But this isn’t the first time something like this has occurred.  There are several air disasters in which many people were killed but one person somehow survived.  I would assume that there would need to be extreme circumstances and quite a bit of luck involved to endure these stories.  Here are a few of the many instances where there was only one survivor left after a plane crash.

Bahia Bakari

This one was less than a year ago.  Yemenia flight 626 was on approach to Comoros on June 30, 2009 when it suddenly plunged into the ocean killing 152 people.  Bahia was somehow ejected from the plane and, despite the fact she couldn’t swim, found a piece of wreckage to cling on to.  The crash occurred at 1:50am on a moonless night, so Bahia was in pitch blackness for the first several hours of her ordeal.  After floating for 13 hours, exhausted and dehydrated, she was rescued by a Comoran ferry participating in the search effort.

Vesna Vulović

JAT Flight 367 was cruising over Czechoslovakia on January 26, 1972.  Vesna was a flight attendant going about her duties when the plane suddenly broke apart in midair from a bomb in the front baggage compartment.  The wreckage fell to the ground some 30,000 feet below.  Vesna was found alive and there has never been an explanation of how it could have been possible.  She remembers nothing of the incident, but was left with a fractured skull, two broken legs and three broken vertebrae and was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. She eventually regained use of her legs and even continued to work for JAT for several years until being let go due to her political views. (She didn’t like Slobodan Milošević very much) She is still listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest fall without a parachute.

Cecelia Cichan

On August 16, 1987, a Northwest Airlines flight going from Detroit to Phoenix crashed during takeoff.  The crash killed 154 of the 155 passengers.  The lone survivor was 4-year-old Cecelia.  She was found alive buckled in her seat among the burning wreckage.  Early press releases indicated that Cecelia survived because her mother shielded her at impact, but they were later debunked.  One FTSB employee, a veteran of 20 plane crash investigations, was unable to explain how she survived.  “I have never seen such complete destruction. There is not a bone left intact in the bodies.”
 

Erika Delgado

I couldn't find a picture of Erika, but here's a pic of the plane she was on

On March 17, 1995, an Intercontinental de Aviacion DC-9 crashed into a marsh 37 miles short of the airport.  Erika, like a few others on this list, was ejected from the aircraft.  She was discovered hours after the crash by a local farmer.  She had two broken arms, but survived because she landed on a large pad of lilies that broke her fall and held her above water until she was found.

George Lamson

Again I couldn't find a photo, so I had to resort to showing the type of plane

Galaxy Airlines Flight 203 reported problems shortly after take-off from Reno, Nevada on January 21, 1985.  As the pilots were attempting to return to the airport, the plane plunged to the ground and burst into flames just outside of town.  The only survivor out of 72 passengers and crew was 17-year-old George Lamson, who was found still conscious and still strapped to his seat sitting upright in the middle of Highway 395.

Juliane Koepcke

Flying to Lima, Peru on December 21, 1971, a LANSA airliner came apart in a severe thunderstorm.  Juliane fell over 10,000 feet while strapped in her seat.  Somehow surviving the fall with an eye injury and a broken collarbone, she then had to further survive 10 days in a dangerous jungle until she finally stumbled upon a loggers camp.  On a sidenote to this one, it was later discovered that as many as 14 other passengers may have survived the crash but were unable to find their way out of the jungle from which Juliane escaped.

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So now you know.  Send him to Washington and everything will be better.  Or something.

Does not have the capacity

But celebrities don’t just adopt children.  Many famous faces in entertainment,  literature, business, and athletics were adopted themselves.   Here are a few of the more notable cases.

Edgar Allan Poe

Born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, his father abandoned the family within a year.  His mother died shortly thereafter of consumption.  Poe was sent to live with merchant John Allan.  The Allans moved back to England a few years later where Edgar attended grammar and boarding school in Scotland.  The family returned to America in 1820, where Edgar joined the military and later went on to become one of the most influential writers in history.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was born in 1955 to Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali.  Joanne was a speech therapist and Jandali was a graduate student who would go on to become a political science professor.  Nonetheless, they put Steve up for adoption a week after his birth and he was taken in by Paul and Clara Jobs.  As a child, Steve’s adoptive father would show him how to take apart and reconstruct small electronics.  He eventually went on to be an intern at Hewlett-Packard where he met Steve Wozniak.  The two got together and started a little computer company called Apple.  He’s made a little bit of money since then.

Faith Hill

Faith was born as Audrey Faith Perry in Mississippi.  When she was a few days old her mother had to put her up and she was adopted by Ted and Edna Perry.  Raised in a strict environment, she sang at a 4-H luncheon when she was 7, and the rest is history.  The multi-award winning singer later married Tim McGraw, himself adopted by the man his mother married. (There were many celebrities adopted by the spouse of a parent.  I only included full adoptions on this list.)

