When you sang the classic “50 Nifty United States” in school, you probably never imagined how many oddball projects tried to add a few more names—here are 10 failed attempts to create new US states, each with its own dramatic tale.

10 Failed Attempts to Create New US States

10. The State Of Franklin

War‑time expenses hit the newborn United States hard, and the first fiscal nightmare after independence was a mountain of debt. In 1784, North Carolina tried to trim its budget by handing over a massive 29 million‑acre wilderness to the federal government, hoping the sale would pad the treasury.

The western settlers who suddenly found themselves under federal control were terrified the land might be sold to a foreign power. Isolated from the state’s political hubs and feeling abandoned, they grew restless, convinced the distant government didn’t understand their daily struggles.

On August 23, 1784 the four western counties—Sullivan, Spencer, Washington and Greene—voted unanimously to break away from North Carolina and form their own state. They sent a petition to Philadelphia, the nation’s capital, asking for admission under the name Frankland, later altered to Franklin in a hopeful bid to enlist Benjamin Franklin’s support.

Although seven states voted in favor, the motion fell just short of the two‑thirds majority required. Undeterred, the Frankliners ran the area like an independent nation: courts opened in Greenville, officials were appointed, and a barter economy flourished (the governor’s salary was a thousand deer hides a year). By 1788 North Carolina reclaimed the territory, arrested the Franklin governor, and after a brief rescue attempt the leaders conceded. In 1789 they rejoined North Carolina, and the region eventually became the core of Tennessee.

9. The State Of McDonald

Every year Missouri rolls out its Family Vacationland Map without much fanfare, until 1961 when the Missouri State Highway Commission accidentally left McDonald County off the printed pages. Nestled in the state’s far‑southwest corner, McDonald County boasted tourist hotspots that would have suffered from the omission.

Incensed by the oversight, the county’s leaders voted to secede, forming a makeshift government. They organized a militia, stopped every car entering the county, and issued special tourist visas to non‑residents. The fledgling entity even printed its own postage stamps, which today are prized by collectors.

Missouri Supreme Court Justice Mary Russell drove down to negotiate peace. In a heartfelt address she pleaded, “We need McDonald County in this state. You are so very important, you are a beautiful county.” When a local asked if McDonald was back on the map, Russell affirmed it, and the brief rebellion fizzled, leaving the county firmly back within Missouri.

8. The Watauga Association

Before the Revolution even began, a handful of settlers along the Watauga River forged a semi‑autonomous community in what is now Tennessee. In 1772 they settled on land technically belonging to the Cherokee nation, beyond North Carolina’s official borders.

The British Crown ordered the settlers to return, but they negotiated a ten‑year lease with the Cherokee instead. They then drafted a compact, electing five magistrates to govern. Though never formally declaring independence from Britain, the Watauga Association operated outside any colonial authority, making it the first non‑Native American self‑governing body on the continent and the holder of North America’s earliest written constitution.

The fledgling government attracted the ire of the British, yet the empire was slow to react. During the early months of the Revolutionary War the Association fielded its own militia. When the Cherokee, now allied with the British, threatened the settlement, the colonists petitioned North Carolina for protection, ultimately folding back into the state’s jurisdiction.

7. Rough And Ready, California

History’s most impulsive decisions often happen after a few too many drinks, and the miners of Rough and Ready, California were no exception. Fed up with a new federal mining tax, the mostly Wisconsin‑born townsfolk gathered on April 7, 1850 and proclaimed themselves an independent republic, vowing to “form peacefully, if we can, and forcibly, if we must, THE GREAT REPUBLIC OF ROUGH AND READY!”

The self‑declared nation abolished mining taxes and lived in a brief golden age. Yet three months later, on July 4, the patriotic fervor of Independence Day swept the community, and they re‑joined California. Rumor has it that nearby Nevada City saloons refused service to “foreigners,” nudging the miners back into the Union’s fold.

6. Deseret

The early Latter‑Day Saints faced relentless persecution, being driven from Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa before finally settling in the Salt Lake Valley. In 1849, Brigham Young sent a petition to Washington asking for statehood under the grand name Deseret—a term meaning “honeybee” from the Book of Mormon.

The proposed Deseret would have spanned present‑day Nevada, Utah, large swaths of Arizona, and portions of California, New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon. Washington‑era politicians balked at the Mormons’ practice of polygamy and feared the massive theocratic state might become a slave‑friendly stronghold.

