Wikipedia says the lease to Klostermann began in 1996; Brocket Hall's own history says the trustees sold a 60-year leasehold in 1997; German Wikipedia gives a 50-year lease. Brocket Hall's history dates the purchase to 1921; English Wikipedia says 1923.2025 · Lord Brocket was jailed for five years for insurance fraud in 1996, and his trustees leased out Brocket HallNajib says the money was a Saudi political donation and that he was misled by financiers; the judge called the donation claim "incapable of belief" and found the donor letters forged:2025 · Najib Razak's stepson made The Wolf of Wall Street with money from Malaysia's state fund, and Najib was given 15 more years in prisonTe Ao Māori News and Wikipedia say she is the youngest of three children, with two older brothers: | The Otago Daily Times calls Korotangi Paki her younger brother:2024 · The Māori King's council passed over the son who had stood in for him and named his youngest child queen at his funeralThe family and the defence say the fall was an accident and that the three children accepted the division of the inheritance ( The judge's order cites a conflictive father-son relationship, a demand for a lifetime inheritance and inconsistencies in Jonathan's account (2024 · Mango's founder fell to his death on a hike with his son, and a judge has named the son the only suspectWOWT (2024) puts Buffett's gifts to the Gates Foundation at nearly $55 billion; bdnews24 (2026) puts them at over $47 billion:2024 · Warren Buffett's will once named the Gates Foundation; he removed it in 2024 and stopped his lifetime gifts to it in 2026Korea JoongAng Daily (10 March 2023) gives Koo Kwang-mo's inherited stake as 8.67 percent ( The Korea Times (12 February 2026) gives 8.76 percentage points (2023 · LG's chairman adopted his nephew as heir; his widow and daughters sued to undo the share split and the adoption, and lost both in 2026The Standard (January 2026) said the trial was set to begin on 21 September 2026; Oxygen reports the prosecution opened on 30 September 2026:2023 · Abby Choi's former husband and his father and brother are on trial for her murder over a flat she had put in her father-in-law's nameDate of death: night of 12 January (South First, WION), 14 January (The News Minute, Dawn obituary via vLex), 15 January 2023 (Wikipedia):2023 · The last Nizam of Hyderabad inherited one of the world's largest fortunes and died in Turkey after losing most of itThe Korea Times dates the share transfer to February 2023; Korea JoongAng Daily dates it to May 2023:2022 · Nexon founder Kim Jung-ju's family paid inheritance tax with 29.3 percent of his holding company, and the government could not find a buyerChun said in 2003 that he had 291,000 won in assets ( The state later recovered 132.72 billion won from family land, deposits, shares and artworks (2021 · South Korea could not collect 86.7 billion won of Chun Doo-hwan's forfeiture after he diedThe Paper (2021) calls the vendor by the pseudonym Xiao You; Beijing News and ifeng (2024) call him Liu:2021 · An 88-year-old Shanghai man signed his 3 million yuan home over to the fruit seller who cared for him, a court later declared him incapable, and the gift still stoodTeletica (July 2021) describes the dead man as Polish; La Nación and ForkLog describe him as Romanian-born:2021 · Bitcoin pioneer Mircea Popescu drowned off Costa Rica, and no heir or keyholder has come forward for coins said to number up to a millionMagalí Gil says she is his daughter; an informal DNA test with his sister showed a low probability, and she has not been recognised as an heir†.2020 · Diego Maradona left five recognised heirs, more paternity claims, and two trials over his death and his nameIn a 1990 television interview Simeon said he had no material property claims against Bulgaria†: | He and his sister took back the royal estates after the 1998 ruling and defended them in court to 2020:2020 · Bulgaria sued its former tsar to take back his palaces, and the Supreme Court gave him Tsarska Bistritsa but the state got Vrana parkForbes Brasil puts the estate at about 16 billion dollars; Brazil Journal at about 20 billion:2020 · Joseph Safra's son sued