sleeping. And if it was too strong, congratulations, your bedroom smelled like burnt toast for hours. That is a guaranteed migraine waiting to happen.
Some inventions were so close to greatness. The pneumatic mail system, for example—shooting letters through tubes across cities at high speeds. And here’s the thing—it actually worked. Banks, newspapers, and post offices used them for years. But large-scale logistics were a nightmare. Letters didn’t always arrive where they should, tubes got clogged, and someone had to constantly maintain the system.
Even today, hospitals still use pneumatic tubes for transporting medications and lab samples. So in a way, the invention never really disappeared—it just found a niche where it truly thrived. But if email hadn’t taken over, I’d argue we should bring back mail tubes just for the fun of launching things at high velocity across town.
And then there was the umbrella hat, a hands-free way to stay dry. A genius idea? Maybe. But socially? No one wanted to look like a walking carnival attraction.
Which, honestly? Feels like an unfair dismissal—because this invention had real potential. The problem wasn’t practicality—it worked. The issue was fashion and wind resistance. Imagine walking down the street with your umbrella hat perfectly balanced—until a strong gust launches it off your head and into traffic. Not ideal.
Still, for those brave enough to wear one, modern versions do exist—they’re often marketed for outdoor festivals, hiking, and sporting events. Maybe it’s time for a revival. And I fully support the idea of a reinvented, wind-resistant umbrella hat for ultimate rainy-day freedom.
We talk about modern collectors, but humans have been hoarding strange things for millennia. From royalty obsessing over rare artifacts to entire civilizations valuing seemingly useless objects, history is full of forgotten collections.
One of the most famous ancient hoards? The Hoard of Hoxne, a Roman treasure stash unearthed in Britain, filled with thousands of coins, jewelry, and strangely intricate tableware. Someone buried it for safekeeping—and never came back for it. Discovered in 1992 by a farmer with a metal detector, it remains one of the largest hoards of late Roman treasure ever found.
The sheer quantity of gold and silver suggests it belonged to someone wealthy—perhaps a noble—or was hidden during times of unrest. A buried fortune, waiting in the soil for centuries. Imagine being that farmer, waving a metal detector over the ground, expecting a few old coins—and instead unearthing an entire vault of history. A single moment changed everything, revealing a treasure trove untouched since the fall of the Roman Empire.
Then there’s the clay tablets from Mesopotamia, documenting everything from beer recipes to personal letters. The oldest known written recipe is a Sumerian beer formula from over 4,000 years ago, etched into clay.
These tablets preserve the everyday concerns of ancient people—grain storage, livestock disputes, even complaints about poor customer service in trading transactions. One tablet, found in ancient Ur, is basically an angry review from a dissatisfied copper merchant, complaining about a bad shipment and demanding repayment. Turns out, humans have been airing grievances about their purchases since the dawn of written language.
And speaking of hoards—some rulers were obsessive collectors. The Emperor of China, Qianlong, had a vast collection of rare handwritten scrolls, some of which were hidden away for centuries. He inscribed personal notes on thousands of artworks, marking them as part of his imperial collection, a habit that infuriated later historians. Many of his treasures were locked away in the Forbidden City, unseen by the public for hundreds of years.
For Qianlong, collecting wasn’t just about ownership—it was about control. If something was beautiful, rare, or culturally significant, he had to have it, and once it was his, he altered it permanently by adding inscriptions, sealing its fate as part of his imperial legacy. Some of his artwork still has his handwritten commentary stamped right onto paintings and calligraphy pieces, an emperor’s personal mark left for eternity.
Beyond royalty, entire civilizations had collecting habits—such as the ancient Egyptians, who buried extravagant collections with their dead. Tombs were filled with jewelry, furniture, board games, food supplies, and even mummified pets.
Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb famously contained over 5,000 objects, including chariots, daggers, and golden shrines, all meant to accompany him into the afterlife. Among the treasures was a dagger made from meteorite iron—literally a blade forged from space metal, something that would have been seen as divine. His burial chamber was designed as an entire royal household packed into a single underground space, ensuring he could rule beyond death. Now I think that dagger is something I want, especially if the same technique used for Damascus Steel to form it.
And sometimes, hoards were never meant to be recovered—like the caches of ritual objects buried by Celtic tribes. These hoards often contained swords, shields, coins, and decorative metalwork, deliberately sacrificed to rivers or hidden in the ground as offerings. Some were meant to appease gods, while others were possibly gifts to ancestors.
It’s haunting to think about—these sacred objects, discarded into lakes or buried deep underground, never meant to be unearthed, yet some were. Did those who recovered them understand what they had found? Or was the original purpose lost forever?
History is full of forgotten collections, some buried in secrecy, others locked away by rulers, and many abandoned when time simply moved on without them.
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