Dave Thomas

Wendy’s founder R. David Thomas was adopted in 1932 by Rex and Auvela Thomas of Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Sadly, his adoptive mother died of rheumatic fever when he was only 5.  The rest of his childhood was spent traveling with his adoptive father while he looked for work and spending summers with his grandmother.  He left high school early and took a job as a busboy in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Several years later, while working for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Harland Sanders asked Thomas to turn around four failing franchises in return for a 45% stake in those stores.  He succeeded, later sold back his interest, and started Wendy’s.  He also founded the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, one of the most successful advocates and facilitators of adoptions.

Sarah McLachlan

Sarah was born in 1968 in Nova Scotia, Canada.  She was immediately adopted by Americans Jack and Dorice McLachlan, who lived in the same area.  They encouraged her studies in music, and she ended up at the Nova Scotia Royal Conservatory with studies in classical guitar, piano, and voice.  She released her first album in 1989 and currently provides her music to way too many psuedo-emotional SPCA commercials.  (Relax.  I believe in the cause, I just don’t think I need to see the commercials every five seconds.)

Greg Louganis

While most of these adoption stories put the child in a better home than they would have been, that is not always the case.  Gregory Efthimios Louganis was born in San Diego, CA in 1960.  His parents were young and put him up for adoption when he was 9 months old, and he was taken in by Peter and Frances Louganis.  Unfortunately, Peter was a heavy drinker and constantly abused Greg both mentally and emotionally.  Frances continually tried to be a peacemaker between them, but was never successful.  The abuse caused Greg to stray off path and start dealing marijuana, using speed, and even attempting suicide.  He eventually put everything he had into the only thing that gave him confidence: diving.  He went on to be the most decorated American Olympic diver.

D.M.C.

Darryl McDaniels was adopted at one month old by Byford and Banna McDaniels in 1964.  He grew up in Harlem and, as a teenager, got together with a couple friends to form influential hip-hop group Run-DMC.  They went on to a long career, starting off with early hits such as “My Adidas”, “You be Illin””, and “It’s Tricky”.  As he started to put together an autobiography, he asked his mother about his early life and she told him he was adopted for the first time.  He was 35 years old.

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I came across this great site called everythingisterrible.com.  It’s a great time-waster if you have a few extra minutes.  They basically post all the terrible videos they can find.  The best part is that most of these videos were meant to be taken seriously.  I wanted put up a couple of my favorites that I found while rummaging through their material, but I highly suggest that you check it out for yourself.  It’s hilarious.

Harry Potter is going to ruin tomorrow’s leaders!!!

I went to a private elementary and high school, so I absolutely remember all the crap thrown at us about how this movie or that book was going to turn us to Satan himself.  Even when I was 12 I thought that was ridiculous.  It looks like that whole movement is still going strong.  Poor kids.  They can’t enjoy anything anymore without a disclaimer.

Once the babies begin, the life ends

I love this one.  (Especially the opening mullet!)  This is a warning video for all the women out there.  Men don’t understand pregnancy.  You know, like being worried about poking the baby in the head.

Sling… bang… BOOM!

At the risk of sounding redundant, I went to a private school.  I saw plenty of cheesy, ridiculous media presentations to try to increase my love for the Lord.  Most of them just made me laugh.  But I never saw one that can hold a candle to this one.  I don’t think this video is historically accurate, though.  I don’t seem to remember learning about David’s Motown backup singers.  The only thing that would have made this better is replacing “Now what was that you were saying, bigshot?” with “Who’s the bitch now?”

 Even Syfy would pass on this one

I love Syfy original movies.  They’re wonderfully cheesy.  The best part about is they know they’re cheesy so they totally run with it.  This movie (I believe it’s called Deadly Prey) would get laughed right out of their executive offices.  It’s not because of the horrible acting, they already have plenty of that. (Read: Megashark vs. Giant Octopus)  It’s that this guy just screams way too much.

The American dream is dead!!!  Better call IDN.

This must have been one of the first MLM schemes advertised on TV and probably inspired the “out of my one bedroom apartment” guy from the 90′s. I don’t even remember his name.  Anyways, they got Flo-Jo to plug this.  The best part is they say how much money everyone is making, then say it’s not about the money. 

I always knew there was something odd going on at the gym.

I don’t even know where to go with this one, except that I think they’re enjoying every second of it.

Never bring a knife to a cop fight

I’m not sure where this came from, but I assume it’s some part of a police training video.  In Canada.

Go to work and die!

To close, we will look at dangerous working conditions.  My wife works at a workers compensation insurance company, so we always get a kick out of these.  They saved us some time and cut it down to all the ailments you can get in an office setting and what you can do about stress.  My favorite is the warning about loose clothing around a printer.  Like that HP Laserjet is going to grab your tie and cut your head off.  Hilarious.

Like I said earlier, you need to check out Everything is Terrible! when you want some mindless entertainment.  They have hundreds of videos like these. 

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Finders not necessarily keepers

So even if you find it, there’s no guarantee that you will keep it and reap the rewards.  But as I said before, it’s all in the thrill of the chase.  Or so they say.  Well, if you have any inkling about going out and finding treasure of your own, these may be a few good places to start.