While Congress debated, the Mormon community formed its own assembly and enacted laws as the State of Deseret for a year. In 1850 the compromise arrived: Millard Fillmore appointed Brigham Young governor of the much smaller Utah Territory, quelling the push for Deseret. Utah eventually achieved statehood in 1896.

5. Jefferson Territory

In 1855 Kansas carved out Arapahoe County, a sprawling jurisdiction that covered most of modern Colorado. The county, named for the Arapahoe tribe, was largely ignored by the Kansas government, which was preoccupied with the violent “Bleeding Kansas” conflict.

When the 1858 Pikes Peak Gold Rush flooded the area with hopeful miners, frustration boiled over. The settlers declared an illegal territorial government called Jefferson Territory, operating autonomously for 16 months while the nation’s attention remained on the looming Civil War.

4. Nataqua Territory

The mid‑19th‑century West was a patchwork of boomtowns and shifting borders, and the tiny hamlet of Susanville in California’s Honey Lake Valley found itself stuck between California and Utah. Neither jurisdiction appealed, and the residents dreaded being ruled by Salt Lake’s Mormon hierarchy.

To solve the dilemma, locals proclaimed the Nataqua Territory, encompassing roughly a quarter of present‑day Nevada and parts of California. Ironically, a cartographic blunder left Susanville outside the new borders, sparking confusion.

When Nevada was later carved out of western Utah, both California and Nevada claimed Susanville, resulting in double taxation and a two‑year “Sagebrush War.” The conflict ended amicably after a tense standoff when a Californian posse besieged Governor Peter Roop’s cabin; a leg wound and a shared drink led to a cease‑fire, and Nataqua was absorbed into Lassen County, California.

3. The Trans‑Oconee Republic

Elijah Clarke, a Revolutionary War hero from Georgia, felt betrayed by the 1790 Treaty of New York, which forced Georgia to cede western lands back to the Creek tribe. Furious, Clarke raised an army intended for an invasion of Spanish Florida, but the plan collapsed.

Undeterred, Clarke turned his troops toward the reclaimed Creek lands, establishing the Trans‑Oconee Republic and building a chain of forts to protect the fledgling nation.

President George Washington warned Georgia’s Governor George Mathews that an independent republic threatened the young United States. Mathews’ half‑hearted proclamation fell on deaf ears until fellow Georgian George Walton, a signer of the Declaration, demonstrated the illegality of Clarke’s move. Public opinion shifted, Mathews raised 1,200 militiamen, and the promise of amnesty convinced Clarke’s supporters to abandon the cause, ending the republic’s brief existence.

2. The State Of Scott

While the South’s secession is often painted as unanimous, many poor white farmers in places like Scott County, Tennessee, opposed the move. Lacking slaves and wealth, they resisted Tennessee’s June 4, 1861 decision to leave the Union.

Future President Andrew Johnson delivered a fiery speech at Huntsville, prompting residents to proclaim the “Free and Independent State of Scott,” formally seceding from Tennessee and re‑joining the Union.

The fledgling state sparked a bitter guerrilla war as Confederate irregulars tried to regain control. Scott County remained de facto independent for over a century, finally petitioning to re‑enter Tennessee in 1986. The state‑of‑Scott era officially ended with the county’s acceptance as Tennessee’s 95th county.

1. Beaver Island

Amid the many failed statehood bids, one succeeded in an unexpected way: James Strang’s self‑styled monarchy on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. After a botched law career, Strang embraced Mormonism in 1844 and, following Joseph Smith’s assassination, claimed to be the rightful successor.

Strang’s charismatic letter attracted followers who sailed to Beaver Island, establishing a theocratic kingdom of roughly 3,000 adherents. He expelled dissenters, consolidating absolute control over the island.

Under Strang, the island saw rapid development: forests were cleared, roads built, and the settlement “civilized.” He also turned to piracy, using small schooners to burn sawmills, rob craftsmen, and force conversions.

Despite his tyrannical streak, Strang’s regime was surprisingly progressive—women and Black citizens could hold office. However, personal vendettas brewed, most notably with Thomas Bedford, whom Strang had flogged for marital infidelity.

