What's the coolest object you've ever touched or held in your own hands?

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An original Shakespeare Hamlet folio

The shed of a komodo dragon. It might just be me being a total reptile nerd but that was incredible to me

I just started a job as an eye recovery technician and I have to say holding a donor cornea or whole globe in my hands is always an amazing feeling. Many decades ago I assisted in an autopsy and each of the organs I held was pretty amazing in its own way. That experience will forever be with me.

The Stanley Cup

My mom has a chunk of the Berlin Wall with graffiti on it. Moon rock at the Kennedy Space Center. And I have a business card from a maiko (geisha-in-training).

I held a small meteorite once, about the size of a volleyball. Holy shit was it heavy, I could only hold it for a few seconds before my arms started getting tired.  That, and a fossilized mammoth molar my boyfriend found fossil hunting. That was Awesome. 

The hammer from Metallica’s Kill Em All cover.

I interned at the natural history museum one summer and was charged with cleaning and organizing the bird collection. I carefully placed the skins of passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets into new, clean drawers. It was haunting.

Human brain

I visited Antarctica last year, and got to touch sea ice from glaciers in Antarctica, there’s so many bubbles trapped inside it sounds like a soda as it melts and releases the trapped air!

Got to check out a pair of A-10’s up close and personal. They parked at a local airport after a flyover and they allowed us to go up and check them out. Love the A10

So where I’m from in Mississippi there are lots of arrow heads and such that can be found. My dad found one and took it to be looked at. It was a skinning tool and was used so much it had the hand prints worn int to the rock. It is said to used by a left handed woman. We still have it at my parent’s house. My dad has about a gallon bucket he’s collected over the years of various arrow heads and spear heads.

The first baby I delivered. I called for the doctor but she didn’t make it to the room in time. Best feeling ever. I am now a retired L & D RN.

Honestly? My newborn son 4 years ago.

I held the dreams of all living beings in my hands while high on lsd. Was pretty, pretty, pretty cool at the time.

Went to Kyoto and got to hold a real katana at a museum demonstration from a samurai that lived during the 1800s. during the Edo period of Japan. Had to wear gloves to hold it. Very cool experience.

Olympic gold medal

My hometown is near the Neil Armstrong Museum where you can touch a moon rock sample from the Apollo 11 mission

A hairless cat. I expected it to feel like skin, which I would not like. But it was kinda fuzzy, like felt. Now I want one, even though I know they're incredibly high maintenance.

My Dad had a 1955 Mercedes Gullwing. I rode in it many times but never got to drive it. He sold it a week before I got my license. Probably saved my life AND the car’s! The fastest he ever drove it was when I was with him. A Camaro passed us doing 70 or so in a 55 zone. The driver yelled something about getting our old car out of his way. I looked at my Dad, saying, “You’re not going to let that slide, are you?!” He very calmly replied to just let them go. When they were a mile or so ahead of us he smiled. And downshifted. We passed them at 140 and climbing before he kinda snapped out of it. The guy in the Camaro’s face was a blur… with a big black hole for an open mouth.

My wife and it isn't even close.

I have a beautiful Roman silver denarius coin from 132 BC. Well, my husband has it, as it was a birthday gift from me to him, but there’s something unbelievable about holding a coin and thinking of someone thousands of years ago holding the exact same thing.

A jar of gold dust worth about $200K now. It was heavy as heck and looked like gold confetti.

A $10,000 bill. They are no longer made.

A beating human heart. I was a surgical tech and I had to use my hand to retract the heart out of the surgeon's way during a surgical procedure. It was incredible!

A starfish.

Gary Gygax’s personal copy of the first printing of Dungeons & Dragons - the “brown box” that he and his friends assembled in his basement in 1974.

My Boston marathon medal. It represented my 20th marathon, my retirement, my 60th birthday and my second lap around the planet.

Cut-off section of a black smoker thermal vent from the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. My geology professor had recently cut it off and retrieved it for his research. I believe it was done using a remote submersible. EDIT: Not a remote submersible. It was the Alvin submersible that three people actually get inside of.

400 year old bottle of scotch. Tasted awesome.