Captain Kidd’s plunder

Treasure: Gold

Possible sites: Connecticut River, Block Island in New York

William Kidd was a Scottish sailor who was a privateer (read: pirate hunter) who allegedly turned to the very act he was supposed to stop. After amassing quite a fortune, he was arrested on his return from the Indian Ocean in 1699.  He was tried and executed in 1701.  What was never found were most of the riches that would have proved his exploits.  One of his hiding places was uncovered on Gardener’s Island  in New York and sent to England to be used against him in his trial.  The belief that he had other hiding places for his plunder was never substantiated, but it is this belief that sends people out with their shovels to this day.

He was tough. They had to hang him twice.

The most talked about location of Kidd’s treasure is up the Connecticut River somewhere on Clarke’s Island.  Rumor has it that the gold has to dug up by three people, in complete silence, during a full moon with the moon directly overhead.  There’s a legend that three men once followed all these directions to the very end.  But once the treasure chest started to be uncovered, one of them yelled “You’ve hit it”.  Upon hearing a direct violation of the rules, the chest promptly sank into the sand and out of reach.

Better than Al Capone’s vault

Treasure: $7 million cash

Possible site: Phoenecia, New York

Schultz (born Arthur Flegenheimer) was a mobster in New York in the 20′s and 30′s.  During his criminal career, he amassed quite a fortune from his dealings.  The government continually tried to take him down for violent crime but were unsuccessful.  They finally had to go the Al Capone route and charge him with tax evasion.  Schultz, thinking he was going to go to jail, decided he needed to make sure he would have some cash when he got out.

It could be anywhere in here

He took $7 million in cash and buried it in a hidden location in upstate New York.  The only two people who knew the location were Schultz and his bodyguard.  Unfortunately, they were both gunned down before he went to prison.  The bodyguard was killed, and Schultz lasted a while until an infection took him as well.   Although there is no proof that either man revealed the location to anyone before their deaths, some say Schultz’s ramblings as he was dying points to a forest in Phoenecia Park.  It is said that many of his rival gangsters spent the rest of their lives looking for the treasure, Lucky Luciano among them.

Calling on Rainman

Treasure:  2900 pounds of gold, 5100 pounds of silver, lots of jewelery

Possible site: unknown

Robert Morriss, an innkeeper in Virginia, was approached by a man named Thomas Beale in 1820.  Beale gave Morriss a box and asked him to keep it until somebody came to get it some time in the next 10 years.  Morriss was told that if nobody came in that time period, he could keep the box for himself.  No one ever showed.  After twenty year, Morriss finally opened the box and pulled out three pages of nothing but numbers.

Figure this out and be richer than you are now.

It was a code, and Morriss spent years attempting to decipher it.  After his death, a friend of his who ended up with the box and reported that he deciphered the second page using the the Declaration of Independence.  The page said that the treasure contained 5,100 pounds of gold, 4,900 pounds of silver, and thousands of dollars in jewelery.  But the page said nothing of the location.  It is assumed that the location is revealed in page one or three, but nobody has been able to decipher those two pages to this day.  You can check it out for yourself here.

Once a pirate, always a pirate

Treasure: Jewels, gold

Possible sites: Cocos Islands, Coastal Peru

In 1820, Peru was near revolt.  The viceroy wanted to transport the country’s wealth away until things calmed down.  He tabbed Captain William Thompson to lead the 11 ships full of treasure and take it to Mexico.  Unfortunately, it was in the days before background checks.  Thompson was once a brutal pirate, and this was too much of a temptation.  As soon as he left port, he killed the Peruvian guards and sailed to the Indian Ocean.

Not the greatest pirate beard

The Mary Dear, Thompson’s main ship, was captured shortly afterwards and the crew sent to trial.  Everyone was convicted and they hanged all but Thompson and his first mate.  Those two cut a deal agreeing to lead officials to the site of the treasure.  They sailed to the Indian Ocean, towards Cocos Islands, but slipped away onto an island and disappeared into a jungle.  Neither one was ever seen again and the treasure was never recovered.    Many expeditions, up to 300 over history, have set out to locate the treasure.  Most of them centered on the Cocos Islands, but newer expeditions have also concentrated on several islands just off the coast of Peru.  They think Thompson could have unloaded the treasure before going across the Pacific.

There’s gold in them thar hills… maybe

Treasure: Gold

Possible site: Ohio

In the 1700′s, when the French still occupies U.S. territory, they knew a battle with the British was coming.  In anticipation of this, they thought it good to move their riches to a safe place.  Ten men were selected to move the treasure of gold and silver.  They used the Great Trail, a Native American route, to move everything.  At some point, sensing an ambush, they buried it.  The attack did occur, where all but two of the men died.  They did not disclose the location of the treasure.