Bedford eventually led a posse that assassinated Strang in 1858. The monarchy collapsed, many followers fled, and the island’s original residents reclaimed it. Yet a small group of about 300 still regard Strang as the true heir to Joseph Smith.

Geoffrey earned seven liberal‑arts degrees that earned him nothing. Follow him on Twitter as he attempts a career in comedy and reflects on his missteps.

When you hear the phrase 10 strange attempts you might picture sci‑fi gadgets or wild conspiracy theories, but the reality is far stranger. Over the past century, governments, researchers, and even a few curious bureaucrats have tried every conceivable trick to sniff out homosexuality – often with dubious science and even more dubious ethics. Below, we rank the most outlandish schemes, from Cold‑War Senate panels to modern AI facial‑recognition experiments.

10 The Hoey Committee’s Investigative Techniques

In 1950, a group of the nation’s most polished minds were gathered into a Senate task force known as the Hoey Committee. Their explicit mission: ferret out the covert presence of gay men lurking within the United States.

The committee quickly discovered that the job was not as straightforward as they had imagined. Senator Margaret Smith, during a briefing with leading medical experts, asked in frustration, “Is there no quick test, like an X‑ray, that can reveal these individuals?”

The surgeon general, however, had to explain that homosexuality does not leave any trace on an X‑ray. While some physicians rambled about sexuality being “complicated” and “fluid,” they refused to hand over any miraculous scanning device that would cause every gay man in America to glow with a neon red aura.

After two years of painstaking research, the Hoey Committee claimed to have identified several unmistakable hallmarks of gay men: they were typically unmarried, they “seldom refuse to talk about themselves,” and they displayed what the committee described as “prissy habits.”

Armed with these criteria, the committee instituted a sprawling system for tracking, marginalizing, and ultimately destroying the lives of gay men, often driving them to tragic ends.

In their final report, they warned that homosexuality was contagious: “One homosexual can pollute a government office.”

9 The Canadian Government’s Fruit Machine

Just north of the United States, Canadian officials were busy engineering a massive contraption they believed could pinpoint any gay man. Dubbed the “Fruit Machine,” this 1960s invention was as mysterious as its name, and the government offered a $10,000 reward for anyone who could prove its efficacy.

The device was described by witnesses as looking like something ripped straight out of a science‑fiction novel: a hulking apparatus bristling with cameras, steel girders, and a screen that intermittently displayed gay pornography.

When a suspect was summoned, an official would say, “We have evidence you may be homosexual. What do you have to say about that?” If the individual denied the accusation, the Fruit Machine became the arbiter.

Subjects were strapped in and forced to watch a series of mundane pictures, interspersed now and then with explicit gay porn. Researchers recorded pulse, skin responses, breathing patterns, and pupil dilation throughout the session.

If a participant’s pupils widened at the sight of gay porn, the machine interpreted this as sexual arousal – though critics noted that the reaction could just as easily be due to darkness, surprise, or nothing at all. In practice, the Fruit Machine proved wildly ineffective.

Nevertheless, the Canadian government remained cautious. Even though the device failed to deliver reliable results, anyone who “failed” the test was compelled to resign, ostensibly protecting the nation from the imagined menace of openly gay citizens walking its streets.

8 The US Park Police’s Pervert Records

The United States Park Police were assigned a special role in the nation’s crusade against perceived homosexual infiltration. After receiving intelligence that gay men favored parks for cruising, a dedicated task force was assembled.

Officers were dramatically increased in number, tasked with monitoring park facilities and, in particular, “sex perverts.” The prevailing belief was that public parks served as popular rendezvous spots for gay men, necessitating vigilant surveillance.

One squad of Park Police spent twelve exhaustive hours, from dusk until dawn, watching the bathroom at Lafayette Park and betting on whether each visitor was gay. Their congressional report declared, “I do not believe a half‑dozen legitimate persons go in there to answer Nature’s call.”

Thanks to this relentless observation, the government concluded that anyone using a public park bathroom could be presumed homosexual. The policy was taken seriously enough that a CIA employee was dismissed after being spotted “changing around the men’s room in Lafayette Park.”

7 J. Edgar Hoover’s Sex Deviates Program

J. Edgar Hoover personally championed the FBI’s “Sex Deviates” program, shifting the bureau’s focus away from organized crime and terrorism and onto what he deemed the true threat: gay men infiltrating government.

