FuNky Facts
Happy Friday, friends! Hope you’re staying cool or dry or whatever the weather is doing today….honest, it's always a surprise here! We were digging through some local history archives and found a story so wild it sounds like something we'd find in a box of vintage mystery novels in our online collectible auctions….
In 1926, a wealthy Toronto lawyer named Charles Vance Millar passed away and left behind the ultimate "practical joke" will. Millar, who had no children of his own, decided to turn the city of Toronto into a giant race track for babies! He decreed that the bulk of his massive estate: worth about $500,000 back then: would go to the Toronto woman who could give birth to the most children in the ten years following his death.
The "Great Stork Derby" was officially on! Between 1926 and 1936, the newspapers followed the "race" like a professional sports league, with standings and stats updated constantly. It was a wild decade of legal battles and big families, eventually ending in a four-way tie! Four amazing moms each had nine children during that ten-year span and walked away with about $100,000 each (which is millions today!).
Extra Depth Facts for the Vault:
- The Ultimate Troll: Millar didn't just stop at babies. He also left shares of a horse-racing track to well-known anti-gambling activists and shares of a brewery to several Protestant ministers who were famous for their pro-temperance, anti-alcohol stances!
- The Awkward Vacation: He left a joint lifetime lease on his Jamaican vacation home to three lawyers who absolutely despised each other. Talk about a "special" kind of roommate situation….
- The Supreme Court Win: The contest was so controversial that it went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. Relatives tried to stop the payout, but the courts ruled that Millar’s "social experiment" was legally binding.
- A Depression-Era Lifeline: While the contest seems eccentric now, it took place during the Great Depression. For the winning families, that "trash-to-treasure" windfall from a stranger's will was a life-changing miracle that helped them survive the toughest economic years in history.
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Team Funky
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