The great trail

Years later, a relative of one of the men found some pages talking about the treasure.  They described the location of the treasure as being “between two natural springs, with the landmark of a tree that had a deer carved into it, and another tree with a rock in the branches”.  The relative, among others, searched but came up empty.  Some time later, both trees were found along with shovels and muskets that were left behind by the French troops.  The location is near Minerva, Ohio but the treasure has yet to be uncovered.

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I would want Joel to host

Before I get started, I would very much like to thank all my fans for their support and viewership and for making it feel like it’s been worth all the time I’ve put in to date.  (Almost 100,000 visits so far!  Small by internet standards, but plenty enough for me.)  Like I said before, the feedback has been more abundant than I thought.  (Most of it good, but I have certainly ruffled a few feathers along the way.  There’s a lot of critics out with keyboards)  To Mark, my first ever subscriber and frequent commenter, and all the others that have subscribed to and read my crazy thoughts, I thank you.  Maybe someday I’ll actually be able to make a little money off this. Hey, I can dream. 

How much I've made so far

Anyhoo, here are some of the pieces that my readers particularly enjoyed.  So far, my weird children’s books post has been by far my most read, followed by my recently posted costly clerical errors.  Out of the last 6 months of researching and writing, here are the favorites thus far.   

From the post: Bedtime stories gone awry (really weird children’s books)  

Who Cares About Disabled People?  

Price: $26.25 (WTF? It’s only 32 pages long!)  

This is part of a Who Cares…? series.  It basically is supposed to teach kids to love and care about everyone.  Another book in this series is Who Cares About Elderly People?  It was difficult to choose which wonderful life lesson to include here, as their titles are both equally head-scratching.  I chose disabled people mostly for the reason of who they decide to include as examples.  

So am I to believe that Kobe Bryant (athlete), David Hasselhoff (boozer), and Kevin Federline (fat kid) are all disabled?  OK, I’ll give you Hasselhoff and Federline, but not Kobe.   And what is the huffer in the this picture huffing?  It looks like a bag of bubble gum.   

____________________  

From the post: You can’t firewall stupid (criminals caught via the internet)  

Crime: burglary   

Downfall: Facebook   

There are tens of thousands of home robberies in America every year, most of them done by criminals smarter than this next guy.  A 19-year-old broke into a house in Martinsburg, West Virginia.  While going through the house looking for valuables, he decided that this would be a good time to log into his Facebook account and update his status.   

That’s all fine and good.  It can’t be easy to be that calm while in the commission of a felony.  Anyhoo, the homeowners returned home later that night and discovered several items missing.  They called the police and, while waiting for them to arrive, went to the computer to let people know what happened.  When they saw the screen, it was still logged in to the man’s account.  Needless to say, it didn’t take the cops very long to figure out whodunit.  The man was arrested and convicted of grand theft and trespassing.  

_____________________  

From the post: All that money and too dead or in jail to spend it  

Jody Lee Taylor, Virginia ($4.4 million) OK, first of all, this poor guy’s life started out cursed thanks to his parents.  They obviously took the song “A Boy Named Sue” a little too seriously.  If I was named Jody, my life of crime would start by the mysterious death of whoever’s idea that was.  But I digress.  Jody was a career criminal before he won his lotto jackpot.  So having a nice nest egg and plenty of beer money would straighten out his life, right?  If you answered yes, I demand you immediately leave this site and go look up ‘naive’ in the dictionary.   

Get it? It's naive backwards

 Are you back?  OK.  So he wins the lottery and moves in to a house.  His fiance, who apparently decided that the money he now had made up for the many times he was arrested for beating her, moved in with him.  That didn’t last long.  3 years after winning, he shot up said house and set her car on fire.  It all came to a head when he smoked a bunch of crack, drank a lot of whiskey, and proceeded to drive the wrong way down the highway.  After a chase, he tried to run down a sheriff’s deputy.  Oh yeah, he was also naked.  

____________________  

From the post: Where do I sign up? (Some of the craziest cult leaders you’ve probably never heard of)  

The Ant Hill Kids   

In 1977, a man named Roch Thériault started a commune in Quebec that the media dubbed “The Ant Hill Kids”.  This guy was especially bad.  He had as many as 40 people at his commune, 26 of the children.  True to cult leader form, all nine adult women in the compound were basically his sexual servants.  But Roch wasn’t the nicest guy in the world.   

Roch and Chuck Manson would get along just fine

Thériault, claiming to be the reincarnation of Moses, based his teachings on the obedience of women, the sinfulness of his followers, and the absolute power of himself.  He convinced all the women that they needed to bear his children and did not take kindly to insubordination.  He cut off the arm and removed the teeth of one of his “wives”, and castrated one of the men.  He killed his legal wife by disembowelment, which is what eventually landed him a hefty sentence on a murder conviction.  But even after that, some of the other wives went on conjugal visits and bore him three more children… What?  I was in my 20’s once and remember the trials and tribulations of relationships and sex.  This guy is cutting off arms and pulling out teeth and he has women lined up wanting nothing more than to bear his children.  I’m in the wrong business.   

 ____________________  

From the post: You get an A+ for originality  

Where has Daddy been taking you?  