Under Hoover’s directive, any individual accused of concealing a homosexual orientation was immediately reported to the chief of investigations. The FBI then deployed its full arsenal—surveillance of homes, monitoring of favorite bars and restaurants, and psychological profiling—to uncover patterns indicative of gayness.

Agents would sometimes intervene early, apprehending suspects while they lingered near notorious park restrooms. The most diligent operatives waited until they could capture “acts of perversion” on camera before moving in.

Hoover’s obsession was so intense that rumors suggest he occasionally turned up at gay orgies himself, a grim illustration of how the perceived contagion of homosexuality was believed to “cough” on even the most powerful figures.

6 The Gulf Cooperation Council Homosexuality Test

The hunt for a surefire gay‑detecting method did not stop with the Cold War; it traveled far beyond the West. In 2013, Kuwait’s director of public health, Yousuf Mindkar, announced a sweeping plan to bolster the nation’s gaydar.

Mindkar vowed to introduce stricter measures that would help the country spot gay individuals, stating, “We will take stricter measures that will help us detect gays.” His proposal called for a revision of visa rules, requiring doctors to certify every incoming traveler as heterosexual before granting entry.

The specifics of how physicians would conduct such a test were never clarified, but Mindkar insisted it would be a simple procedure, confident that any doctor worldwide could identify the “physical markings” of homosexuality.

International backlash forced Mindkar to retreat. FIFA expressed concerns that his policy could bar fans from attending the 2022 World Cup, and critics in the United States argued the plan would prevent anyone who simply enjoyed soccer from entering Kuwait, effectively barring a whole demographic.

5 The Malaysian Guide To Spotting A Gay

In 2018, Malaysia’s tabloid Sinar Harian published a checklist purporting to teach readers how to identify gay men. The article claimed that certain observable traits could betray a man’s sexual orientation.

According to the checklist, gay men typically sport beards, favor branded clothing, stay close to family, and frequent gyms. However, once inside the gym, the article warned, the gay male would rarely exercise; instead, he would stare longingly at other men, his eyes lighting up whenever a handsome physique appeared.

The piece also addressed lesbians, asserting that they displayed “venomous attitudes toward men” while being open and carefree around women. It claimed lesbians would hold hands and hug each other openly, yet harbored a deep disdain for men, deriving any joy they felt from belittling the opposite sex.

4 The Scientific Study Into Gay Faces

In 2008, researchers Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady at Tufts University tackled a long‑standing question: do gay people possess distinct facial characteristics that set them apart?

The team photographed both heterosexual and homosexual participants, meticulously stripping away variables such as hairstyle by Photoshop‑removing hair and placing every face against a uniform white backdrop. This left only cheekbones, eyebrows, and other subtle features for analysis.

When a separate group of 90 observers were shown these stripped‑down images and asked to guess each subject’s orientation, the participants reportedly identified gay faces more often than not, leading the researchers to claim that a “gay face” does indeed exist, even if observers are unaware of it.

3 Stanford University’s Gaydar Machine

In 2017, Stanford professor Michael Kosinski pushed the gay‑detecting frontier further by creating a machine he called a “gaydar.” He and co‑author Yilun Wang fed a facial‑recognition algorithm 75,000 online dating profiles, sorting them into “gay” and “straight” categories.

The AI was trained to spot recurring patterns in what the researchers termed “gay facial features.” To test its prowess, they pitted the program against human judges, asking each to identify whether a photo belonged to a gay or straight person.

Humans performed only marginally better than a coin flip, while the algorithm correctly labeled gay men 81 % of the time and lesbians 74 % of the time—though its accuracy dropped sharply when applied to non‑dating‑app photos.

Thus, Kosinski’s machine proved effective at detecting sexuality when subjects deliberately presented themselves in a way that highlighted gay cues, but it faltered with ordinary, uncurated images.

2 The Attempt To Isolate The Gay Gene

During the 2015 American Society of Human Genetics conference, UC researcher Tuck Ngun announced a breakthrough: he claimed to have isolated a “gay gene.”

Ngun’s study focused on 37 pairs of identical male twins, where one brother identified as gay and the other as straight. He reported five DNA methylation marks that he believed signaled homosexuality.

