Have you ever been curious about something and when pursuing the answer get way more than you bargained for? Sometimes a question needs to stay unanswered…
Here are some of the stupidest things people have done out of sheer curiosity.
Many thanks to all the Redditors who responded. Check out more answers from the source at the end of this article!
1. “Impact.”
My father and I swung aluminum baseball bats simultaneously at each other to hear that loud “clank” noise they’d make at impact. When we connected I didn’t hear that “clank”.. more of a loud thud. I missed his bat and hit his hand. Broke a few knuckles and had to explain to mom why I hit dad with a baseball bat.
LouisianasBeard
2. Never too old to lick some minerals.
Death Valley has lots of these little formations on the floor in places. They look like columns about 5-6cm high. I knew they were salt, but had to lick one….yup they were salt. I was 50 years old at the time.
garfbar
3. Good to know.
When I was fifteen years old, I kicked in my basement window so I could see how easy it was to break into my house. Turns out it is pretty easy.
DrDudeManJones
4. I’m gonna try this.
When I was younger, after I had a bath, I decided that I would slide around the tiled bathroom floor naked pretending to be a penguin. It was actually so fun.
attractivegoat
5. And now you know!
A friend of mine wanted to know what was in a battery so he tried to cut it open. Naturally, acid shot into his eye. The nurse at the ER told him he was the stupidest person she’d ever met.
tnydancer44
6. The inside of a wall… never thought about it.
When I was around 10 years old I really wanted to know what the inside of a wall looked like, so I dug a hole in my bedroom wall. Well, having a hole roughly the size of my hand in the wall terrified me (at the time I had, and may still have, an irrational fear of a hoard of man eating chipmunks living in the walls). I didn’t want to look at it, so I put a poster over it and taped all around every edge of the poster to seal in the chipmunks.
I eventually forgot about the hole. A couple years later when we were moving I finally took down all my old posters and rediscovered the hole.
Not wanting to have my parents find out that I was ruining the walls, my idea was to find a way to fix the hole without them ever knowing.
I taped over the hole with packaging tape, then did kind of a paper mache over it with paper towel and Elmer’s glue to kind of match the texture of the wall. Then, being pretty artsy, I mixed acrylic paint to match the color. As far as I know, they never found out about my journey to the center of the wall.
thescreamingpotato
7. If only there was another way to figure it out…
I was studying in my school library’s study room when I was younger (it was a small library). Saw the emergency door with a sign saying “DO NOT OPEN, ALARM WILL SOUND” and I thought “What will happen if I open it? Will the alarm really sound?”
Turns out the alarm is really loud.
monogrillaboy
8. Sometimes you just HAVE to know.
As a teenager in the mid 80s, there were two ways for me to find out why a golf ball is so bouncy: go to a library and look it up or cut it open with a pocketknife. It cost me six stitches to discover it was a tiny hard rubber core with a lot of little rubber bands wrapped all around it.
SteinbeckWasRight
9. Looked so fake…
One time I found this pile of crap in the school yard. It looked like a totally legit fake pile of crap.
I tried convincing my friends that it was fake poo.
They said prove it.
I poked it. And as I poked it I realized I made a grave mistake…it was in fact, a real pile of crap.
My finger sunk right into it, everybody laughed. I ran to the bathroom to clean my finger.
Just assume all crap you see in the grass is real.
Ob3city
10. Science strikes again!
One time I took one of those little paper cups (the kind you might have in a bathroom for taking a quick drink of water for swallowing a pill), filled it halfway with water, and then took it to my room and set it on my dresser. I then proceeded to light it on fire.
My dad smelled the smoke and burst in wanting to know what I was doing. I told him I wanted to see what would happen when the fire reached the water.
He was angry at me for playing with fire and doing so in the house. I think he was also disappointed that regardless of what happened, I clearly had no plan for what to do after I lit the fire.
To put your curiosity to rest, I will inform you all that once the flames reached the water level, the fire went out. SCIENCE!
Nickbou
11. Anything can become a bed!
See how long I could go without sleeping. I ended up falling down the stairs around the third day. Too tired to get up I just slept where I landed.
RememberDaTing
12. Not surprising…
I put muscle relaxant under my eyes once to see if it made me cry. Sure did.
ell_yeah_
13. Straight down…
When I was about 14 I was getting into programming and learning about ‘progz’ / hacking. I downloaded a virus just out of sheer curiosity. Wasn’t gonna send it to anyone, but for some reason I thought it was cool to have. Well the avatar thing for it was a folder, so naturally I see what’s inside and boom! Brand new family computer straight down the crapper!
Rap-master6000
14. Spoiler alert for anyone who wants to try this.
Not me but my sister once decided to test whether stepping on a rake would make it spring up and hit her in the face like in cartoons. Spoiler alert: it did.
friggin_pippin
15. Be careful people!
When I was about 12 I wanted to know what would happen if I stuck a basketball pump opening to the opening of my penis and pump air into it. I legit thought it would make it bigger. I was sadly mistaken. Pissed air for a good hour and endured the worst pain in my life.