his mother and brothers over the family bank, alleging his father had been influenced to change his will, and settled in 2024The Herald reported the penalty claimed against Shin as 60 billion won: | Bizhankook reported 600 billion won, 200 billion won per plaintiff:2020 · Hanmi Pharm's founder died owing a family tax bill of 500 billion won, his widow and daughter agreed to merge with OCI, and his sons stopped it at a shareholder voteThe Mubarak family calls the closure a full exoneration; prosecutors said only that they lacked evidence to prove illegal origin: and2020 · Switzerland froze 700 million francs tied to Mubarak's circle in 2011, and after 11 years released the last 400 million to its ownersNBC and most outlets report about 150 claimants paid; later 2026 reports say 136:2019 · Jeffrey Epstein signed his will two days before he died in jail; victims' claims cut the $577 million estate to about $107 million¡Hola! says the family split the ashes and half went to Mexico; La Razón describes his remains arriving in a gold coffin:2019 · José José's older children searched Miami hospitals and funeral homes for his body, and two wills name different heirsThe Citizen and The EastAfrican (May 2021) date the High Court ruling 18 May 2021; The Citizen (August 2024) dates it 18 March 2021:2019 · Tanzanian tycoon Reginald Mengi's will left his estate to his second wife and their twins, and the High Court threw it outHuman Rights Watch says the cabinet presented the draft bill in 2019; other reports date cabinet approval to November 2018:2019 · Tunisia's president proposed equal inheritance for daughters and sons, died before parliament voted, and his successor called the debate falseMelcher's son Terry Melcher said his father's early death saved Day from ruin; the court found Melcher used her funds without her knowledge.2019 · Doris Day's husband died in 1968 and she learned her lawyer and her husband had lost her earnings; a court awarded the couple $26,396,511Pack's suits say Bernard mismanaged the estate; Bernard's lawyer says Pack has no claim.2018 · XXXTentacion was shot dead at 20, and his son was born seven months later outside his willRobertson says she knew nothing of the fraud; the OSC found Cotten ran it.2018 · Crypto CEO Gerald Cotten died in India holding the only keys to C$215 million, and regulators found the money was already goneFrench Wikipedia gives the death date as 20 June 2018; English Wikipedia gives 21 June 2018. The French article also gives the release as 24 March in one section and after the 26 March questioning in another.2018 · Baron Empain was kidnapped in Paris in 1978, lost part of a finger, was held 63 days, and sold his stake in Empain-Schneider three years laterInterogo says its aim is to secure "the longevity and independence of the IKEA concept" ( The Economist reported the structure minimised tax and disclosure and rewarded the family (2018 · Ingvar Kamprad put IKEA into a Dutch foundation in 1982 that The Economist called the world's richest charity and one of its least generousLaeticia's side held that Hallyday lived in Los Angeles and California law applied; the Nanterre court counted his days and found his residence was France.2017 · Johnny Hallyday disinherited two of his children under California law, and a French court ruled French law appliedEnglish Wikipedia dates the appeal ruling to May 2016; French Wikipedia gives 28 August 2016.2017 · Liliane Bettencourt gave a photographer about €1 billion, and her daughter's complaint ended in his convictionGiuseppe Caprotti says in his 2023 book and a 2026 interview that his father fired him out of jealousy and took the children's shares; the courts held in 2012, 2014 and 2016 that Bernardo had full right to take back control.2016 · Esselunga founder Bernardo Caprotti took back the shares he had given his children and left control to his second wife and daughterQatari view of 1972 as a lawful succession by the named heir, against the Western description of an overthrow: | The 1995 takeover while the father was abroad:2016 · Qatar's emir took power from his cousin in 1972; in 1995 his son took it from him and froze his bank accounts abroadIn 