However, the broader scientific community quickly pointed out flaws. By scanning 6,000 methylation sites across only 37 twin pairs, the study was statistically destined to find spurious patterns. Moreover, the purported “gay gene” appeared in only 67 % of the gay participants, casting doubt on its reliability.

1 Penile Plethysmograph

One of the more enduring devices touted as a gaydar is the penile plethysmograph, a tool still used in certain scientific contexts today. The Czechoslovakian army once employed it to verify whether men claiming exemption from the draft on the grounds of homosexuality were being truthful.

The procedure involves affixing a slender metal strip to the penis, then exposing the subject to a series of gay pornographic clips while measuring the organ’s engorgement. The device records how erect the participant becomes in response to each image.

While there are certainly simpler ways to gauge someone’s sexual orientation—such as noting that a researcher who obsessively measures penile responses might themselves be gay—the plethysmograph has persisted in research circles.

Proponents claim it is the most accurate test available, boasting a 32 % success rate in correctly identifying a man’s sexual preferences—making it, statistically, no better than flipping a coin, but still the most “proven” method on record.

10 Strange Attempts Overview

The quest for a reliable, real‑life gaydar has produced a parade of bizarre, ethically questionable, and often downright ineffective schemes. From Senate committees consulting surgeons to AI‑driven facial analysis, each attempt reflects the era’s anxieties and the lengths to which authorities will go to police sexuality. While modern science has largely debunked the notion of a foolproof gaydar, the historical record remains a fascinating—and unsettling—chronicle of human curiosity gone awry.

What did you think about when you saw the name of this article? Did you click on it because you already know the answer and wanted to see if we got it right? Or maybe because you never actually wondered about this yourself and it made you curious? Or do you think about this often and haven’t come up with an answer on your own?

5 The Basic Science

How Does Your Brain Fire Neurons?

Let’s start with some fundamentals. How does your brain do anything? Neurons. Neurons are the basic building blocks that make your brain do everything from ensuring you keep breathing to creating new mathematical formulas if that’s something you do. Neurons make it all happen. 

Neurons are nerve cells and they group together in neural tracts and send signals to one another. They receive sensory input from outside of the brain, which could be anything from signals in your stomach about food you’re digesting to smells in the air, music you’re hearing, a movie you’re watching or a cold breeze you feel on your neck. 

The neurons send electrical signals between each other and also throughout your nervous system, controlling your entire body in response to the sensory input they receive. Some of it is totally out of your control, like the way your intestines contract as food is digested or the way your heart beats. Some of it is all up to you, like deciding if you want to go for a walk or just veg on the sofa. But how your neurons work controls it all. 

To manage everything your brain needs to control, you have between 80 and 100 billion neurons. These are connected by synapses of which you have 500 trillion. Electrical impulses are formed in the neuron thanks to positive ions flowing across the cell membrane. Any given neuron is permeable to both sodium ions and potassium ions, but the flow of potassium out is larger than the leak of sodium in, which allows for a negative inner charge until the neuron actually fires and the sodium channels open. Then these ions are exchanged thanks to action potential. Sodium rushes in and the neuron is depolarized. Potassium channels open and the potassium rushes out. A little spark is formed and your neuron can send a signal to the next in line. Now imagine it happening millions of times along the axons that connect your neurons.

When your neurons send impulses, they create neurotransmitters. These cause other neurons to fire. As the neurotransmitters spread, hundreds and then thousands of neurons will fire, and this is essentially how a thought is formed. 

So, in simple terms, stimulus from outside the brain sends a nerve signal to the brain. That causes the neuron to fire. The neuron produces neurotransmitters that make a chain reaction across many neurons, thought forms as a result. This happens in a fraction of a second, up to about half a second. 

Of course, your brain has many sections that govern many different functions, but we’re not getting into deep neuroscience here, just how the thing works in the first place. With that in mind, let’s look a little closer at what it does now that we know how it does it. 

4 What Your Brain Does

One thing to remember about those firing neurons in your brain will form patterns for you. If you do things repeatedly, the same way, your brain will create a neural pathway that actually strengthens as you continue to do and react the same way. That can, in part, explain why people get into routines and habits. Your brain is quite literally wired to do things a certain way if you allow it to happen. That’s also why learning to do something a new way once you’ve adapted to a different way can be difficult. Your brain has established it should be done one way and you’re trying to write a new pattern for it. 