  

I wonder if this was turned in by Pacman Jones’ kid.  Either way, he’s got a good head start to douchebaggery.  

____________________  

From the post: 2012 is probably going to be less destructive than Y2K (read: nothing will happen)  

The Sumerians said so  

  

Doomsdayers say:  The Sumerians were the first great civilization and made several accurate predictions, including the existence of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.  So their claim that the planet Nibiru is going to collide with the earth in 2012 must be true.  

Scientists say:  The claims that the Sumerians predicted a planetary collision isn’t hotly debated.  In fact, it’s not debated at all.  One Sumerian researcher came up with this theory and people ran with it.  Every other expert on Sumerian culture disagrees.  They did not know about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.  They also thought the sun rotated around the earth.  

I say: If we still listened to the Sumerians, you wouldn’t be reading this.  You would be too busy sacrificing children.  

____________________  

From the Post: WTF? Etsy  

Thank you card?  

  

Price: $3.00  

I suppose this would be a good card to get.  It’s very direct.  And this was a very tame card compared to some of the others that this girl sells.    You can check them out here. (NSFW)  Maybe there’s one that can apply to you.  

____________________  

From the post: It’s like they think they can print their own money.  Oh wait, they can.  

The infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” (2006)  

This is an earmark that garnered a lot of attention, as it should.  The bill called for the $398 million Gravina Island bridge to replace a ferry that would connect the mainland to the Alaskan island with a bursting town of…  50 people.  Yes, you read that right.  I understand the need for the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges, but not this one.  In 2005, Congress received so much grief on this one that they removed it from legislation. 

Isn't nowhere everywhere in Alaska?

 The story doesn’t end there.  After winning the governor’s race, Sarah Palin said she would pledge to responsible spending.  She then spent $25 million in government money to build the Gravina Island Highway that would connect to where the bridge would be.  Now mind you, this was after the bridge idea was scrapped.  So they built this highway that simply ends at the coastline.     

Actual picture of the road. Look it up.

 Why would they spend that much on a useless road you ask?  Because if they didn’t spend the money, they would have return the money to the federal government.  It’s a perfectly good excuse to fund a useless project, right?  I’m in the wrong industry. 

_______________________ 

So here we are.  Six months and 100 posts later.  It’s been fun, and I’ll keep writing posts as long as I can still come up with good ideas.  Again, thank you all for you support.  Now, let’s see what else I can think of… 

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What almost was

That mistake, however, did not result in the loss of millions of dollars.  Quite the opposite.  But some simple errors have led to some very expensive consequences.  Whether it’s a typo, misspelling,  or simple forgetfulness, the following clerical errors ended up with a heavy price tag.

And I thought Southwest had the best fares…

Alitalia Airlines is a carrier out of Italy that made a slight mistake on its website in 2006 regarding a fare from Toronto to Cyprus.  The fare advertised was $39.  It was supposed to be $3,900.  The rate was posted on a travel website and the rush was on.  As many as 2,000 tickets were sold for this price.

Probably didn't even pay for the fuel

While Alitalia initially tried to cancel all the tickets purchased for the wrong price, they eventually decided to honor the mistaken fares.  If all 2,000 people actually used their tickets, it adds up to a $7.72 million loss to the airline.

Punctuation is important

Despite text messaging and Twitter completely destroying the English language one poorly constructed run-on sentence at a time, punctuation can still make or break a deal.  In Canada, Aliant Inc. had a contract with Rogers Communications to install about 90,000 utility poles.  They signed a contract and the installation began.  But soon, the construction of a sentence in the 14 page contract caused an 18 month legal battle.

Make fun if you want, but the comma is mighty!

Rogers Communications thought they had an ironclad five year contract with Aliant.  However Aliant, being the grammar police that they are,  saw it differently. They cited this sentence:

The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five-year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

Had the second comma not been there, Aliant would have had to honor the first five years of the contract before anything could be changed.  But because of the comma, Aliant cancelled it early and almost tripled their prices, costing Rogers Communications $2.13 million.

Bad day for a day trader

In 2006, an broker for Mizuho Securities in Japan wanted to sell off a share of J-Com stock.  The price he wanted? ¥610,000.  So he entered it into the system and then noticed something slightly off.  He realized that he told the system to sell 610,000 shares for ¥1 each.

It was a bad day for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, as well as a bad day for hairstyles and hats.

Officials at Mizuho contacted the Tokyo Stock Exchange to attempt to halt the sale, but were unsuccessful.  The error cost the securities company approximately $340 million U.S.

And Aloha means goodbye

The state of Hawaii was already facing a budget deficit in 2009 when they took another hit.  It seems that their fiscal year for one of the departments did not end with the $8 million surplus they initially thought, but instead a $36 million deficit.  Because of a clerical error in the state accounting department, the $44 million collected as part of a delinquent tax program was counted twice.

I guess if debt has to go somewhere, it might as well be here.