I once held a Mayan skull. There was this rock shop my family and I used to visit that also had various artifacts and anything you could think of. It was owned by this older guy and his brother. Wouldn’t think anything of it from the outside, it looked like an old shack. One of them lived in a house behind the store and they had legit mummies in their home. I was a young teen at the time, and they loved younger visitors. One of them told me to hold my hands out and close my eyes. When I opened them, I was holding a Mayan skull. Might be cursed now for all I know. Years later there was a break in and someone stole it and other numerous things. Edit: I remember my parents took a picture of me with it, and I held it like it was a pie

My dearly departed kitty. I had her 15+ years and her companionship saved my life, multiple times. She was there for all of the darkest days of depression and through all of my self hate. As for inanimate objects, coolest is probably the drumstick I caught at a Nine Inch Nails concert- was the peak of my life for all of 3 seconds until the guy next to me grabbed it and punched me for it. I had to let it go, I wanted to stomp a new mud hole in his ass, but I was working for the sheriff's department at the time and somehow logical brain kept me from doing that. I didn't want to live where I worked lol

One time I touched Rob Van Dam's sweaty greasy shoulder when he was coming down to the ring through the crowd at an ECW show

My newborn baby!

My cat, she passed away today. But she’ll always be the coolest thing I ever held, and will always hold her in my heart <3

I grabbed a handful of ice as it was tumbling out of my open freezer door once. Stupid ice maker.

A boa constrictor

An elephant! I cried like a baby. This was at the zoo! 

Part of the Apollo 13 rocket. 

A piece of dinosaur bone my husband had. And a dinosaur coprolite

10million year old megalodon tooth I bought. Other than that probably a small gold bar or a \~100million year old belemnite I found. Not special because of the age (there are older things everyone can touch anytime) but because these creatures permanently left our world.

$30,000 that my MIL pulled out of her safety deposit box.

The bronze metal for Figure Skating from the 1936 Berlin Olympics awarded to Vivi-Anne Hultén. It was presented to her by Hitler. She lived in St. Paul, MN for several decades and had a connection to the father of a man I worked for via Sonia Henie.

A Shakespeare First Folio at my college’s archive.

We found a baby Eastern Screech owl and raised it. Had fallen out of the nest after a storm I guess. It would fly in the house and land on your shoulders or hair and preen your hair. It was cool when it’d perch on your finger and wrap it’s talons around it. He never hurt us.

I touched the baby sting rays at the Monterey Bay aquarium and they were so soft, I was really surprised because I had imagined they would be rough like shark skin.

I held the linen wrappings of an ancient Egyptian mummy!

A startfish, felt the tube feet on my hand. I was stunned!

Honestly struggling to think of anything cool here. Touched a meteorite once at a museum and that was pretty neat I guess? Like this thing was literally floating around in space for billions of years and now it's just... sitting there in a display case. Kinda wild when you think about it. But then I read other people's answers and they're like "I held an original copy of the Declaration of Independence" and I'm like... okay well I touched a cool rock once so

Many years ago at a sketchy petting zoo that no longer exists, I got to hold a wolf pup and coyote pup, and hug an actual for real tiger. I also own a real fossil megalodon tooth, which gives me the shivers of “this is awesome” every time I hold it.

My first wallet. It was given to me by my grandpa who had it given to him by his grandfather. It’s nothing remarkable. It’s a handmade leather wallet that my great great grandpa made as a teenager. I’ve quit using it long ago to preserve its integrity but I plan on passing it down to my grandkids eventually.

My father's father's father's ... x24 worked in the court of Akbar. He must have done something special (some say that he helped improve the tax collection system) because Akbar gave him a title and some lands near Delhi. I have held that proclamation parchment. Of course, I am just a working schlub but there were many generations who did nothing but sit on their asses and enjoy life. All because of that one guy who busted his ass to impress the top boss.

An 18 hour old foal. I had planned to pick up something at a friend's place early on a Sunday morning. I had met a couple of her horses previously but I did not know that one was expecting. When I got there, she took me out back for a "surprise" - it turned out that her horse had foaled the previous evening and I got to meet the baby. Both baby & Momma were doing great!

a chameleon.  well, it held me.    they have the funniest little feet.  

