James Kidd, Arizona hermit, and miner, disappeared in 1949 and was declared legally dead in 1956. His handwritten will was found in 1963, and it stipulated that his entire estate, worth around $275,000 at the time, should “go in a research for some scientific proof of a soul of a human body which leaves at death.”
Courts received more than a hundred petitions for the inheritance but dismissed all of them. In 1971, the money was awarded to the American Society for Psychical Research in New York City, though it has as of yet failed to scientifically prove the existence of the soul.
Thomas Shewbridge
As a Californian prune rancher, Thomas Shewbridge wasn't all that well known during his life, and that's okay. His will, of all things, brought him into the public eye when he left twenty-nine thousand stock shares in the local electric company to his two dogs, Mac and George.
For the most part, this didn't really mean that much, but since they were major shareholders, it did mean that the dogs had to be present for the board of directors' meetings. The two dogs also inherited an estate worth almost $250,000. The dogs weren't very interested in the meetings, but that's not because they're dogs. It's just because shareholder meetings are boring.
T.M. Zink
Lawyer T.M. Zink might have the strangest request on this entire list. When he died, he left a trust fund of fifty thousand dollars to create a library, but not just any library. He wanted a library totally devoid of women. No books, or art, made by women (easy), no decorations by women (might be tough), and no female employees (impossible).
Zink's own daughter contested the will and was actually successful. The womanless library was never founded, no matter what Zink's reasoning was. Was he a misogynist? Or did he just want a library that actually had books worth reading? We may never know.
S. Sanborn
Sanborn, an American hatmaker, bequeathed his body to science when he died in 1871. One Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., a professor of anatomy at Harvard Medical School, and one of Holmes's colleagues received the body. Was it for research?
No, not really. Instead, Sanborn wanted to be drums. He stipulated that two drums were to be made out of Sanborn's skin and given to a friend, on the condition that every June 17th at dawn, the friend would play “Yankee Doodle” at Bunker Hill to commemorate the anniversary of the famous Revolutionary War battle. A true patriot, even after death. The rest of his body was to be made into fertilizer to contribute to the growth of an American elm.
Jonathan Jackson
A 19th-century Columbus, Ohio, man named Jonathan Jackson was a true animal lover. His will stipulated that “It is man's duty as lord of animals to watch over and protect the lesser and feebler.” When he died in 1880, he left money in order to create a cat house.
No, not that kind of cat house. It was really, truly, a place where cats could enjoy all the creature comforts of life, such as large bedrooms, dining halls, an auditorium to listen to live accordion music, an exercise room, and a special roof designed for climbing that wouldn't risk any of his feline friends while they were seeing the great outdoors.