2013 the Augsburger Allgemeine put the gift tax at about €27 million: | The Bavarian Landtag motion of 3 February 2016 cites accepted tax damage of €135 million to €145 million:2016 · Curt Engelhorn sold Boehringer Mannheim to Roche with no German tax paid, two of his daughters were arrested, and the family settled for €135 million to €145 millionThe Local (AFP) says police found 179 gold ingots weighing 168 kg at the villa in 1982 ( the Boston Globe and Il Foglio date the gold, about 160 kg in flower pots, to 1998 (2015 · Police found the P2 lodge's 962 names in Licio Gelli's factory in 1981, and after he died prosecutors asked a court to confiscate his villa from a dead manChris Aber said, "They couldn't prove one thing I did wrong," and that his brother Mark had been selling Rooney's possessions on eBay. The conservator called the Abers "thieves" and pointed to a $2.9 million judgment the Abers acknowledged in the settlement. Both accounts: and the court-ordered conservatorship:2014 · Mickey Rooney worked 90 years and left an $18,000 estate to one stepsonOda's 2019 memoir describes 17 years with Takakura and does not address the relatives' account ( the relatives say she excluded them from the cremation and kept the ashes (2014 · Ken Takakura's adopted daughter cremated him before his family knew he had died, and inherited his estate and film rightsThe sons say they published because they found literary worth in the book ( The author's stated wish, recorded by the sons themselves, was that it be destroyed (2014 · Gabriel García Márquez said his last novel must be destroyed; his sons published it on his 97th birthdayThe Rutland Herald puts his individual bequests at about $200,000; Wikipedia says $2 million went to stepchildren, caregivers and friends:2014 · A Vermont gas station attendant and janitor left more than $8 million in stocks, and his stepson had no ideaThe church said in a 2014 statement published under a press arbitration order that Yoo retired from management in 1997, owned no shares and was not the Sewol's owner ( Prosecutors alleged he was the de facto owner through family holding companies (2014 · After the Sewol sank with 304 dead, the man prosecutors called its real owner fled, was found dead in a plum field, and the state went after his family's assetsThe 2016 judgment dates the insolvency administration order to 26 January 2015: | 24 Old Buildings dates the hearing and order to 25 January 2015:2013 · Boris Berezovsky lost his case against Abramovich, died seven months later, and a judge called his estate hopelessly insolventThe Library of Congress blog says one pair of grandparents sued the other with the hospital as a third party; China Daily's 2018 summary says the four parents sued the hospital:2013 · A Chinese couple died in a car crash five days before their embryos were to be implanted, and four years later a surrogate from Laos gave birth to their sonJobs said in a court filing that he was sterile and told Time in 1983 that the test was unreliable; the court-ordered test found a 94.1 percent probability of paternity, and he later acknowledged her.2011 · Steve Jobs swore he was sterile to avoid paying for his daughter, lost on a blood test, and later left her millionsWikipedia gives her death as 13 January 2010 in one place and 19 January 2010 in another:2010 · A secretary bought three Abbott shares for $180 in 1935, never sold them, and left $7 million to Lake Forest CollegeLe Monde du Droit dates the Strasbourg decision 20 February 2024; Moneyvox dates it 15 February 2024:2009 · Maurice Jarre left his estate to his widow through a California trust, and France's highest court said his children's reserved share did not follow him abroadAngelo Bertolotti said a private laboratory's hair test showed poisoning ( The coroner ruled the death accidental, from pneumonia with anemia and drug intoxication ( and a judge dismissed his suit when he missed a second court date (2009 · Brittany Murphy's father sued the coroner for her hair samples, then said a lab found heavy metals; her mother called it a smearThai police: suicide by hanging ( Family pathologist Baden: accidental asphyxiation (2009 · David