Learning things makes the connections between neurons, and these neural pathways, stronger. You have reinforced the thought, an idea, a behavior, whatever it is. It is now something you know. The more you do it, the stronger it gets, the better you are at it. That is why repetition and practice are often essential to learning. 

Your brain weighs about three pounds and is made of both gray matter and white matter. The gray matter is on the outside and it allows you to process and interpret the information that you receive from all the external stimuli and sensory data in the world. The white matter is inside, and that sends information to different parts of your brain and throughout your nervous system so you can do things and react to what you’re experiencing.

How does your brain decide what to do, when, and where? That’s an anatomy question.

3 Brainatomy!

There are multiple parts to your brain, but three main parts comprise the whole thing. The front of your brain is called the cerebrum. That’s where you find the cerebral cortex. This is a full 80% of your brain, so most of what you’re doing happens here. The cerebrum is where you interpret external stimuli like things you see and hear. It’s also where you do your learning, your reasoning, speaking, and where emotions are controlled.

Next up is the cerebellum. This little guy is in the back of your brain, just above the brainstem. Do you have any motor skills whatsoever? Can you stand upright without falling down? Thank your cerebellum for that. It handles balance, coordination, and your fine motor skills.

Speaking of your brainstem, that’s the last part. There are several sections in your brain stem, and the whole part is chiefly concerned with the more automatic functions of your body. Things like chewing and blinking are controlled in your brain stem, as well as breathing, sleeping, and your heart rate.

But wait, you might say. What about your frontal lobe? Or your occipital lobe? Those are in there too, and they are part of the cerebrum. Your brain has two hemispheres and four main lobes. The frontal lobe, which is obviously located at the front, controls things like personality, speaking, decision-making, and, for whatever reason, your ability to smell.

In the middle, you’ll find the parietal lobes that aid in spatial understanding, your sense of touch and pain, object identification, and understanding speech.

At the back of the brain, you’ll find your occipital lobes and those help you with seeing things and understanding visual stimuli. Understanding movement, color, and shape all happens in the occipital lobes.

Last but not least is your temporal lobes. These help with short-term memory, smell again, facial recognition, and emotional awareness.

There are also a number of other structures in your brain, including the amygdala, the hippocampus, the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus, the prefrontal cortex, and so on. As you can see, it’s a real mixed bag when it comes to what part of your brain does what. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of organizational structure going on there, so the whole thing needs to work together to have a fully functional mind.

So maybe now we have a basic idea of how thoughts are formed in a brain, but what about consciousness? That’s not a reaction to external stimuli. Where does the you that exist in your brain come from?

2 Consciousness

We’ve got good news and bad news when it comes to explaining consciousness. The good news is, if you’re experiencing any of what we’re saying right now, you are conscious. The bad news is that’s about all science can tell you about your consciousness.

Something in the way that all your neurons and synapses connect throughout your entire brain creates your conscious experience. But what does that even mean? We can say fairly certainly that consciousness is a product of your brain. If you undergo anesthesia, your consciousness actually disappears for a short time. You’re not asleep, you’re not dreaming, and there’s no sense of yourself anymore because anesthesia shuts off nearly all the electrical activity in your brain.

If you want a specific answer about how the inner workings of your brain allow consciousness to form, then you’re going to have to wait for a while. We don’t have an answer to that yet.

We can describe some of the dimensions of consciousness, what needs to happen for consciousness to be a thing. That includes the ability to have thoughts and feelings and be aware of them, some degree of wakefulness, and some degree of sensory organization that allows us to group concepts and perceptions together in an understandable way.

All of those things are more philosophical than biological, however. There’s a little crossover, but the ability to have thoughts and feelings isn’t really a scientific concept that can be explained in the same way as sodium and potassium ions moving in and out of neurons in your brain. Some have argued that your consciousness can’t actually be a biological process and that biology only represents the consciousness in the way a frown may represent sadness. It shows the emotion, but it is not the felt emotion, just like patterns in your brain may show consciousness but are not consciousness itself.

MRIs and EEGs show that there is more activity in your thalamus and its connections through your brain when you are awake than asleep. We know something is happening in there, but not what or how. Sorry if that’s disappointing.

1 What We Don’t Know

The fact is even neuroscientists can’t explain to you with a lot of detail how a brain works because there are so many things they don’t know. Those trillions of synapses we mentioned earlier? Each one is home to 100,000 molecular switches. Each of those is full of protein molecules that transmit information between themselves.