Lucy. Yes, *that* Lucy.

An orphaned baby squirrel. He curled up in my palm and fell asleep. 🥰

Definitely my newborn daughter. An amazing feeling.

Original Game Boy

My babies.

Vishnu Schist. 3.5 billion year old rock at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

An otter.

Other than my own babies, a baby sea turtle! We were on vacation in Barbados and a nest of sea turtles hatched near where we were sitting. We watched a few make their way to the water, but the conservation authority was alerted and showed up pretty quickly, and brought most of them to a facility where they raise them until they’re a bit bigger/ more likely to survive. As they were transferring them to a bucket for transport, they let me and my son hold one. It was very cool!

The sand on Normandy Beach where D-Day took place!

My boss won a couple of Emmy’s that I have held several times. They are pretty heavy and a lot taller than I thought they would be.

David Bowie’s Live Aid suit and his Ziggy Stardust shoes at the V & A East Storehouse

The 3rd largest red beryl crystal ever found.

A few milliliters of liquid nitrogen cupped in my palm. Leidenfrost effect prevents it from freezing your hand for a moment or two. -196C is pretty cool.

Touched a piece of the Titanic at an exhibit in the very early 2000's.

A very big heavy diamond, when I was working in Belgium and was in the diamond district a lot. Dude just said. Hold out your hand and dumped it in . Was about a large grape sized. No idea if the worth but it was pretty cool

An Oscar

A baby sloth. Highlight of my life.

Each of my kids immediately after they were born.

I touched the Rosetta Stone when it was on display at the British Museum, many years ago. No, I was not supposed to. No, it was not covered (which is very weird in retrospect).

My Grandfather’s Atomic Commission card when he worked on the Manhattan Project. Along with a part of the MANIAC 1 computer that was built by my Grandmother. The part was given to her when the disassembled it .

I was in the Oki Islands, Japan. I saw a tree that was 1800 years old. There was a barrier around it. I just reached over and touched that 1800 year old tree. I felt the history.

A human brain with an intact spinal cord. From a cadaver in Anatomy lab in college

I’ve held a human brain in 8th grade science class. It was surreal

Hummingbird

I have a whisker from a white tiger.... I've also held the paw of an endangered cloud leopard.... And the tail of a snow leopard - it was the softest thing I've ever felt....

A baby leopard, a baby puma, a baby caiman and a baby shark. I've been around exotic animals my whole life. I've also raised about 100 baby parrots.🥰

During my medic training, I got to assist in 2 autopsies. One of them required the brain of the person to be weighed, and I was able to carry it to and from the scale.

The 4 lower spine sections of a whale that my parents collected from a beach.

Original mint condition illuminated manuscript of Gregorian chant. I had to wear special gloves.

The microphone stand used by Korn singer Johnathan Davis, designed and made by H.R. Giger.  It was at an exhibition about Giger and no one was looking so I just had to touch it.

There was a cuneiform tablet in some museum I visited in Hanover, New Hampshire about 25 years ago. It was on display and I couldn't resist reaching over the barrier to touch it, put my fingers in the cuneiform indentations, feeling that connection with someone who lived millennia ago. I then got chided by a museum staffer. Totally worth it.

I'm in forensics and every time I hold a human skull i think about how that was a person with dreams and a family and memories. 

A jelly fish!

Original Fuzzball puppet from Captain EO

Part of a frill from a Triceratops that's been featured in scientific studies. That alone helped shape what I was interested in researching back in college

A piece of Celtic bronze ring money. Dude won the cache at an auction and gave it away. I carry it on my keychain.

My son is a geoscience student in Alaska, and he brought me back a piece of metasequoia he dug up personally from a basalt quarry. It's about 20K years old. To me it's especially cool because as he told me, the conditions in that quarry are not typically conducive to preserving wood, so this should not exist.

A guy I know who owns a bunch of ATMs let me hold the bag of cash he had collected from a day of rounds.  I don't remember how much it was, but it was the most money I've ever seen or touched in real life.  