Carradine was found dead in a Bangkok closet in 2009; Thai police said suicide, the family's pathologist said accident, and his widow sued the film companyKim Ledger said in 2008 the family would give the estate to Matilda; no court record of the transfer has been published.2008 · Heath Ledger's will was written before his daughter was born and left her nothingKay's lawyer said a Gibraltar court found Kay a co-owner of the disputed trusts (RAPSI, 18 December 2009): | The widow's lawyers said Gibraltar recognised only a claim to 14 percent and barred Kay from dealing with the assets (Pravo.ru, 23 December 2009):2008 · Badri Patarkatsishvili died in Surrey worth over $1 billion, a relative produced a copy of a will naming himself executor, and the widow called it a forgery in courts in five jurisdictionsStrasbourg Observers dates the just-satisfaction judgment 8 June 2020; Nottingham's Human Rights Law Centre dates it 18 June 2020:2008 · A Greek Muslim left everything to his wife by notarial will, his sisters invoked sharia, and Greek courts cut her to a quarterNBC put the estate at about $100 million in 2012; the New York Sun cited $198 million in 2007.2007 · Brooke Astor's son was convicted of looting her estate while she had Alzheimer'sDaughter Deanna Brown Thomas said in 2025 the family had "no indication" how the $90 million is used; the estate says funds will be distributed once litigation ends.2006 · James Brown left his fortune to educate poor children, and 15 years of lawsuits came before the estate sold for about $90 millionEnglish Wikipedia describes an oak coffin; German Wikipedia, citing Süddeutsche Zeitung, describes a stainless-steel coffin.2006 · Thieves stole the coffin of Friedrich Karl Flick, heir to a Nazi-era fortune, from his Austrian mausoleumThe family argued the heirs were good-faith third parties entitled to keep the assets, and the Supreme Court rejected this (2006 · Chile's Supreme Court forfeited Pinochet's assets in 2018 after the US Senate exposed his Riggs Bank accountsDong-A Ilbo dates the marriage to 1958; Wikipedia dates it to 25 October 1959:2005 · The last Korean imperial heir divorced his American wife after relatives pressed for a son, died in the Tokyo building where he was born, and was given an adopted son after his deathForbes Middle East gives two dates for Bahaa's sale to Saad, 2008 and 2018:2005 · Rafik Hariri was killed in 2005; his family chose the second son as political heir, the other brothers sold him their shares of Saudi Oger, and the company closed in 2017Joakim Larsson: "we are Stieg's legal heirs"; the family says Expo received about 20 million kronor. Gabrielsson says she should control the work.2004 · Stieg Larsson's partner of 30 years got nothing from the Millennium fortune because they never marriedBernhard's 1976 account to the commission recorded no child in California; NOS found the 1976 tip about payments to "Alicia Webber" in the National Archives and reported that the documents bear it out.2004 · Prince Bernhard denied a secret daughter to the Lockheed inquiry, then left her and a second one a sixth of his estate eachThe Institute of National Remembrance says the Supreme Court's military chamber revoked the death sentence in 1995; Newsweek wrote that it was commuted to life after 1989 before charges were dropped:2004 · Polish colonel Ryszard Kukliński passed 40,000 pages to the CIA, was sentenced to death in absentia, and lost both sons within months in 1994The family says the flats came from the grandfather's Qatari investment and the case was political: and The accountability court convicted in 2018, and the High Court acquitted on appeal:2004 · A Qatari prince's letter said Nawaz Sharif's father had willed his Gulf profits to a grandson, and courts fought for six years over four Park Lane flatsThe Seattle Times wire report says Jorge's father won the port concession; Agência Brasil says it was his grandfather, Eduardo Guinle:2004 · The heir to the Santos docks fortune spent it all and died on a state pension in the Rio hotel his family built and soldThe Elkanns' spokesperson says the tax deal closed "a painful affair" with no admission of the