Given that studying thought and consciousness requires investigating a living brain and not damaging it while studying it, you can see how it would be almost impossible to fully map a conscious mind when you’re dealing with such ungainly numbers and such sensitive material.

We have a general understanding of how you can learn something, but not how your brain processes the information. In order to fully understand the human brain, we probably have to map it. So far, only a handful of organisms have had their brains fully mapped. It took four years to make a basic map of a mouse brain and a human brain has 1,100 times as many neurons. A team of scientists around the world have been collaborating on the project for years now and many millions of dollars have been spent, but we’re only a fraction of the way through the job.

One of the big problems with understanding how a brain works and even mapping it is that your brain and my brain are not the same brain. Neural pathways are formed differently, and information is processed differently. There are people out there who have severe brain damage, have even lost portions of their brain, whose brains are able to adapt and alter function. So even a map of the brain can’t explain everything about how a human mind works because it’s very subjective.

Neuroscientists have written extensively about many things we don’t know. For instance, the number of neurons is a ballpark number. We don’t know exactly how many a brain has, and it’s probably safe to assume that your brain and my brain have different numbers of neurons because neurogenesis exists and that can create neurons, while others can be destroyed.

We don’t know why drinking alcohol makes you feel relaxed. We don’t even know exactly how Tylenol works in your brain. We’re not sure why the left side of your brain is linked to the right side of your body, and vice versa. We don’t even know why we dream.

While we are learning more and more about the biology of the brain, the fact is there’s just a lot about what it can do and why that we can only guess at.

When you wander into the great outdoors, you quickly realize that 10 things people have tucked away among the trees, rocks, and streams, turning wilderness into a clandestine gallery. The rustle of leaves, the scent of pine, and the distant call of a bird become the backdrop for secret projects that blend art, mystery, and a dash of mischief. Below we count down the most captivating creations that have been concealed in nature, each waiting for a curious explorer to stumble upon it.

10 Things People: The Hidden Wonders of Nature

10 Giants

If you ever stray from the paved trails of a Copenhagen forest, you might be greeted by six towering wooden giants. Danish sculptor Thomas Dambo fashioned these massive figures from reclaimed timber and slipped them into the woods, letting hikers discover them by chance. Some blend seamlessly among lofty trunks, others recline on gentle slopes, and one even peeks out from beneath a bridge like a mischievous troll.

Dambo explains, “As humans, we often have a way of choosing the beaten path and the main roads.” His aim was to nudge people off the familiar routes and into the forest’s hidden corners. He dubs the project an “open‑air sculpture treasure hunt,” complete with a map on his website, stone‑etched poems, and riddles that guide seekers from one giant to the next.

9 Eyes

Australian artist Jennifer Allnutt answered Nietzsche’s famous warning—“if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee”—by painting hyper‑realistic eyes onto stones. She selects smooth rocks from the wild, coats them with lifelike pigment, and then returns each stone to the exact spot where she found it, turning the forest floor into a silent stare‑contest.

Allnutt says, “I’m fascinated by those in‑between, grey areas, intangibles and ambiguities and then fusing these into the physicality and language of paint.” Her ocular rocks invite passersby to wonder whether the abyss is indeed looking back. If a stone’s gaze goes unnoticed, she’s content—its secret remains safely hidden.

8 Living Artifacts

Carving initials into a tree is a rite of passage for many, but centuries‑old arboreal inscriptions—known as arborglyphs—elevate this habit into archaeology. These markings, etched into living trunks, survive only as long as the tree lives, turning each tree into a temporal record.

One of the most prolific sources of arborglyphs are mid‑1800s Basque shepherds who, isolated in the western United States, etched intricate designs and verses onto the smooth bark of aspen trees. Their solitude among the sheep inspired a wealth of drawings, poetry, and even simple statements.

Researchers have catalogued roughly 20,000 of these living artifacts across the mountains of California, Oregon, and Nevada. One carving reads, Es trieste a vivir solo (“It is sad to live alone”), offering a poignant glimpse into the shepherds’ solitary lives—stories that would otherwise be lost to history.