Before the error was realized, the state did what every other government agency would do with a sudden influx of cash: they spent it.  After the money was spent, the error was found and the budget deficit reported.

Get out while you still can

A 41-story New York condominium development may not have sold as well as they thought.  Many people paid a lot of money for some of the condos at The Rushmore in early to mid-2009, but the properties were already worth less than what they paid.  Several of them went looking for a way to back out of the sales without losing their deposit.  They may have found it.

It had a view of the river, but the owners were underwater. HI-YO!!!

It seems that the contracts given to the buyers left an out clause if the first closing did not occur on time.  That time was supposed to be September 1, 2009.  In the contract, the listed date was September 1, 2008.  The first closing was not until February 2009.  The end to this one is not yet known, but it could cost the development company tens of millions of dollars.

That’s a lot of buses

In 2006, the New York City Department of Education made a mistake in their bookkeeping.  Apparently, there was a misspelling that had a word with one extra letter.  This word was not readable by their accounting system and, somehow, that system decided to therefore spend twice as much on transportation.  That year, $2.8 million was spent instead of the budgeted $1.4 million.

That's about 30 extra of these

The city had to come up with the money to replace it.  And much like the Hawaii thing, it amazes me that nobody noticed this.  If you were working somewhere and all of a sudden your budget doubles for no apparent reason, wouldn’t it be a good idea to bring it up at the next meeting?

Ignore court orders at your own risk

This is the one I read about that gave me the idea for this post.  Luckily for Pepsi, the ruling was thrown out recently.  But it could have been really bad.  You see, a couple guys were suing Pepsi over what they said was their idea about the way Pepsi produces Aquafina water.  They said they went to Pepsi with an idea, Pepsi said no, and then started using it anyways several years later.  The lawsuit was served at the company’s headquarters in North Carolina but took a while to get through the corporate chain to the legal department.  An employee misplaced the paperwork and Pepsi missed the court date.  The judge was not impressed.

What an unimpressed judge looks like

The men were awarded a judgement of $1.26 billion.  They were happy for a while, but then the judgement was thrown out and a trial ordered.  Time will tell how much cash the men may end up with.

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• There’s plenty of Nigerian Princes out there looking for people to give their money to, and folks are still falling for it.
• Ever wanted to tell someone off using 19th century slang?  Just tell them to shut their bone box.  Or any of these other slang terms used back then.
• Ever wondered who you’re listening to when you mis-dial a phone number?  Here is that and 9 other famous disembodied voices.
• In case you happen to be the last person on earth, here is a practical guide of what you need to do.

And to close, a Youtube video that made me laugh.  Pandas are cute, right?  Well, this one knows it.  He distracts the zookeeper by performing a cute-style rollover while his buddy slips out the door and then totally makes a break for it himself.  Pandas are cool. (The fun starts at about the :35 mark)

Paying for the ridiculously large inheritances of four people

It took me a while, but I went through most of the people on the list looking for interesting ways people made their money. (There’s over 1000 on the list, but I stopped after 750.  I had to click through and read them one by one and it took me forever.)  Not everyone made their billions from the traditional ways.   Here are a few that stuck out to me.

Kunio Busujima 

Rank: 143 ($5.4 billion)

Kunio is in the gaming industry.  Specifically, he owns Sankyo.  They make the classic pachinko machines that I didn’t even know were still being produced.  I have an old one that I’m trying to fix up right now.

This one

Maybe I should give this guy a call to see if he’ll give me a discount on parts.

Dietrich Mateschitz

Rank: 208 ($4.1 billion)

This guy made all his money off the caffeine craziness of the world today.  He threw together a couple of ingredients, put it in a blue and silver can, and said ”I think I’ll call it Red Bull.”  We all know where that went.  He currently owns 49% of the beverage company that sold $4.7 billion worth of heart explosions last year.

Haim Saban

Rank: 287 ($3.3 billion)

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.  Need I say more.  Well, I will.  He created the show back in the early 90′s and rode it all the way up on its improbable success.  He then used that money to make his own little media empire. 

It's easy to make billions when you only spend $5 on wardrobe

Amazing what you can do dressing some teens up in funny costumes and having them karate chop people in terrible monster suits. 

Frits Goldschmeding

Rank: 297 ($3.2 billion)

Who knew there was so much money in finding other people jobs?  Frits owns Randstad Holdings, the world’s second largest temp agency.  His may be the most noble occupation on the list.  He may make a lot of money, but at least it’s through a vehicle that helps other people make money too.

Martua Sitorus

Rank: T-316 ($3 billion)

Martua is one of about five entries I saw on Forbes list that made their money though palm oil sales.  I wasn’t sure what palm oil is because I’ve never used it.  Apparently it’s widely used for cooking in Asia and Africa.  And they must use a lot of it to put several billionaire’s kids through college.

Yummy

I didn’t see a single vegetable oil or corn oil billionaire.  I guess they wasted all their money in alternative fuels.

