10 Strangest Last Wishes and Testaments

7b

5 – Luis Carlos,

5a

  • Luis Carlos was a wealthy loner who picked seventy random heirs to his fortune from the phone book.
  • Luis was the illegitimate son of a Portuguese aristocrat and had pretty much no friends or family of his own. His mother never wanted him, so he ended up having a lot of money but no one to share it with. In life he was deeply unhappy and drunk himself to an early grave.
  • Luis didn’t want his fortune to go to the state, so he decided to divide it up between seventy strangers who were picked at random from the Lisbon phone book. The strangers were contacted out of the blue after his death and told they were beneficiaries. Every one of them thought it was a joke.

4 – Mark Gruenwald,

4c

  • In 1996, comic fans mourned the loss of Mark Gruenwald, Marvel’s executive editor and the man behind Captain American and Iron But this creative mind had a creative last wish: he wanted to literally become part of his comics.
  • To do this, he asked for his cremated remains to be mixed in with comic book ink. The ink was then used for a reprint of Squadron Supreme, his favourite limited edition comic.
  • Even though Mark died from a sudden and unexpected heart attack, he’d discussed his dying wish at length with his widow, Catherine. What a weird conversation that must’ve been…

3 – No Women Library,

3b

  • For his last wish, T.M. Zink tried to build a library that honoured his intense hatred of women.
  • Before his death Zink invested $50,000 in a trust, which grew over time into a cool three million. As his will instructed, this money was to go towards building the Zink Womanless Library, a library that wouldn’t have a single book, decoration or piece of art made by a woman. It would also have the words ‘No Women Admitted’ written at each entrance.
  • Fortunately this terrible project was vetoed by Zink’s family, who challenged his will in 2005. All the book-loving misogynists will have to find somewhere else to hang out.

2 – John Bowman,

2a

  • John Bowman was a wealthy American lawyer who believed his entire family would be reincarnated once all of them had died.
  • In preparation for this great resurrection-slash-reunion, John set up a $50,000 trust so he could continue paying his many servants from beyond the grave. In his will, he instructed his servants to keep his twenty-one-room mansion spotless and asked them to serve dinner each and every night – just in case that was the night they decided to come back from the dead. The last thing anyone wants is to return from the afterlife to a messy house and no dinner.
  • John died in 1891 and his will was honoured until the trust ran out in 1950.

1 – Harry Houdini,

1b

  • Harry Houdini is remembered for giving us a lifetime of incredible illusions. But according to his last will and testament it seems he was saving his best trick for last.
  • In his will, Houdini asked friends and family to hold a séance every year on the anniversary of his death. You see, Houdini planned to make contact with his wife after his death. He even left a secret code to prove that he was the spirit communicating with her.
  • For ten years Houdini’s wife held these séances on Halloween, which was the night of Houdini’s death. No one knows for sure if she was able to make contact. But if she had we probably wouldn’t hear about it. After all, a magician never reveals his secrets.

 

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