7 Geocaches

Geocaching turns the wilderness into a global scavenger hunt. Participants use GPS coordinates to locate hidden containers—known as caches—left by other adventurers. The activity has surged in popularity thanks to smartphones, making it easy for families and solo trekkers alike to chase down treasure spots worldwide.

A typical cache is a small, waterproof box that houses at least a pen and a logbook, allowing finders to sign their code name and perhaps leave a trinket. The “take one, leave one” ethos encourages exchange of tiny toys, gems, or other curiosities among seekers.

Some caches push the limits of difficulty: an underwater cache reachable only by scuba divers, or a mock bird’s nest complete with faux eggs and a guard‑bird sculpture. These challenges add layers of intrigue to the simple act of hiding a box in the woods.

6 Twisting Branches

French artist Spencer Byles fashions whimsical sculptures from twigs and branches, twisting them into fantastical limbs that seem to sprout from the earth by magic. After a year of living in seclusion along the Loup River, he left behind a series of these ethereal structures, each woven from the very wood he gathered on site.

Byles reflects, “The force of life and growth and the slow disintegration of all living things has always fascinated me.” He deliberately keeps the locations secret, preferring that hikers discover the pieces serendipitously rather than through a map or social media post.

5 Fairy Homes

Stories of tiny, winged fairies have long captivated children and the young‑at‑heart. Communities across the United States keep that wonder alive by constructing miniature fairy houses along nature trails. In Roswell, Georgia, the Chattahoochee Nature Center’s trail hides fifteen such dwellings, tucked into stumps and bushes, built from twigs, pine cones, moss, rocks, and feathers.

Further north, upstate New York’s seldom‑used trail boasts twenty ornate fairy cottages, each with painted doors that open to reveal delicate steps and ladders. Similar installations have popped up on Maine’s islands and throughout San Francisco Bay, inviting visitors to reconnect with their inner child.

4 Treasure Chest

In 2010, eccentric millionaire Forrest Fenn announced that he had concealed a 19‑kilogram chest brimming with gold coins, antique relics, a jade carving, and a jar of Alaskan gold dust somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. He scattered poetic clues across the nation, sparking a modern‑day treasure hunt that has drawn countless adventurers.

The quest has been perilous: two seekers have died, and several others have suffered serious injuries while chasing the prize. Because participants guard the location of the chest to preserve their advantage, rescue efforts are hampered when accidents occur. Fenn’s original intention was to inspire people to explore the outdoors, not to endanger lives.

3 Time Capsule

On Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard archipelago, scientists buried a stainless‑steel tube 5 meters deep in a fjord, intending it to remain untouched for at least half a million years. The capsule, sealed in 2017, preserves a snapshot of contemporary civilization for any future discoverers.

Inside, researchers placed DNA samples from humans, rats, salmon, and potatoes, a bee encased in resin, and roughly 300 tardigrades—microscopic “water bears” famed for surviving extreme conditions. They also included a 4.5‑billion‑year‑old meteorite fragment, Namibian sand containing diamond particles, and Icelandic lava. Technological artifacts range from a basic mobile phone to a radiation detector, plus a porcelain‑etched photograph of Earth taken from space.

Permafrost specialist Marek Lewandowski explains, “I wanted to create a memorial for the ages.” His hope is that a distant, perhaps alien, civilization will uncover the capsule and decode the story of our time.

2 Graffiti

Even the most secluded rock formations can become canvases for urban artists. In Riverside, California, a hidden spot known as Graffiti Waterfall transforms a mound of rocks into a vivid, multicolored cascade. Every crevice brims with bright swirls and tags, a testament to the urge to leave a mark in even the most unlikely places.

Spray cans are lightweight, portable, and empower anyone to proclaim, “I was here.” The site attracts daring climbers who scale the steep rock pile to add their own splash of color, turning the natural landscape into a living gallery.

1 Nature Art

Andy Goldsworthy is a master of fleeting, site‑specific art created from natural materials that surrender to the elements. Whether he stacks ice between two trunks, arranges poppy petals into a vivid red line down an ancient Spanish staircase, or places golden leaves around a sycamore to make it appear luminous, his work constantly challenges perception.

Goldsworthy reflects, “It’s not about art, it’s just about life and the need to understand that a lot of things in life do not last.” He documents each piece photographically, and his daring pursuits have taken him to icy cliffs, mangrove swamps, and remote wildernesses, often enduring bruises and cuts to bring his transient visions to life.