Thatguybemo
16. Oh my lord. What were you thinking!?
I once poured water onto a light bulb (that had been shining for hours). I wasn’t really thinking and kind of expected it to make this ‘psshhhhh’ sound. Well it exploded right in my face. Thankfully I didn’t get hurt, but I could have been blinded..
theforeshadowing
17. I don’t even…
Licked the red part of the cigarette lighter in the car.
JPHamlett
18. No foolin’???
I licked a Himalayan salt lamp. Tasted like….salt.
Maddiefan
19. A nasty wad has formed.
When I was 5 my genius brain decided that if I just held the toilet paper in place while I peed then it would save time so I wouldn’t have to wipe after. Soon as I felt it soak through I got freaked out and and flung my hand out and up, effectively splootching the wad on the ceiling, where it stuck. Grandma wasn’t happy.
Lunatyc84
20. Your sacrifice has been accepted.
When I was a kid, my family and I were very religious. My parents were quite strict. I broke an expensive crystal vase when no one was home. I knew I’d be in big trouble. I prayed my parents wouldn’t notice and tore two $5 bills that I had into shreds as a sacrifice to God to help me. They never mentioned it to me, but it seemed cringeworthy when I got older.
Tyler_M_Williams
21. Why is everybody licking things?
When I was little, I noticed some brown liquid leaking out of the battery compartment on one of my toys. For some reason I decided it might be BBQ sauce, so I tasted it.
It was battery acid. Burnt the tip of my tongue, not pleasant.
paleo2002
22. Nasty.
My sister and I found a duck egg and wanted to see if we could hatch it. We thought the microwave was a perfect way to speed up the incubation process. It sped up the explosion of an egg in our microwave. The smell lingered for weeks.
Hawt4teach
23. Well at least you thought in through…
When I was around 10 I wanted to see what the inside of an electric cord looked like so I cut one in half with a pair of scissors. I didn’t want to be electrocuted so I turned the lamp off first.
officerbill_
24. Beautiful. I’m so jealous.
I laid on my bed and poured an industrial size bag of M&Ms over my body which I got from my job at an ice cream parlor.
burtwinters
25. Efficient, but stinky.
Poured rubbing alcohol on my leg and set it on fire to see if I could burn off my leg hair instead of shaving.
thelaughingpear
26. Compressed air in yOOooour cup!
I took one of those cans of compressed air and directed it into my cup of coffee. To no one’s surprise coffee went flying everywhere, and I still wasn’t woken up.
ooo-ooo-oooyea
27. For science!
I did this the other day driving home from the supermarket at about 7pm on an empty suburban road.
I was driving along and had the thought ‘ I wonder what the difference in strength and muscle memory is between my right and left foot on the brake pedal’ (the right one being the only one I use and left being exclusively for the clutch).
So, the stupid began to creep into the corner of my mind and I placed my left foot on the brake and gave it a light tap.
The difference between a ‘light’ tap of my right and left foot is massive so the car braked a lot harder than I was expecting. This is where muscle memory took over: car slowing down immediately translates into put clutch in so we don’t stall.
This meant my light tap with old lefty turned into full planting of left foot to the floor, the car screeched to a very very sudden halt and stalled.
So there I was, sitting in the middle of a dark road in a stalled car drowning in a pool of my own idiocy.
Luckily like I said earlier, it was an empty suburban road so no one was around to crash into but still…
Blixnstraten
28. Nice discovery!
I have pectus excavatum which basically means there’s a giant dent in my chest. I found out that if I play music on my phone and lay it in the dent, it will amplify it the same as when you do it with a bowl. I also used it as a bowl for skittles once.
EuterpeZonker
29. The classic forward lunge.
I was driving with my brother going around 30-40 mph and decided to test out my cars e-brakes. They worked great, probably should have checked to see if my brother was wearing his seatbelt though.
JAL24
30. Stung hard.
When I was a kid I wanted to see what would happen if I touched a bee. I got stung.
Dandelioon
31. They missed out on that award in the end.
I was working night shift so I came home at 7am, napped and woke up in the lazy Australian afternoon sun feeling dozy. I walked around my little garden and my garden shed had a hole in the side where a reptilian coil hung out.
Still half asleep and quite interested in snakes I go, “Huh, I wonder what species it is.” And pulled it out. Australian Eastern Brown. I dropped it and it slithered away and I walked several steps before I went, “You Darwin Award Idiot.”
Bushtuckapenguin
32. This is a bad move.
The eraser on the end of my pencil came off one day in grade school. Looked to be about the right size to fit in my ear. Turns out I was right.
I spent 6 months with a pencil eraser in my ear. I was too embarrassed to have someone help me.
Willisshortforbill
33. Ouch.
I squeezed a prickly pear cactus to see if it was soft or hard. What I learned is that between the big needles you see, there are a billion tiny needles between them that you cannot see. My fingertips were full of them.
Scrappy_Larue