Left on a train
Someone took a train in Switzerland last October and disembarked quite a bit lighter. They left behind a package filled with gold bars worth more than $190,000! You'd have to be pretty oblivious to leave that much behind by accident - and then not go back
for it. Despite "extensive investigations", the owner of the high-value package had not been tracked down, officials said in a statement published in the local government Lucerne Canton gazette. After authorities failed to track down the owner of the precious cargo, the gold bars were confiscated by the public prosecutors office. Now, authorities have decided to publicise their quest to find the bounty's mysterious owner. While Switzerland is a banking mecca, it's not like this sort of thing happens every day. The owner of the gold bars must be either so rich that the loss was incidental to them, or more likely did not want the bars traced to some nefarious activity.
Burning rage
Quicky divorce
In 1892 ... a law firm in the American West came up with the idea of a divorce papers vending machine. For a while, at least, legal divorce papers were items that could be bought from a vending machine in Corinne, Utah. A purchaser could insert $2.50 in coins, pull a lever on the side of the machine, and pick up his papers from a delivery drawer that popped open like a cash register drawer. Those papers were then taken to the local law firm — whose name was printed on the form — where the names of the divorcing couple were written in and witnessed.
— Kerry Segrave, Vending Machines: An American Social History, 2002