allegations. | Prosecutors allege about €1 billion in assets went undeclared through Marella's Swiss residence, and a judge ordered John Elkann charged.2003 · Margherita Agnelli sued her three children over her mother's estate, and Turin prosecutors charged her son John Elkann with tax fraudRéAnna Simone Kelly said in 2021 that Harris bullied her mother and gave the estate to strangers ( The Attorney General's settlement papers say Kelly breached her fiduciary duty and diverted estate assets (2003 · Nina Simone left most of her estate to a trust for African children; the California Attorney General said her daughter diverted it, and the daughter resigned and gave up the rightsThe Constitutional Court spells the deceased "Vuyo Elius Mgolombane" and gives the death as October 2002 ( the Cape High Court order spells him "Vuyu Elius Mgolombane" and gives 9 October 2002 (2002 · South Africa's Constitutional Court made two Khayelitsha girls sole heirs of their father and struck down male primogeniture in 2004The sale is dated 2002 (Caravan, LiveLaw) and 2003 (LawChakra's account of the 2025 hearing):2002 · An orphanage trust sold its Mumbai plot for Antilia in 2002, the waqf board called the sale illegal, and the Bombay High Court dismissed the last challenge in 2025Her age at death is 85 in South African government reporting ( and 86 on Wikipedia (2001 · South Africa's Constitutional Court upheld the Valoyi community's choice of Tinyiko Shilubana as its first woman Hosi in 2008Outlook reports a second will said to date from the mid-1990s, after mother and son reconciled; its existence is unconfirmed†:2001 · Gwalior's Rajmata disinherited her son and barred him from her last rites; the Scindia property fight ran 40 yearsMaritime Executive says the bonds had been in default since 2002; Compass Lexecon dates the default to 2001:2001 · A hedge fund had Argentina's navy training ship held in Ghana for 11 weeks over defaulted bondsAl Jazeera says he returned to Argentina in 1971 and that his secretary found his body on 1 August 2000: | The Argentine presidency says he returned and founded the foundation in 1975 and died on 29 July 2000:2000 · René Favaloro, who developed coronary bypass surgery, shot himself after his foundation went unpaid by Argentina's health insurersThe family has never admitted or denied that the funds were stolen ( Nigeria's Supreme Court held that Decree No. 53 forfeited the assets (1998 · Four governments returned more than $780 million of General Sani Abacha's money to NigeriaThe estate, for his widow and daughters, argued the letter expressed a future intent only; both Montana Supreme Court rulings went the other way.1997 · CBS newsman Charles Kuralt kept a second family for 29 years, and a letter from his hospital bed gave his mistress his Montana landAmount frozen. French Wikipedia gives CHF 8.3 million frozen since 17 May 1997 ( swissinfo gives about CHF 8 million ( SFr7.7 million released in July 2009 (1997 · Switzerland released Mobutu Sese Seko's frozen money to his heirs, and his body stays in RabatVOA's historian says Bảo Đại remarried in 1982: | Wikipedia gives a 1972 marriage:1997 · Bảo Đại handed his gold seal to the revolution in 1945, sued his own son for it in France, and his widow's heirs sold it for 6.1 million eurosCornell's Legal Information Institute says the late chief's son by a second wife, and that son's mother, also contested the uncle's claim ( This Is Africa calls Senate Masupha an only child ( She filed her challenge in 2010 ( or 2013 (This Is Africa, same URL as above).1996 · A Lesotho chief's eldest daughter sued to inherit his chieftainship, and the courts kept it in the male lineKim's brother and Lee Sang-ho alleged neglect and concealment for profit ( Police found no neglect and no fraud ( and a court found the film defamed her (1996 · Kim Kwang-seok's daughter, heir to his song copyrights, died in 2007, and her mother told no one for ten yearsSteve Ross and Ross's friends say Bob wanted the family to keep his name ( Bob Ross Inc. says the rights belonged to the company under work-for-hire terms, and the courts agreed (1995 · Bob Ross left his name to his son, and his business partners