People Reveal The Last Time Their Minds Were Completely Blown

#1

Someone asked the folks over on Reddit when was the last time someone "blew their mind", so we collected our favorites for you guys to enjoy. Some are personal while other involve the laws of the universe.

#2

A magician. This guy was wandering table to table as part of the theme of a restaurant. He would do a quick trick at your table and move on. Simple enough and kind of pedestrian but we were game. This, guy, was, incredible.

Still to this day I'm not sure how he did this but it's worth noting I figure a lot of ‘tricks' out.

He took a regular green plastic Reach toothbrush out and had myself and my mother in law inspect it. I looked at it, felt around it and even bent it a bit, it was solid and brand name.

He asked my mil about her wedding ring and if she would be OK with using it in the trick. She agreed and here's what he did.

He put her removed ring on the table, had us both hold onto one end of the toothbrush. He took the ring and layed it sideways right on top middle of the toothbrush being held horizontally at each end by us.

He then placed a napkin over the top of said horizontal toothbrush balancing the ring in the middle between us. Said some abracadabra stuff and pulled the napkin off the toothbrush that we were still holding on both ends mind you, and her ring was now ‘on' the toothbrush like it was a finger. Right there, us holding both ends, the ring was on the middle now and it was her ring. He layed it on top of the toothbrush, put a napkin on it, removed the napkin and the toothbrush was now through the lumen of the ring.

Mind-boggling.

#3

Had an encounter with an autonomous google car and found myself trying to decide right of way with it. Then realized that was impossible. It was just strange trying to gauge the programs "thoughts" or next move, human-to-robot like I would human-to-human. Future's weird.

#4

I came back from a trip to Maryland. My half brother and his wife pick me up and my brother tells me, "We have to talk about something. Let's go to Mexican Fiesta (a place we went to regularly) and we'll talk."

We sit down and my brother says, "I did some searching and I found your real father. He passed away about 2 weeks ago but I did talk to his wife and she would love to get to know you."

I said id like to meet her and I'd just need to know when and where.

A few seconds later our waitress walks up to the table and begins crying. I look at her and say, "I'm sorry, I forgot to put makeup on."

She laughs and then begins to cry even more, "You have his sense of humor too!"

The waitress was my half sister. I had been served by my half sister for years and had no idea who she was.

#5

About a month and a half ago I got a phone call from my dad late at night. I missed the call but the voicemail said. "Call me back, this is going to blow your mind."

When my parents were young, they had a baby. Not being old enough or financially stable, they gave the child up for adoption. Almost 15 years later they had another couple kids, my younger sister and I. On this night, my parents had received a phone call from their oldest child and a week later I met my 43 year old big sister for the first time. She was stunningly similar to my younger sister in looks and personality, and will be a big part of my life going forward. Dad was right, my mind was blown.

#6

Fun little facts about the gravitational wave that was discovered last year. They were created by two black holes colliding about 1.3 billion years ago. This is around the same time that mutli-cellular life was beginning to evolve here on earth.

These gravitational waves are also mind bogglingly small. We detected it via the motion of the mirrors in the LIGO detectors. The more the mirrors move, the bigger the gravitational wave. For GW150914, the mirrors moved about 1/1000th a width of a proton. This is also really hard to conceptualize. So let's think about it this way:

LIGO's detectors are 4km long (in each direction, but let's just look at one direction). Now, let's scale up the size of the detectors. Let's say that they're now about 4 light-years long (which is the distance between here and the closest star, proxima centauri). With this much larger scale, how much did mirrors move in this model? The answer: about the width of a hair.

#7

About ten years ago. An old friend of mine had found something precious of mine I'd left at his place, without remembering that I had done so. Instead of letting me know that he'd found it, he invited me and my wife over for a night of partying drinking and smoking and once we'd been there an hour he gave me a small piece of paper. It was a clue. He'd created a scavenger hunt around his entire house just for me to follow, waited long enough that I was fucked up enough that my head was all kinds of marshmallow and then sent me on this mission. It took me about 3 hours to get through all ten of the clues and at the end of it all, I found my missing beanie that I hadn't seen in 5 years.

I was so utterly stoked that he'd gone to so much effort to fuck my brain over. Had I been sober I probably would've taken about 20 minutes to get through it all, but since they got me messed up first I was trashed and it made it even more awesome. My wife was in on it and they took photos of me trying to find the next clue in every room in the house, out in the garden, etc etc it was hilarious and I had an absolute blast of a time 😀

#8

Pirates don't wear eyepatches because their eye is messed up. They wear eye patches so when they go below deck, they switch the eye patch, and their eye is already adjusted to the darkness.

#9

When I was 5 years old (now 18), my class went on a field trip to the new Pizza My Heart. My Dad was one of the chaperones, and was asked to flip a pizza up into the air after the chef's little spiel. Unbeknownst to them, and the kids, my Dad had worked at a pizza joint and knew how to flip pizzas into the air. He was supposed to make a mess and drop the pizza, and instead did the flip perfectly. My Dad says that was the last time he blew my mind.

#10

I'm an expat and last Christmas was my first Christmas away from my family in all my 27 years. I live in The Netherlands now, and they have Sinterklaas instead of Santa. Sinterklaas comes on December 5th instead of Christmas Eve and brings presents in a sack instead of leaving them under the tree.

We had this whole plan that we would get my friend's kids a bunch of presents and leave the sack outside the front door for them to find to convince them Sinterklaas left them at the house, the whole shebang.

It turns out, my boyfriend and friend schemed behind my back to have a freaking real and actual Sinterklaas come to my friend's house and give the kids presents. So I'm in complete awe that Sinterklaas is hanging out with us when he starts pulling presents out of his sack for ME! They had gotten the idea and set the whole thing up for me rather than for the kids (although it was just as much for them and we all opened our presents together, haha).

I was so, so surprised and excited by the whole thing that I almost had a heart attack. It really made my first Christmas away from home special and blew my mind that they put so much effort and thought into planning it, keeping it all a secret and making me feel so cared for and loved in my new home.

#11

I realised the other day that my cat over its lifetime has heard 1000's of songs. From the classical symphonies that make ones heart weep to light fluttery pop songs it's heard them all and kept its opinion mute. The cat has watched 1000's of hours of television, the great connector device for so much of humanity it's seen news stories break and moments of joy all while watching without a comment. The cat has also experienced that other great human medium, the cinema it's watched many genres of films and who knows what it's thought about these stories and how they may have impacted its world. The cat has heard millions of words of human speech spanning all emotions we have, it's heard cries and laughter and shouting and whispering and never once has it joined the conversation.

But for all its experienced, that cat has never read a single book. Not a single line of text or written word.