Some Light Hearted Trivia
Posted on 12th November 2017
Thought I would do a light heart-ed post for a change, Wills and Lasting Power of Attorney can be very deep and thought provoking, sometimes people even avoiding thinking about getting their affairs sorted purely as they refuse to think about the worst happening.
So here are some interesting facts and nonsense and simply unbelievable things to do with Wills throughout history:
* The oldest Will known to man was found in an Egyptian Tomb dating back to 2048 B.C. where an Egyptian man named Uah leaves all his property to his wife Teta.
* There are Two Wills that both hold the title for being the Shortest Wills in history, both containing only three words, the first was a Will made by a German gentleman leaving 'All to wife', and the second Will made by a man in India states 'All to son'.
* Meanwhile a English Lady known as Frederica Evelyn Stilwell Cook, holds the title for having the longest ever Will drawn up, totaling a staggering 1066 pages (over 95,000 words), it wasn't as if she even had a huge Estate, the value was only around £100,000, glad to say she wasn't one of my clients.
* The Worlds first Power of Attorney document was found in 561 B.C. in Mesopotamia, where a man has given his brother the power to run his business on his behalf.
* Back in the day, a Will would be used to distribute a persons Real Estate after they had died, where as a Testament would be used to distribute their personal Property. Nowadays the document is combined 'Last Will & Testament'.
* Guess what, the Smithsonian Institute in America was started from a Legacy from a English man named James Smithson whom died in 1829, and he had never visited America in his life.
* Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to make sure that he would be remembered by his family and requested that in his Will, a lock of hair was to be made into a bracelets and sent to his mother, brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews. Later with all his hair floating around it was deemed after examining that he may have died from arsenic poisoning.
* Mary Livingstone who was the wife of the entertainer Jack Benny who died in 1974, was a very lucky lady, Jack arranged for a Red Rose to be delivered every day to Mary for the rest of her life.
* Solomon Sanborn left his body to science, he was a haberdasher who died back in 1871, but one of the stipulations was that he wanted a drum to be made out of his skin, and given to his friend, but not only that, his friend had to promise to play 'Yankee Doodle Dandie' every year at sunrise on Bunker hill on every 17th June.
Look out for more trivia in the future.
Tagged as: Estate Planning, Wills
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