I think it was at a Smithsonian museum in Washington DC, where they have a tiny moon rock in a display that you are allowed to touch. Of course I touched it!

Baby ostrich, not sure why, it just felt very cool.

The German officers' bayonet my grandfather brought back from WW2 is the coolest thing I've personally held, but my Dad got to touch a cane gifted to an ancestor by George Washington after the ancestor's battlefield injury which I think is way cooler.

when i was in high school we got to go to a cadaver lab and i got to hold both a brain and a uterus in my hand. so freaking cool.

My piece of the Berlin Wall.

A baby wombat

Stone Hand axe here too, not as old, in Tomb of the Eagles on Orkney. As soon as you held it you knew that it was made for a left handed person because it fit the left hand, but not the right,

The reentry shield of Apollo 11 capsule. The side of John Glenn’s Mercury capsule. The cockpit of an SR-71. The flight deck of the Space Shuttle simulator in Huntsville. The new moon spacesuit. The flame trench at LC-39 B at Kennedy Space Center. A few pages of a MS that Shakespeare wrote. A moon rock. A first edition of Paradise Lost from 1667. A British coin from the 1200s. A page of a Gutenberg Bible at the Huntington Library. A crucifix from the 5th century. A Roman coin from 30 BC. The basketball rim at the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill. The tree that Isaac Newton saw an apple fall from at Cambridge. The launch button in the Explorer-1 block house. Atlantis, Discovery, and Enterprise space shuttles. An Olympic Bronze Medal.

A Civil War letter from my grandfather times three. I have possession of it.

Puppies.

I cupped the beak/chin of a flamingo bird in my palm while feeding at the zoo. That was pretty cool

A baby shark. Or a capybara.

An injured barred owl, I wrapped him in a sweatshirt and put him in my car trunk and took him to a rehabber.

A first edition of Paradise Lost.

A preserved coelacanth at the San Francisco natural history collections. A critter from legend and eons past indeed.

When I worked for the government in Australia I got see and touch the Pilbara Stromatolites "*The fossils represent the earliest known life on Earth, dating up to 3.49 billion years old. They were formed by microbial communities (cyanobacteria) trapping sediments in shallow, volcanic waters.*" It was very cool.

A piece of Mars

I held a hand that had held Dr King's.

I held a piece of the heat shield from the Space Shuttle program. The guy running the demonstration held a four inch cube in front of a blowtorch until it was glowing red. Then picked it up and handed it to me. The outside of it was warm while 3/4s of the cube was still glowing red. It dissipated the heat that quickly.

I fed baby racoons!!

In hawaii I got to hold seahorses!!!!! And I held a chameleon that was in someone's yard

Huh, interesting question. I guess the "coolest" thing I can think of was qualifying on the Mark 19, an automatic grenade launcher. I suppose I also bought sandwiches from Saddam Hussein when I was in Iraq. Yea, not the guy you're thinking of, but he had the same name, and that's kinda a cool story.

I picked up a chunk of iceberg off a beach in Newfoundland, and I licked it.

I got to hold some birds of prey! I held a crested caracara, a vulture, and a hawk. I love birds and it was such a joy!

A baby sea turtle! We were walking the beach at night when the nests were all hatching. We were good kids, keeping our distance and watching quietly, but one little baby kept going the wrong way. The people watching the nests kept nudging it toward the ocean, but he kept crawling to the dunes instead. They asked if one of us wanted to help it, and I was the quickest kid to volunteer, so I got to carry a sea turtle to the ocean. It was a truly magical moment for me, as my 2nd grade teacher (I love you, Ms. Murphy!) instilled a love of nature in my seven year old self.

Woah Olduvai handaxe is really cool, I learned about those a year or so ago. For me its probably a human heart

A tiny piece of moon rock from one of the Apollo missions.