David Green

Rank: T-316 ($3 billion)

Green may have the coolest job of all the world’s billionaires. (Well, except for maybe the heirs and heiresses who don’t have to do anything.)  He is the founder of Hobby Lobby.  So in his down time, he gets to play with slot cars and remote-controlled helicopters.  I wonder if he watches “I Love Toy Trains”?

Ty Warner

Rank: 342 ($2.9 billion)

Ty made his money off a 90′s fad much like Haim Saban above.  Remember Beanie Babies?  They don’t sell a whole lot of them these days, but back in the mid 90′s they sold enough to make it so only 341 people in the world have more money than Ty.  Back then, they compared it to the pet rock.  I don’t think the guy who invented the pet rock made this much.

Keiichiro Takahara

Rank: 488 ($2 billion)

Takahara makes his money off paper products.  More specifically, diapers and tampons.  I think I’ll leave well enough alone on that one.

Isaac Perlmutter

(I searched everywhere and couldn’t  find a picture.  Must be a private guy.)

Rank: 616 ($1.6 billion)

Comic books can still fetch a fair price.  Perlmutter moved from Israel in the 60′s with $250 and started a toy shop.  His stores grew and he soon was able to acquire Marvel Comics out of bankruptcy on the cheap.  He sold the company to Disney a few years ago for $4 billion.  Not a bad income jump.  It makes me wonder how much money Stan Lee has.

Yoshikazu Tanaka

Rank: 721 ($1.4 billion)

Tanaka is one of the world’s youngest billionaire at 33 years old. (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest at 25)  He also made his money in arguably the most ridiculous way.  The majority of his fortune was made by selling virtual clothes to people for their avatars.  That’s right, he made a billion dollars selling something that doesn’t exist.

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What she should have done instead

When people have a certain occupation or live their lives a particular way, and then die in a way that mirrors or contradicts those, it can be funny.  I don’t wish to make fun of the deceased, but… well, yes I do.  How can you not in the following situations?  (Except for the woman who was murdered.  Interesting situation, but hard to laugh at.)

 Jim Fixx

 Jim was a health-nut guru.  He wrote a book in 1977 called “The Complete Book of Running” which was a best seller.  He made a lot of money telling people that running could greatly extend your lifetime.  He was a member of Mensa and wrote a book of puzzles for geniuses, which means was also probably pretentious.

Afterword by the Grim Reaper

One day when he got home after his daily run, he had a heart attack and died.  An autopsy revealed he had coronary arteries 95%, 85%, and 50% blocked. 

Clement Vallandigham 

As a lawyer in the 19th century, Vallandigham had made quite a name and fortune for himself.  He was also politically active and made news for opposing slavery while at the same time calling for the removal of Abraham Lincoln as president.  In 1877, he took the case of a man on trial for an alleged murder that occurred during a barroom brawl.  He argued that the deceased accidentally shot himself during the melee and set out to prove it was possible.  It was very possible.  During his reenactment, he shot himself in the head and died.  

Can you name another lawyer who would die for his client? Didn't think so.

While that sucks for Vallanigham, it was golden for his client.  The jury decided that the deceased very well could have shot himself and acquitted the accused.

Myra Davis 

Myra was a body double for Janet Leigh in the movie Psycho.  She was the one standing in the shower in the scene where caretaker/handyman Norman Bates murdered Leigh’s character.  It’s quite a famous scene to be a part of. 

Nice hair

In 1988, she was found dead in her apartment.  After the investigation, it was found that she was murdered by a 31-year-old certifiably insane caretaker/handyman.  

Jerome Moody 

In 1985, the New Orleans recreation department lifeguards threw themselves a party.  You see, they had their first season go by without a single drowning incident.  While quite an accomplishment, they apparently let all the rules go bye-bye during the party.

Unfortunately not on duty at the time

When the party ended, 31-year-old lifeguard Jerome Moody was found dead at the bottom of the pool from drowning.  Not one of the over 100 lifeguards at the party noticed it happen. 

Jerome Rodale 

Another Jerome, another ironic death.  Jerome Rondale was one of the first faces of the organic food movement.  He thought sugar and caffeine were not part of clean living, so no Starbucks for him.  He was also an advocate for the organic lifestyle saying lead to a much longer life. (You can see where this is going)  He went on the Dick Cavett radio show and told Cavett that “I’m going to live to be 100, unless I’m run down by some sugar-crazed taxi driver.” 

Didn't live to 100

Right after the interview ended, Rondale collapsed and died of a heart attack.  He was 72.  On a sidenote: don’t name your kid Jerome.

Michael Anderson 

In 1983, Anderson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by electrocution.  He appealed the jury’s decision and the sentence was changed to life in prison.  Shortly after, he was having problems with his television in his cell. 

Not the chair that the jury had in mind

 While sitting on the metal toilet, he bit into a live wire attempting to fix the TV.  The resulting shock electrocuted him to death.

