30 Unusual Wills - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.226)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube, and one of my favorite pieces of writing of all time is John Keith's Will

It's one line of perfect iambic pentameter. My chest of books divide amongst my friends

That's the first of many unique wills that I'm going to share with you today, in the hopes that when your time comes you will be able to annoy and or amuse those who live on

A man named Samuel Bratt died in 1960 after what must have been a long life of his wife

complaining about his cigar smoking because he left her 330,000 pounds if she smoked five

cigars every day for the rest of her life. He seems like he was a nice guy

Come to think of it, the theme of this video is going to be sometimes people who die are jerks

For instance, TM Zink left no money to his wife and $5 to his daughter and wanted $35,000

of his money to be put in a trust for 75 years. And then he wanted his money to be used to

create the zinc, womanless library. The library would have no books by women, no art or furniture

made by women, and of course, no women allowed. But then some wills are actually sweet, like

comedian Jack Benny arranged to have a rose delivered to his wife, Mary Livingstone, every

single day after he died. He died in 1974, she died nine years later. By that time, she

had received over 3,000 roses. And then there's the extraordinary kindness of an Englishman named Henry Budd, who left

200,000 pounds for his sons in 1862 on one condition. Neither could grow a mustache. If one did, the rest would go to the other's son

Henry Budd, protecting his children from hipsterism. A similarly weird request came from Samuel Houston, senator of Texas in the mid-1800s

who wrote in his will, I wish my sons early-taught and utter contempt for novels and light reading

Here at MennoFloss our books are tiny, so all of our reading is light. It's not just sons who receive weird instructions. Benjamin Franklin left his daughter Sarah

a portrait of King Louis XVI, which contained 408 diamonds. But he asked, quote, that she

would not form any of those diamonds into ornaments, either for herself or daughters

and thereby countenance the expensive vain and useless fashion of wearing jewels in this country So she sold the painting to pay for a trip to Europe where presumably you can wear jewels Another quote straight from her will Charles Dickens demanded that those who attend my funeral wear no scarf black bow long hat

band, or other such revolting absurdity. Those dudes had a lot of opinions about fashion

And then there's the will of American Garvey B. White, who died in 1908. It read, in part

before anything else is done, fifty cents is to be paid to my son-in-law to enable him

to buy for himself a good stout rope with which to hang himself

Moving on to strange post-cremation requests, like Frederick J. Bauer, who invented the Pringles can

had his ashes buried in a Pringles can. Mark Gruenwald, who wrote for Marvel Comics, wanted his ashes mixed with ink to print comic books

They ended up in the first edition of the Squadron Supreme collection. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had some of his ashes launched into space, which you

can also do thanks to a company called Celestis. And if you think that's unreasonable, in 1977, socialite Sandra West was buried in her powder blue Ferrari

She requested that the seat be, quote, slanted comfortably. Harry Houdini has one of the most famous wills of all time, even though it's an agreement with his wife, Bess, rather than like an actual physical will

The two came up with a secret code, and she promised to hold a seance each year on the anniversary of his death, so he could contact her with the code

She tried for ten years. Surprisingly enough, it didn't work out. The code, in case you want to attempt it, was

Rosabelle, answer, tell, pray, answer, look, tell, answer, answer, tell. My code would have just been like, hey, it's me, Harry Houdini. My appendix still hurts in the afterlife

Two more wife stories. So Patrick Henry, who made the Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech

put in his will that his wife would lose her inheritance if she remarried, and Shakespeare left his wife, Anne Hathaway, his, quote, second best bed

Some scholars think that was a nostalgic thing, like couples slept in their second best bed

and so it was their bed. Some people think that he was just, you know, like, dissing on his wife

In the 1800s, Solomon Sanborn from Medford, Massachusetts, requested that his skin be made into two drumheads

He asked for one to be inscribed with universal prayer by Alexander Pope and the other with the Declaration of Independence

He also wanted them beat every June 17th at sunrise on Bunker Hill

Similar, but far less disgusting, Napoleon Bonaparte asked for his head to be shaved when

he died so locks of hair could be sent to his family and friends In 1996 a woman from Louisville Kentucky named Audrey Naur left actor Charles Bronson all of her money a total of about She never met him She was just a fan

