June 1932: The winners of an arc-welding essay contest, sponsored by the Lincoln Electric Company of Cleveland, received their prize checks written on steel plates. The plates were a foot high, an inch thick, and two feet long.
The local bank accepted the checks and then used a gun to cancel them, putting bullet holes in them to spell the word 'PAID'. All the writing on the checks, including the endorsement, was done with a welding torch.
Steel check made out to H.H. Tracy. Note bullet holes. image source: The Strangest Cases on Record, by J.A. Duncan
There's a community of people who collect unusual checks. So I imagine that these steel checks would be sought after as collectibles. But where are they now?
The title of Phillip Fry's 1975 book, Pay no income taxes without going to jail, was pretty much a direct challenge to the IRS, to which the IRS inevitably responded. It brought charges against him for aiding tax fraud, and in 1986 he was sentenced to five years in jail. And the tax agency's punishment of him didn't stop there:
While Fry was in jail, the IRS audited his and his wife Susan's income tax returns for the years 1977 to 1980. The IRS determined that the Frys owed a substantial amount of taxes and sent them notices of tax deficiencies. The Frys challenged these deficiencies in Tax Court. The Tax Court litigation was resolved adversely to Fry during the pendency of this appeal.
One of Fry's other books was titled Our Lady of Perpetual Deductions and was about how to avoid taxes by claiming to be running a church.
I couldn't find any free copies of his books available online. So if you're interested in benefiting from his advice you'll need to find used copies.
March 1922: Superior Judge J.R. Welch of San Jose, CA ruled that George Jones had to pay Henry B. Stuart a grand total of $304,840,332,912,684.16.
The reason was that in 1897 Stuart had loaned Jones $100, and the two had signed a contract agreeing that the debt would grow by 10% a month, compounded, until paid back.
Jones had then left the state and forgotten about the debt. But Stuart hadn't forgotten, and when Jones returned a quarter century later, Stuart sued him. The judge agreed that the debt was still owed, and by the terms of the original agreement had grown to over $300 trillion.
Of course, Jones promptly declared bankruptcy. But I'm pretty sure the ruling remains the highest court judgment in history. Though because it was essentially a meaningless judgment, it's typically overlooked. For instance, Google AI says that the largest court judgment ever was the $206 billion Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
The current value of silver is around $32 an ounce. The value of gold is around $2975 per ounce. Being able to turn silver into gold would generate a substantial return.
As it turns out, back in the 1920s the French scientist (and alchemist) François Jollivet-Castelot claimed he could do exactly this, and he shared his method.
If you decide to try it, let us know how it works!
Cindy Heller, shown below, later became a well-known gossip columnist for the New York Post. She's better known by her married name, Cindy Adams. Her wikipedia page doesn't mention that she was Wallet Week Queen.
The earliest 'Miss Credit Union' contest I could find was in 1948. The latest was in 2011. Though I suspect some are still going on, but maybe not calling attention to themselves.
Fine art and British Rail may not seem like they have much in common, but for several decades British Rail, through its pension fund, was a major player in the world of fine art. From the
NY Times (Apr 5, 1989):
Between 1974 and 1981, British Rail became Britain's first (and it is believed only) large pension fund to enter the collectibles market, acquiring more than $70 million worth of paintings, prints, drawings, furniture and other top-flight works to supplement more conventional investments as a hedge against inflation, which was extremely high in Britain at the time.
The pension fund began selling its art in 1986, and sold the last of it in 2003.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 1996 that the pension fund made a return of 13.1% per year on its art. Which doesn't seem bad at all. However, its stock portfolio, during the same period, returned 22% a year.
If you're looking for a coffee-table curiosity, there are several books dedicated to the artwork owned by the British Rail pension fund.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.