Harry Bensley had a very interesting episode in his life.

He was reputedly a West-end playboy, a “bit of a rogue” and a womaniser. He had plenty of money, through investments in Russia, which allegedly earned him around £5,000 a year (a huge amount at the start of the 20th centurary).

This particular story goes like this: At a dinner one evening in 1907, at his club “The National Sporting Club, London”, two gentlemen; John Pierpoint Morgan and Hugh Cecil Lowther Lonsdale (5th earl of Lonsdale and of whom boxing’s Lonsdale Belt is named after) were arguing whether it would be possible to walk around the world without being identified. Lonsdale said it could be done, where Morgan said it could not.

Morgan put up a 100,000 dollar (then £21,000) challenge, and Harry, on hearing the argument, took it up. At that time, it was the largest ever recorded bet! Many conditions were also placed on the bet, including that he was never to be identified, he had to finance himself (starting off with only one pound sterling), only take a change of underclothes, and he had to find a wife on his journey, without letting her know who he was.

A particular route was planned consisting of 169 English towns and cities, plus 125 others in 18 counties around the world. Morgan also financed an escort (often referred to as The Minder) to travel with him to ensure the terms of the wager were kept! At this time, the name of the escort is unknown (can you help here?) but my mother has an article which suggests he was an American. He is pictured on many of the postcards that Harry sold to finance himself.

Sources:
The Man in the Iron Mask - Wikipedia
The Man in the Iron Mask Official Website

Powerball, a multi-state lottery, has unique rules. Players pick six numbers: five which they hope will match five randomly selected white balls; plus one additional number which they hope will match a randomly selected red ball (the Powerball). Any player who successfully predicts all six balls correctly wins the jackpot. The odds of hitting the jackpot? One in over 195 million.

However, correctly predicting the five white balls only results in a large prize itself, currently $200,000. The odds here? One in 5,138,133.

But something went wrong during March 30, 2005 Powerball drawing. One hundred and ten people hit those one-in-five million odds, winning, collectively, almost $20 million dollars.

Immediately, officials assumed rampant fraud. They plotted the winner’s locations on a map, and, seeing no obvious patterns, dug deeper. What they found wasn’t fraud. It was food. Specifically, fortune cookies.

Wonton Food, Inc., in New York, makes fortune cookies. A lot of them, in fact, with distribution across the country. They print up thousands of copies of each fortune, replete with lucky numbers. And as luck would have it, one of these sets of numbers exactly matched the five white balls in that week’s Powerball drawing.

One hundred and ten people played those numbers — and finding no fraud in the end, Powerball officials concluded that these 110 lucky Chinese food fans were indeed winners.

(Source: us1.campaign-archive1.com)