Dust to dust…

Discover 12 of the strangest Last Will requests ever

Image: Melinda Gimpel

Thinking about one’s own demise is not a pleasant task for most of us. Still, it’s wise to make preparations in case the worst happens, to ensure your material possessions are handled according to your wishes. The same goes for any plans you might have for your funeral. Last wills are fairly common, but as it happens, in some cases, people go beyond the usual, leading to the 12 extraordinary examples that follow.

Image: Vitaliy Shevchenko

The first name on the list belongs to one of the greatest magicians of all time—Harry Houdini, who died in 1926 from a ruptured appendix.

Houdini’s library of books on magic and the occult was offered to the American Society for Psychical Research on the condition that J. Malcolm Bird, the society’s research officer and editor of its journal, resign. Bird refused, and the collection instead went to the Library of Congress.

Houdini also left his wife a secret code—ten random words they had agreed upon—that he would use to contact her from the afterlife.

Image: Kenny Eliason

When news billionaire William Randolph Hearst died in 1951, he included a clause in his will addressing rumors that he had children out of wedlock. Anyone claiming to be his illegitimate child, the will stated, would receive "the sum of one dollar." He added, "I hereby declare that any such asserted claim... would be utterly false."

No one ever came forward.

Image: Paweł Bulwan

When hatmaker S. Sanborn died in 1871, he stipulated in his will that two drums be made from his skin and given to a friend, on the condition that every June 17 at dawn, the friend would play "Yankee Doodle" at Bunker Hill to commemorate the anniversary of the famous Revolutionary War battle.

The rest of his body was to be composted into fertilizer to nourish an American elm tree, to be planted along a rural roadside.

Image: Libby Penner

John Bowman, a wealthy tanner from Vermont, believed he would be reincarnated along with his deceased wife and two daughters. To prepare for their return, his will established a $50,000 trust fund to maintain his mansion and mausoleum.

The will required that dinner be served every night, just in case the Bowmans were hungry upon returning from the dead. This ritual continued from his death in 1891 until 1950, when the trust fund was finally depleted.

Image: Chewy

Eleanor E. Ritchey, heiress to the Quaker State Refining Corporation, left her $4.5 million fortune to her 150 dogs when she died in Florida in 1968. The will was contested, and by 1973, the dogs were awarded $9 million.

By the time the estate was finally settled, its value had grown to $14 million—but only 73 of the original 150 dogs were still alive. When the last dog died in 1984, the remaining estate passed to the Auburn University Research Foundation to fund research into animal diseases.

Image: Sérgio Alves Santos

Janis Joplin, the legendary singer known for her soulful voice and hard-living lifestyle, died of a drug overdose in 1970. Her will included a $2,500 provision to fund an all-night, posthumous party for 200 guests at her favorite pub in San Anselmo, California—"so my friends can get blasted after I'm gone."

Image: Quino Al

Portuguese aristocrat Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara made headlines when he randomly selected 70 names from the Lisbon phone directory and named them as beneficiaries in his will.

Understandably, many of the recipients initially thought it was a scam—most had never even heard of him before learning they had inherited part of his estate.

Image: Sophie Shankey

Billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley left the majority of her estimated $8 billion estate in charitable trusts for "purposes related to the care of dogs." She specifically set aside a $12 million trust fund for her Maltese dog, Trouble, and disinherited two of her grandchildren "for reasons known to them."

The disinherited grandchildren contested the will, claiming that Helmsley lacked mental capacity when she made it. The dispute was settled with half of Trouble’s trust—$6 million—being awarded to the grandchildren.

Image: Jay Kettle-Williams

Billionaire Wellington Burt ensured that his fortune would remain inaccessible to his heirs for nearly a century. He died in 1919 and included a "spite clause" in his will, which stipulated that his wealth would be distributed only 21 years after the death of his last surviving grandchild. That grandchild died in 1989, meaning the 21-year countdown ended in 2010.