A Hyacinth Macaw. I stopped in a bird specific pet store one time just to see what was in there. I was geeking out over the Toucan and Gouldian Finches. Since no one else was in, I asked the cashier what his favorite bird was. I don't remember what he said, but when he asked me the same question, I told him that if I won the l******, I wanted a Palm Cockatoo and Hyacinth Macaw. The guy said, "Wait here," and walked into a back room, and came out with the Macaw. When I asked if I could pet it, he set the bird on my shoulder instead! I just wandered around the pet store for an hour with the bird on my shoulder. He said he would have brought his Palm Cockatoo, but it had been feeling off a bit, so he left it home. Still one of my best life experiences.

At Kennedy Space Center theres a place where you can touch a piece of the moon. That was pretty cool to do. The whole place was really fascinating if you're into Space Exploration

A glass of port wine from 1865- it tasted sublime;, and an original invitation from Louis the 15th's wedding. Both were owned by the same person

Half of the bottom jaw of a tyrannosaurus rex. It was the largest fossil found in my state, and it's thought to have belonged to a juvenile. The teeth were the size of my finger.

I visited the Louvre a few years back and was shocked to find that it houses the Code of Hammurabi stele, with naught but rope around its pedestal! Obviously I couldn't resist copping a quick feel when the staff turned their backs

A baby giraffe once galloped over to me like he recognized me and hugged my neck with his neck. I got to pet him for a minute and then he realized it was time to go eat breakfast. I will never forget that feeling.

I touched the Apprentice pillar in Rosslyn Chapel.

A live, pet tarantula. I’m afraid of spiders but was in a safe situation. Her tiny feet were warm. Wasn’t expecting that.

A human brain. I high school I was in a Bio II class, and we took a field trip to go study cadavers. I was one of 3 brave enough to hold the brain, and it blew me away. The weight of it, the size of it, and the knowledge that and entire person once existed within it…

A human brain. I had a tech job in research during college. It was pretty humbling and profound to have that in my hands.m. I still think about who that person was.

Been a few things. Ww2 German p38 cigarette edition, war trophy. Gist when allies the took over the factory gi’s etc took parts and assembled guns. Ever part has an inspection stamp give or take , but they are missing the final proof marking etc . How you can tell if it was issues to a German or taken from the factory. They got the name cause soldiers took a bunch and would trade them for things . So some how it went from the Germany factory to my grand pa on a boat in the pacific. He traded a bottle of booze for it. I never met him, he died few years before I was born. But I got his journal. Nothing connected to my family finding dinosaurs tracks that were not known . Was doing off trail hiking and got lost. Found them , and reported them to a local college . Year later I got a letter saying i found them since they had never been documented before.

Moon rocks. They were on loan from NASA to the astronomy department. They were encased in plastic but I held the plastic that held the moon rocks so, close enough.

Lord Stanley’s Cup

Lit dynamite. It was a mine tour, the guy lit the fuse, shoved it in my hands, took a picture, laughed, and ran out to a field to drop it. It was extremely loud.

B**** 

Either the North Sea (I'm a west coast American) or when I sat inside the inside of the cockpit of an SR-71 Blackbird at a museum

Can’t beat a 1.3 million year old hand axe.

gold , like gold jewelry even. not in a greedy way. gold doesn't come from earth and how old gold is. I find that amazing

todos con meros artefactos o animales, yo lo mas chido cuando acaricio a mi perra pug

My snowmobile. It is insanely fast. I smile every time I touch the throttle. Never had more fun on anything in my life

Also the stick shift in a 1998 Porsche 911 Turbo. A friend’s uncle had bought one shortly before we went to Florida on spring break in college. I was the only one who knew how to drive stick and he let me drive it. As a college kid, that was f****** amazing.

Human heart. In chest cavity. Still beating....or at least attempting to...

Got to walk through the Enola Gay while it was all torn apart to be restored in a huge but otherwise unremarkable Smithsonian warehouse in a suburb of DC. (I was on lunch break from a video shoot that required an F-4 cockpit). The place was packed to the rafters with airplane stuff. I was trying to find my back to our setup and got lost. Turned a corner and froze when I saw it. I spent about 20 minutes, mostly staring at all the exposed wiring, piping and hydraulics. Was able to walk onto the midsection, as it was unattended, which made the whole experience even more eerie. Also got to hold two of the Low Light Level TV cameras used on the early Apollo Missions. Different location. Different shoot.