won it in courtMoney magazine's account (the $5,000 start in 1944) vs. her executor's account and her 1936 tax return: | J. Weekly gives her top IRS salary as $3,150; Wikipedia says she never earned more than $4,000 a year:1995 · An IRS auditor who said she was held back as a Jewish woman left $22 million in stock to Yeshiva University, a school she had no ties toWikipedia dates Douglas's selection to 1992; City News Service says Douglas was appointed in 1995, when Seymour died. Wikipedia says Robert died in prison; AP says in a California hospital:1995 · Seymour Durst passed over his eldest son, the family bought Robert out for about $65 million, and Robert died a convicted murdererWikipedia's Dugdale article dates the raid 26 April 1974 and says the ransom was IR£500,000 plus the release of the Price sisters from Brixton; RTÉ says the IRA asked for four prisoners to be moved to a Belfast prison and that the paintings were found eleven days later; the Vermeer article dates the raid 27 April and the recovery eight days later.1994 · Russborough House was robbed four times from 1974 to 2002, and Sir Alfred Beit gave his stolen Vermeer to Ireland before it was foundDuke said the car lurched forward after she released the brake; Peter Lance's 2021 book and a witness, Bob Walker, contradict her account.1993 · Doris Duke left $1.2 billion with her butler as executor, and a court-appointed lawyer said her doctor hastened her deathThe Independent obituary gives 20 June 1993 as the date of death; a 2006 Independent feature says 1992.1993 · The 6th Earl Cawdor left Cawdor Castle to his second wife, and a court put his son's children out of itSaeed Naqvi dates the move to Malcha Mahal to the "early 80s"; the Tribune and Wikipedia give 1985:1993 · A woman claiming to be heir of the kings of Awadh lived nine years in a Delhi railway station and won a palace; she was the widow of a university registrarIn 1995 Roxas's brother Jose told a Baguio court that the statue was lead, that Roxas had been bribed to call it gold, and that he wanted it melted; the Hawaii jury valued the Buddha at $1.3 million as gold. Both are in the Hawaii Supreme Court opinion:1993 · A Baguio locksmith said Marcos's men seized his golden Buddha, and a Hawaii jury valued the gold he never got back at $22 billionNewsweek (January 1992) wrote that Daniel had "recently turned 1"; Wikipedia gives his birth as January 1985.1991 · A fugitive baron died in Manila with two infant sons by two women, and the Lords gave his title to his half-brother after DNA ruled out one boy and bigamy the otherThe judgment gives the ruler's death as 19 July 1991 and, quoting the High Court, 20 July 1991:1991 · Travancore's last ruler died in 1991, the Kerala High Court said his brother could not inherit the temple's management, and the Supreme Court gave the family controlGloria told Tichys Einblick that the house had to auction art, furniture and porcelain to pay the inheritance tax: | The record adds debts from company acquisitions, reported at $500 million, and a separate in-lieu transfer of more than 2,200 objects to the state:1990 · Gloria von Thurn und Taxis auctioned the family treasures and handed 2,200 objects to Bavaria to settle her husband's estateTech Monitor reported on 8 August 1989 that Fred Wang resigned ( The Roanoke Times obituary of 25 March 1990 says his father fired him (1990 · An Wang put his son in charge of a $3 billion company, the son was out by 1989, and Wang Laboratories went bankrupt in 1992The Third Circuit and CoinWeek place the safe-deposit find in 2003: | The Philadelphia Inquirer (2015) says 2004:1990 · A jeweller's daughter found ten 1933 gold double eagles in his safe-deposit box, handed them to the Mint to authenticate, and the government kept themThe foundations say Melinda carried out Paul's wish to preserve the entailed estate; the Eisenstadt court found his will showed he did not want entail succession.1989 · Prince Paul Esterházy made his widow sole heir, and the Esterházy family lost Burgenland's largest estate to her foundationsB.D. Hyman said in 2003 that her mother never read My Mother's Keeper ( The record: Davis's 1987 memoir printed an