In 2016, to prove to her husband that lottery tickets were a waste of money, a woman named Glenda Blackwell bought a Carolina Millions scratch-off ticket worth $10. In the end, she unexpectedly won and took home $1 million.
After being annoyed with her husband Buddy for asking her to buy him Powerball tickets, Blackwell, 57, from Leicester, North Carolina, decided to do something to prove to him that buying lottery tickets was a pointless waste. However, she unexpectedly won with a lottery ticket. She then decided to buy a house and some land to help her daughter as well as set aside some money to cover the college tuition for her two granddaughters.
There was a seven-year-old boy who watched a lot of toy videos on YouTube and decided to make vlogs about different toys. The boy later earned $22 million a year from his videos and product line at Walmart.
Ryan’s YouTube channel has influenced the toy world just like PewDiePie, a Swedish comedian and video game commentator, has influenced video games. As of February 2019, one of Ryan’s videos titled “Surprise Toy Challenge with Giant Eggs” had exceeded 1.7 billion views. From being the eighth highest-paid YouTuber in 2016-2017 with earnings of $11 million, he became the highest-paid with $22 million in 2018.
After watching toy review channels on YouTube, Ryan asked his mom, “Why don’t I make videos on YouTube for other kids to watch?” And then the boy started his vlogging career in March 2015, and his mom quit her job as a high school chemistry teacher to help him make toy review videos. In 2017, his parents signed with a children’s media startup called Pocket.watch to market and sell merchandise. In 2018, Ryan’s channel also created an app called “Tag with Ryan” for iOS and Android devices. That same year, the channel released a new toy line called “Ryan’s World” exclusively at Walmart, Target, and later on Amazon.com.
In 1992, while searching for a lost hammer with a metal detector, a retired man discovered a massive Roman treasure containing 15,234 coins. The British government later paid him and the landowner £1.75 million to acquire these artifacts.
When farmer Peter Whatling lost his hammer, he enlisted the help of his friend Eric Lawes, who had received a metal detector as a retirement gift. On November 16, Lawes was searching in Whatling’s farmland in the village of Hoxne, Suffolk, England when he unexpectedly found the hoard. It contained many gold and silver items, 15,234 Roman coins, some silver spoons, and 200 gold objects. Archaeologists determined that these objects dated back to 410 AD, the time when England broke away from the Roman Empire.
There was a woman named Ailin Graef, also known as Anshe Chung, who became a virtual millionaire by selling virtual real estate in the online world Second Life.
While living in Los Gatos, California, Dahl was sitting with his friends at a Bonny Doon bar listening to them complain about their pets. He then jokingly said he had the perfect pet – a rock – that didn’t need grooming, walking, feeding, or bathing. Plus, it wouldn’t get sick or old, wouldn’t misbehave, or die.
Dahl then bought rocks for a penny each, and the price he sold these “pets” was extremely low. His biggest expense was producing the boxes and the “Official Pet Rock Training Manual” – a small 32-page book titled “Caring for and Training Your Pet Rock.”
Although sales were low in February 1976, Dahl sold 1.5 million Pet Rocks at $4 each, making him a millionaire.
In 1975, a man named Gary Dahl became a millionaire by selling smooth rocks from the beach of Rosarito, Mexico for $4 each.
During the Great Depression, a banker convinced a small town of struggling families in Florida to buy shares of Coca-Cola. This town became the richest per capita town in America and now has at least 67 millionaires.
In the 1920s and 30s, the farming town of Quincy was struggling to survive. But Pat Munroe noticed that the townspeople were spending their leftover money on Coca-Cola bottles. At that time, the stock of the company was quite cheap at $19 per share. So he invested in the stock, and as a trusted banker, many people followed his advice and invested even when the market was down.
Munroe’s instincts paid off, and the stock pulled the town through the worst of the Great Depression. It was also reported that dividends saved the townspeople during the subsequent recession and when crops failed. Many of them accumulated massive wealth that earned them the title “Coca-Cola millionaires” and passed their riches down to their descendants.