wealth
Fortunes made, inherited, or spent on increasingly strange things.
The Woman Who Started the War Early
She raised a revolutionary flag twelve days before the revolution was declared — on a warship that was, on paper, a trading ship.
The Man Who Could Not Fail
He shipped coal to Newcastle during a miners' strike and sold every piece at a premium.
The Man Who Set Himself on Fire to Cure Hiccups
He inherited 132,000 acres at age two and died in a debtors' prison at thirty-seven, and those are not the strange parts.
The Man Who Weighed the Earth and Hid From His Housekeeper
He measured the density of the entire Earth. When he saw his housekeeper on the stairs, he built a second staircase.