Image: Carlos Quintero

Comedian Jack Benny’s widow, Mary Livingstone, wrote in a magazine shortly after his death in 1974: "Every day since Jack died, the florist has delivered one long-stemmed red rose to my home. I learned Jack had actually included a provision in his will for the flowers—one red rose to be delivered to me every day for the rest of my life."

Image: Nick Stephenson

People leave all kinds of things in their wills, and dates are no exception. In 1891, about three years before his death, novelist Robert Louis Stevenson learned that the 12-year-old daughter of the U.S. Commissioner to Samoa, where he was living at the time, was unhappy because her birthday fell on Christmas Day.

Stevenson left his birthday, November 13th, to little Annie to adopt as her own, provided she took care of it with "moderation and humanity… the said birthday not being so young as it once was."

Image: Totte Annerbrink

Mark Gruenwald, a comic book writer best known for his work on Captain America, requested that when he died in 1996, his ashes be mixed into the ink used to print the first trade paperback anthology of Squadron Supreme, another of his landmark creations.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

Stranger Than Fiction: 10 Unbelievable Events That Actually Happened

Image: Diana van Ormondt

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and some of these historical events are living proof of this old adage.

Brace yourself for a rollercoaster ride through history, where the strange and unexpected take center stage in the theater of reality. From absurd battles to mysterious weather phenomena, these 10 astonishing tales will leave you thinking long and hard about the complexities of human history.

Image: Sharon Co Images

Wars are typically waged between nations, but in 1932, Australia faced an unusual adversary: emus. After large numbers of these flightless birds invaded crucial farmland within Western Australia’s Wheatbelt, the government decided to intervene by sending soldiers armed with machine guns to reduce the emu population in the area. However, most attempts were ineffective at most, killing very few birds and costing thousands of dollars in supplies and ammunition.

As soon as the first shot was fired, the seemingly tame emu dispersed way beyond the range of the machine guns, and apparently switched to guerrilla tactics of sorts, avoiding all further military ambushes and frontal attacks while still feasting on the farmer’s crops. The government’s futile attempts were ridiculed and physical barrier methods to manage wildlife were preferred from then on. Sadly, they give no medals for having endured the Great Emu War.

Image: Hannah Skelly

In 1518, the town of Strasbourg, France, was gripped by a strange and inexplicable phenomenon - people suddenly began dancing uncontrollably in the streets. The dancing madness persisted for weeks, with some of the affected succumbing to exhaustion or even death. The authorities at the time did not know how to react, and some people even joined the dancers voluntarily, as they feared it was a punishment from Saint Vitus (and presumably wanted to stay on the safe side).

After many efforts to fight the strange epidemic, the dancing eventually subsided and people in the town could resume their normal lives. While theories range from mass hysteria to hallucinogenic substances and neurological disorders like Sydenham's chorea, the event remains a historical enigma that challenges our understanding of the human mind and collective behavior.

Image: Nima Sarram

In 1908, a massive explosion flattened over 80 million trees in the remote Tunguska region of Siberia. The cause? A mysterious airburst, likely caused by the explosion of a meteoroid or comet in Earth's atmosphere. It is now estimated that the event had an explosive energy of 3 to 5 megatons, equivalent to over a thousand Hiroshima bombs. The resulting shockwave broke windows, and knocked people down hundreds of miles away, reaching an equivalent of an earthquake of 5.0 on the Richter scale in some areas.

A bright glow was observed in night skies in Asia and Europe for days after the event due to high-altitude ice particles that formed as a result of the explosion. For all its magnitude, the explosion left no visible crater and minimal debris beside the devastated forest. The Tunguska Event serves as a stark reminder of the potential cosmic threats that lurk in the darkness of space.

Image: British Library

Miscommunication can often lead to chaos, but rarely on the scale witnessed in the Battle of Karánsebes in 1788. The Austrian army, at the time facing the Ottoman Empire, descended into total anarchy when two different scouting parties mistook one another for the enemy, fired on each other, and raised the alarm.