Which reminds me, if you enjoy Mental Floss video here on YouTube, don't forget to put us in your will

Anyway, in 1999, Bronson settled out of court with Naur's family, so we don't know who actually got the money

But the fact that Charles Bronson even contested that will... really? Speaking of celebrities, Janis Joplin left her friends $2,500 for a 200-guest party at

a pub in San Anselmo, California, quote, so my friends can get blasted after I'm gone

In fact, she added that to her will just two days before she died

Portuguese aristocrat Luis Carlos de Neronia Cabral de Camara, a man with not enough names

didn't have any family, so he randomly picked 70 people out of a Lisbon phone book to inherit

his fortune. They received their money in 2007. It's funny because people used to use phone books

When philosopher Jeremy Bentham died in 1832, his will revealed that he wanted his body

dissected in a lecture on anatomy, which, you know, isn't that weird in the context

of weird wills. But then he wanted his skeleton to be put together and put on display at the

University College London. His body is still there. He even attended a board meeting once

Oh, that's interesting, because the dinosaur skeleton attends all of our board meetings. Shut up, we have a board. It's Mark and Meredith and the dino skeleton and Hello Kitty in a

Speaking of universities, Marie Curie left a gram of radium to the University of Paris

in her will, but she included that her daughter, Irene Curie, would have the rights to use

the radium in her own scientific research. I'm not a regular mom, I'm a cool mom, I'm gonna let you play with radium

Anyway, Irene Curie went on to win a Nobel Prize, so, you know, it worked out

Although I guess it didn't work out that well, since they both died as a result of radiation poisoning

Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst was annoyed with rumors about him having illegitimate

children, so in his will he left one entire dollar to anyone who could prove that they

were his kid. Now, that's a man who's confident that he doesn't have illegitimate children

He also wrote that anyone who claimed to be was, quote, utterly false and wholly fraudulent

Of course, this was pre-DNA testing when you could make such broad statements without fear

of, you know, being caught. Moving on to a weird Will story. So, in 1976, a 15-year-old named Diane Rompke found a message

in a bottle and it read I Howard Robard Hughes being of sound mind and body do hereby declare this to be my last will and testament That would be billionaire businessman Howard Hughes you know who Leo DiCaprio played in The Aviator He previously refused to sign his will even after it had been written

and in addition to giving $500 million to an illegitimate son in Italy, the will gave

$10 million to, quote, the finder of the bottle. Now we'll never know if it's real, but just in case you want to drop your will in the ocean

bear in mind that it was not considered a legal document and no one has gotten money from it

Now, you know from our episode about dogs that German Countess Carlotta Liebenstein

left about $106 million to her German Shepherd, but she's not the only one who's left outrageous amounts of money to pets

Like businesswoman Leona Helmsley died in 2007, leaving $12 million to her Maltese trouble

although a heroic judge later lowered that amount to $2 million because, you know, trouble just wasn't worth that much trouble

And then there's the 1880 case of an Ohio man named Jonathan Jackson, who in his will set aside money for a, quote, cat house

But not that kind of cat house, the kind that, you know, actually houses cats. He instructed that it should include, quote, sleeping quarters, a conversation room

and an auditorium where they could listen to live accordion music. Farmer Thomas Shoebridge left his dogs thousands of shares in a California electric company in 1958

so naturally they began to attend shareholder meetings. And then there's singer Dusty Springfield, known for songs like Son of a Preacher Man

who put an arranged marriage in her will, a marriage between her 13-year-old cat Nicholas and a friend's cat

I know your concerns, so just for the record, these cats are just friends. And finally, I return to my salon to tell you about the Great Stork Derby

Rich Canadian lawyer Charles Vance Miller died in 1926. He was a jokester and left the majority of his estate

to whichever mom in Toronto gave birth to the most children in the next 10 years

And thus began the Great Stork Derby. In 1936, four women received $125,000 apiece

They'd each had nine children in ten years