Fun Facts That Are

A scrap dealer paid $13,302 for a gold egg at a flea market, planning to melt it for profit. Nobody wanted it. It sat in his kitchen for years. Then he Googled the name engraved inside. It was a lost Imperial Faberge egg made for Tsar Alexander III. Estimated value: $33 million.

Keanu Reeves gave up $75 million of his Matrix sequels paycheck and redirected it to the special effects and costume design teams. Then he bought every single stunt performer a custom Harley Davidson.

They're sold in over 170 countries. But bring a Kinder Surprise egg into the United States and customs will seize it. A toy inside a chocolate egg violates a 1938 federal law. Border agents confiscated over 60,000 in one year. The original Kinder Surprise remains contraband.

Will Ferrell was offered $29 million to make Elf 2. He turned it down because he didn't think the sequel would be good enough. He said he couldn't promote it honestly knowing it wasn't up to standard.

Steve Jobs had to follow an exact sequence of taps during the first iPhone demo in 2007 — one wrong move and it would crash on live TV. Apple engineers called it the "golden path." They had backup phones ready backstage to swap in if he slipped. The most important product launch in tech history was held together with duct tape.

In 1995, Patrick Combs got a promotional check for $95,093.35 in junk mail. He endorsed it with a smiley face and deposited it at an ATM as a joke. The bank cleared the full amount. It turned out the fake check accidentally met every legal requirement of a real one. Six lawyers told him the money was legally his. He returned it anyway.

In 2006, developers offered 84-year-old Edith Macefield $1 million for the tiny Seattle house she had bought for $3,750 in 1952. She said no. So they built a five-story shopping complex around it. During construction, the site superintendent started checking on her, bringing groceries, driving her to appointments. When Edith died in 2008, she left the house to him.

Red Bull settled a $13 million lawsuit after a customer argued it was no better than coffee. A can has 80mg of caffeine. A cup of coffee has 150mg. Red Bull offered $10 per person to anyone who bought one since 2002. So many people claimed it that the payout dropped to $4.25.

In 1938, Lee Byung-chul started Samsung in Daegu, South Korea as a small trading company selling dried fish, vegetables, and noodles. The name Samsung means "three stars" in Korean — chosen to symbolize something big, numerous, and powerful. Today Samsung's annual revenue equals roughly 20%% of South Korea's entire GDP. From noodles to semiconductors. The stars delivered.

Matt Damon says James Cameron offered him 10% of Avatar's box office. He couldn't take it \u2014 he was locked into the Bourne franchise. Avatar grossed $2.9 billion. That 10% would have been worth roughly $250 million.

Dale Schroeder worked as a carpenter at the same Iowa company for 67 years. He never married. He drove a rusty old Chevrolet. When he died in 2005, nobody could believe he had secretly saved $3 million. He left it all to send 33 complete strangers to college. They call themselves "Dale's kids."

On May 22, 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoin for two Papa John's pizzas — the first real-world Bitcoin purchase. At the time, those coins were worth about $41. At Bitcoin's peak, they would have been worth over $700 million.