King of Donair's doner kebab cam and other weird and wonderful livestreams you can watch right now

If an explorer from the 1400s zapped onto your front lawn in a time machine and asked you to describe the most important invention of the past few centuries, you'd likely tell him about the internet and explain how almost every piece of human knowledge is available at the push of a few buttons.

You'd probably leave out the part about how it's being used to share cat videos and – to the delight of Twitter users this morning – to livestream a rotating doner kebab spindle in the Canadian city of Halifax, Nova Scotia. You might want to break that to him when he's sitting down.

That's not to say that the livestream of the 'elephant leg' at King of Donair in Halifax isn't utterly mesmerising. Just try to deny that there isn't something deeply soothing about watching the shop clerks gesturing portion sizes with their hands and twiddling the knobs on the heater. And nothing quite matches the satisfaction of watching the pieces of lamb fall elegantly as the doner is carved. You'd tell your new time-travelling friend, sure you have Michelangelo, but you've not lived until you've seen a slowly turning hunk of lamb.

In that spirit, here are a few other weird and wonderful webcams that you can tune into right now.

Drive Me Insane

For reasons that are unclear, a married couple known as Restil and Gertie have given up control of the lights in a room in their home to strangers on the internet since 1997. In real time, you can turn on and off lamps including a plasma ball, spin a disco ball, and watch to see if it spikes their "current insanity level" in the corner of the screen.

Watching Grass Grow

This is a webcam where you can, yep, watch grass grow. More specifically, the grass on the lawn of a family home in Colorado. "Mr. Grass" has been streaming his garden since 2003, when a drought lead to water rationing and caused their lawn to become patchy.

Viewers have watched as the greenery goes from scrubby to lush. Other highlights include the yard being covered in Halloween and Christmas decorations and regular visits from the waste disposal team.

The International Space Station

Join the 165.6 million people who have already tuned in to this stream from the International Space Station. Depending on where the camera is being pointed, you might see inside the lab, the Earth, or a sunrise or sunset as the ISS completes its 90-minute loops of our planet.

You can also hear the crew members contact Mission Control.

The Last McDonald's in Iceland

While the fast food chain is ubiquitous in the UK and US, the last branch in Iceland closed in 2009. Hjörtur Smárason was its final customer. Instead of eating his burger and fries, he chose to keep them in their original packaging and document how they change in a glass box. The meal is currently at the Bus Hostel in Reykjavik.