The strangest thing in my house is this "handmade" fan, made of welded metal pieces. It's loud, ugly, and weighs as much as a bad marriage, but in its 36 years (it was made when I was born) it has been a real workhorse; unless you throw it from a tenth-floor window, it's almost impossible to break.

The electric motor is disproportionately large for a fan; according to my father, it comes from a Soviet washing machine's dryer. The blade is a sheet of iron, cut and shaped as needed. The rest of the parts are whatever was on hand at the time, meaning recycled material.

Next to more modern fans, it looks like what it is: an awkwardly ugly relic, but it has outlasted all the modern fans in the house, and everything seems to indicate it will maintain that unbeaten streak.