Bobby Leach 

As a world-famous daredevil in the early 1900′s, Leach did a lot of crazy things including going over Niagara Falls.  Even in his sixties, he was still trying to do crazy things.  That kind of commitment to trying to kill yourself would usually lead to success after a while.  Not for Leach. 

Really, it floats

He died in 1926 from gangrene and having to have his leg amputated.  Whet crazy stunt was he doing, you ask?  None, unless you consider clumsiness a stunt, in which case give me a few beers and call Hollywood.  Anyways, Leach slipped on an orange peel.

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Greed may not be necessarily good, but it has certainly been popular.  Here are five financial scandals that happened before the current wave of bad headlines was written.

Credit Mobilier

Back in 1864, Credit Mobilier was a construction company started by executives of Union Pacific Railroad.  They then had Union Pacific make contracts with Credit Mobilier to build railroads at inflated prices.  These payments would in turn go to buy Union Pacific stock at par value and sell them at market value, generating huge profits to the tune of over $43 million.

Here’s the thing: the contracts were being paid with generous subsidies from the U.S. Government.  Then a man named Oakes Ames, a U.S. congressman, was tabbed to head the firm.  He started offering other members of congress stock at the par value, giving many of them a chance to earn a huge profit.  The whole thing came crashing down when a New York newspaper published a story about how Credit Mobilier built $53 million worth of railroads while receiving $72 million in payments.  The resulting downfall implicated several executives and politicians, including future president James Garfield.

Samuel Insull

Insull was an major player in the early electricity industry.  In 1892 he became president of the Chicago Edison Co. and 5 years later merged another power company with his to create Commonwealth Edison.  He then started purchasing portions of other companies that included utilities and railroads, essentially creating the first “holding company”.  He ended up controlling a $500 million dollar empire.

The problem was that the empire only had $27 million in equity due to many of his holdings being highly leveraged.   When the Great Depression hit, his holding company collapsed and wiped out the life savings of 600,000 investors.  He fled to Greece but was later captured in Turkey and extradited to the U.S.  He was found not-guilty of wrongdoing because the courts ruled that “a holding company could not be held responsible for the acts of the companies it controlled”.

Cornering the gold market

Shortly after the Civil War, America was in a period of reconstruction and expansion.  This was because the government issued a large influx of currency backed only by credit.  The plan was to eventually buy back the cash with gold.  A couple of financiers, Jay Gould and James Fisk, saw this as a way to make a lot of money and set forth a plan to get it.  They befriended Abel Corbin, who was the brother-in-law of President Grant.  They used this connection to get close to the president and convince him to appoint an acquaintance as the Treasurer.  That way Gould and Fisk could have inside information as to when the government planned a gold sale.

In 1869, they began purchasing large amounts of gold, causing the price of gold to rise and stocks to go down.  When they really started hoarding it later that year, Grant realized what was going on and immediately authorized a $4 million government sale.  Gold prices plummeted so rapidly that it not only ruined the fortunes of many (including Corbin) but also sparked the Panic of 1869.  What followed was an eight year depression in which millions lost jobs, businesses, and savings.

The Keating Five

In the early 1980′s, there was massive deregulation of the savings & loan industry.  It allowed S&L institutions to invest the money of their depositors into more risky ventures.  Charles Keating, who ran American Continental Corporation, got into the business through the purchase of Lincoln Savings & Loan in Irvine, Ca.  He took advantage of the loosened restrictions to make a lot of money for a while.  After a few years, Lincoln Savings & Loan started to struggle and came under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The company eventually failed, costing the government $3 billion and leaving 23,000 customers with worthless bonds and depleted life savings.

What followed was the S&L meltdown of the late 80′s.  Over 700 failed and put the country into a recession that would last years.  The devastation also put a magnifying glass on Lincoln Savings & Loan.  After the investigation, it was revealed that Keating had made many large (but legal) donations to the campaign funds of five U.S. senators in return for preferential treatment from the SEC.  The senators implicated were Donald Riegle Jr., Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn, Alan Cranston, and John McCain.  They were all found to have acted improperly and the case generated two rounds of campaign finance reform.

 Money for oil (but not the oil you think)

This one didn’t affect a lot of innocent people like the others, but I came across it while doing research and had to include it.  It’s just too original.  It was a multi-million dollar scandal and the circumstances have been compared to the recent housing meltdown because of the of the way that otherwise cautious and conservative lenders were giving out increasingly risky loans.   In 1963, there was a company called the Allied Crude Vegetable Oil company, led by Tino De Angelis.  De Angelis discovered that he could obtain low interest loans based on his inventory of salad oil.

He would have ships that appeared to be full of salad oil inspected and then get millions of dollars worth of loans based on that cargo.  That’s where the scandal begins.  Oil is thicker than water, so the ships were filled mostly with water and a few feet of salad oil floating on top.  To the inspectors, it appeared to be full of oil.  Once the scam was revealed, De Angelis was tried and sentenced to seven years in jail.  The biggest loser in this was American Express, who wrote many of the loans to the company.  Their stock dropped 50% in one day and it ended up costing them over $50 million in losses.

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