open letter answering the book and its title, and the 1987 will named Hyman and her sons as intentionally omitted (1989 · Bette Davis wrote her daughter, her adopted daughter and two grandsons out of her will after "My Mother's Keeper"China says Gedhun Choekyi Nyima is a private citizen living a normal life (AP, 19 May 2020): | The Tashilhunpo monastery in exile says his whereabouts remain unknown:1989 · The Dalai Lama named a six-year-old as Panchen Lama in 1995; the boy disappeared within days and China installed another boy chosen from a golden urnThe UAE's official account says the family unanimously elected Zayed: | Historians describe a coup planned with British officials:1989 · Three Abu Dhabi rulers were killed in family feuds in six years; the survivors swore to their mother never to do it again, and in 1966 one brother removed another without bloodshedA 1954 entry in Chiang Ching-kuo's diary, opened at the Hoover Institution, says the twins were the children of his friend Wang Chi-chun (TVBS, 2020). A declassified 1985 CIA paper lists Chiang Ching-kuo as John Chiang's father (CNA, 2020).1988 · Chiang Ching-kuo never acknowledged his twin sons, and one of them took the Chiang name 63 years laterGeo News reported the 2021 awards as 15 million and 8.56 million rupees: . WION reported payments of 11.5 million and 7.2 million:1988 · Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar were born in Peshawar houses their families left at partition, the new owners refused to sell, and the province took both by compulsory purchaseA 2006 New Times report said the older children received more royalties than the twins ( A rebuttal by an heir said distributions have always been 25 percent each (1987 · Jaco Pastorius died broke after a club bouncer beat him, his estate nearly closed with debts, and his stolen bass took four years of litigation to get backThe foundation's dissolution is documented only in the O'Keeffe Museum's own archive.1986 · Georgia O'Keeffe's late codicils left most of a $65 million estate to her assistant, 58 years younger, and her family suedCoogan's mother signed a sworn deposition that "there was never a promise in any way, shape or form" to hold his earnings in trust ( The record: the parents' own 1922 court petition asked to end the guardianship because they planned "the creation of a trust for the investment and preservation of the estate of said Jackie Coogan" (1984 · Jackie Coogan earned $3 million as a child; $252,000 was left when he sued his motherUPI reported Basia's settlement as $300 million; a law-firm account gives $340 million with the children at 12 percent.1983 · A Johnson & Johnson heir left $400 million to the maid he married, and his six children suedLansky said he was nearly broke; federal authorities said he had $300 million hidden; no cache has been found: and1983 · The FBI believed Meyer Lansky had $300 million hidden; he died in Miami with less than $35,000 in the bankUPI dates the divorce from Hope Cooke to 1978 and the disarming of the guard to 11 April 1975; Foreign Policy dates the army's attack to 9 April:1982 · Indian troops disarmed Sikkim's palace guard in 1975; the last king died in New York, his heir died on a mountain road, and a federal committee was still deciding which palace property the family ownsAmount sued for: $11 million (UPI, September 1982) vs $5 million (Time, July 1983):1982 · Alfred Bloomingdale's mistress sued his dying body for palimony, was beaten to death a year later, and her estate won $200,000Peikoff says the pages were never given and the remark was facetious ( Wikipedia's summary of the same events is drawn from that essay and the 1998 article (1982 · Ayn Rand's heir kept the first and last pages of The Fountainhead manuscript; the Library of Congress took them from his home in January 2002Rohan Marley says Blackwell loaned the family the $11.5 million; the court record shows a joint bid by the adult family members and Island Logic.1981 · Bob Marley died without a will, and his widow forged his signature to move his companies into her nameThe case digest and a 2024 journal review give the death as 27 December 1981 ( two online transcriptions