TSA Reveals The Craziest Things It Found In 2013

The TSA has published its annual "Year in Review" blog post for 2013, counting up the craziest and scariest things it found last year.

It was a record-breaking 12 months. TSA officers discovered 1,813 firearms, more than 80% of them loaded. That's an all-time high, and a 16.5% jump over 2012's haul of 1,556.

Included in the "notable firearm incidents" category is the time officers found a fully loaded .22 caliber gun in the boot of a passenger at Salt Lake City. Also, the seven undeclared firearms found in a checked toolbox at Miami.

Here's sampling of some TSA firearm finds:

When you search 1.7 million passengers a day, you find more than guns. There were a lot of swords hidden in canes as well:

And fragments of a human skull, discovered in clay pots in a checked bag at Fort Lauderdale. "They did slow screening down a bit since the area quickly became a crime scene," the TSA writes.

Someone hid this wood and metal mace in their carry-on bag:

A particularly scary find was this inert suicide vest belonging to an explosives instructor, discovered at Indianapolis in March. At the time, the TSA recommended that other instructors "contact their preferred shipper about mailing the training aids to their destination."

And this is just a sampling of the throwing stars found in 2013:

So far in 2014, things haven't slowed down. The TSA reported earlier this month it found 42 guns, 37 of them loaded, in the space of a week.