Making matters worse, the Austrian army was made of men of different nationalities who more often than not could not understand each other. All attempts to end confusion and the ensuing friendly fire on the part of the Austrian emperor himself were in vain, and after a while - deeply demoralized - he was forced to give the order of retreat. When the Ottoman army arrived two days later, they found an empty battlefield and were able to take the city of Karánsebes without any resistance.

Image: Aswathy N

In 1807, eight years before Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte had a humiliating defeat at the hands of a strange opponent - a horde of rabbits. During the celebrations that followed the Treaties of Tilsit - which effectively ended the war between the French and Imperial Russia - Napoleon’s chief of staff Alexandre Berthier had the idea of organizing a rabbit hunt to entertain its guests.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary for the time, but when the rabbits were simultaneously freed along the edges of a grassy field, instead of scattering as expected, all these fluffy beasts began running toward their amused hunters. But the fits of laughter didn’t last long, as the now-hunted hunters realized that there was nothing they could do to stop the relentless animals as they swarmed their positions and had no other choice than to flee. Some accounts state that Berthier had gathered around 3000 rabbits, so not even mighty Napoleon was a match for this unexpected army.

Apparently, the chief of staff's mistake was buying tame rabbits from local farmers, accustomed to being fed by humans, instead of trapping wild hares for the hunt. If we learned anything from the Great Emu War, the lesson is clear: never underestimate animals!

Image: Mitsuo Komoriya

In the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia - the largest in at least 1,300 years - 1816 became known as the "Year Without a Summer." The volcanic ash floating in the atmosphere led to climate abnormalities worldwide, resulting in crop failures and widespread famine in the most affected areas.

In Europe and North America temperatures plummeted, and most crops suffered irreparable damage due to the persistent frost. In the United States, a "dry fog" was observed in the eastern regions, dimming sunlight so much that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Also, the high level of volcanic particles present in the atmosphere caused strange optical effects in the following years, such as strong red hues during sunsets, which can be observed in many paintings produced at the time.

Image: Tiana Attride

It seems that wars against unusual adversaries are a fashionable trend in human history because the Roman Emperor Caligula declared war in the year 40 AD on no one other than the god Neptune himself, king of the raging seas.

Known for his eccentricity, Caligula allegedly ordered his legionnaires to "attack" the sea with swords and spears, after which he declared victory against the powerful god and told the men to gather seashells as trophies of war. One can only imagine that the soldiers had a fun -albeit puzzling- day.

Image: Tim Mossholder

In the late 1980s, Pepsi briefly possessed the sixth-largest navy in the world. In exchange for commercializing Pepsi products in the Soviet Union, the company received 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer.

However, the fleet was composed of obsolete and unseaworthy vessels that were destined to be turned into scrap almost immediately. The payment was made in the only resources the USSR could gather easily at the time, and it provided a way to establish profitable international relations - and open up to the world.

Image: Garry T

The American Civil War started and concluded with a curious connection to Wilmer McLean, an American wholesale grocer from Virginia. The conflict's first major battle, the First Battle of Bull Run, took place in McLean's farm in 1861. A cannonball fell directly through the kitchen fireplace of the McLean’s house, which was being used as headquarters for the Confederate Army, destroying the dinner that was being prepared by the stationed officers - something that was noted not without humor by the Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard.

The McLean family moved to Appomattox, Virginia trying to escape the war, but just four years later, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in McLean's parlor, marking the conclusion of the Civil War. Unintentionally, McLean was a prime witness of one of America’s most defining conflicts. Later, he said of this: "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor."

Image: Snowscat

Genghis Khan's vast empire and brutal military campaigns had an unexpected impact on the Earth's climate. A recent study suggests that the Mongol invasions in the 13th century led to a significant reduction in global carbon dioxide levels, as large areas of cultivated land returned to forests.

This had the unintentional effect of scrubbing as much as 700 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, roughly equivalent to the global annual consumption of gasoline today. This drastic ecological shift highlights the effect that land use, and particularly deforestation can have on our planet at a large scale.