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On 19 October 2017, astronomers at Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii detected 1I/ʻOumuamua, the first confirmed interstellar object to pass through our solar system. The elongated visitor had already swung past Earth five days earlier, travelling at 26 kilometres per second on a hyperbolic trajectory that meant it would never return. Its unusual acceleration and reddish surface sparked debate about its composition and origin. In October 2000, researchers published findings in Nature claiming to have revived Bacillus permians, a bacterium trapped in a New Mexico salt crystal for 250 million years, raising questions about the limits of biological dormancy and the possibility of ancient life on other worlds. And on 19 October 1596, the Spanish galleon San Felipe ran aground off Japan. A dispute over the cargo and an ill-judged boast about Spanish imperial strategy contributed to the execution of 26 Christians in 1597 and accelerated Japan’s turn toward sakoku, a policy of near-total isolation that lasted over two centuries. Three moments when the universe arrived uninvited, and humans scrambled to make sense of what turned up.