of the judgment read 27 December 1961 ( The 1982 grant and lawsuit support 1981.1981 · Nigeria's Supreme Court upheld Gladys Ukeje's share of her father's Lagos estate and declared the Igbo rule excluding daughters void in 2014Forbes says Arnault used $15 million of family money to buy Dior in 1984; Fortune says reports conflict between $15 million and a symbolic one franc.1980 · Marcel Boussac, France's richest man in 1951 and Dior's backer, died ruined; his collapsed group became Bernard Arnault's startThe Somoza family said in 2005 that its Cementera shares were never taken ( The Attorney General said the shares were confiscated under Decree 3 (1980 · Nicaragua's Decree 3 confiscated Somoza family property in 1979, and Somoza was killed in Asunción in 1980Sean Lennon says the brothers' trusts were equal ( The will names neither son, and Julian sued for 16 years before a settlement reported at £20 million (1980 · John Lennon's will left everything to a trust run by Yoko Ono, and his son Julian sued for 16 yearsThe memoir author's Swiss publisher said a Russian relative was already in prison for trying to sell the jewels. The author, Kandinsky scholar Jelena Hahl-Fontaine, says there was no such relative and nobody was imprisoned.1980 · Nina Kandinsky was strangled at her Gstaad chalet in 1980, about $2 million of her jewellery was stolen, and no one has been chargedTreccani and Il Foglio place the crash near Ravenna airport; Il Resto del Carlino places it at Forlì.1979 · Raul Gardini ran his in-laws' Ferruzzi group, was voted out in 1991 and shot himself in 1993 as it collapsed with 31,000 billion lire of debtThe Boston Globe gives the sons' valuation as $235.6 million; the Tax Court opinion lists the estate's figures as $8,595,000 and $170,181,000 for the Advance stock and $68,300,000 for Newhouse Broadcasting:1979 · The IRS valued Samuel Newhouse's newspaper shares at $1.32 billion and sought a $305 million fraud penalty, and the Tax Court sided with his sonsA family spokesperson, Margaret Rockwell, said the paintings "were given as gifts to the people of the Berkshires" ( Judge Agostini wrote that the Attorney General's investigation found "no express gift restrictions" ( and the Supreme Judicial Court approved the sale (1978 · Norman Rockwell's sons sued to stop the Berkshire Museum selling paintings he gave it, and Shuffleton's Barbershop went to George Lucas's museumThe ransom is reported as 600,000 Swiss francs, $600,000 or £400,000.1977 · Two men stole Charlie Chaplin's coffin for ransom, and his widow refused to payWikipedia's Edith Bouvier Beale article, citing New York magazine, says Onassis paid about $25,000 for repairs, back taxes and a stipend: | The Grey Gardens article cites about $32,000 in repairs from the Asbury Park Press of 16 May 1976: | Wikipedia dates the purchase to 1923; Gardenista says 1924:1977 · Jacqueline Onassis paid to stop her aunt's eviction from Grey Gardens, and the house sold for $220,000 on condition it not be torn downIn 1998 Christina Crawford told interviewers that Cathy and Cynthia were not twins and implied the adoptions were not legal ( The record: Cathy's lawyer filed both birth certificates naming them as twins, three arbitrators awarded Cathy $5,000 plus costs on November 4, 1999, and Christina's own lawyer said she no longer knew whether the statement was correct (1977 · Joan Crawford's will left out Christina and Christopher "for reasons which are well known to them"The Kildare Observer dates the sale of the reversion to 1919; Wikipedia dates Mallaby-Deeley's control of the estates to 1922 and calls the £67,500 a gambling-debt sum without a source.1976 · The 7th Duke of Leinster sold his future inheritance to a moneylender and died in a London bedsitThe heirs argued the donors meant to give the estate to Franco personally and that the purchase was legitimate. The court held the documents refer to "the caudillo" as head of state and called the purchase a fiction ( The Supreme Court found in 2026 that the family could not have held Meirás as owners until at least the 1990s (1975 · Spain's Supreme Court confirmed in March 2026 that Franco's grandchildren must give the Pazo de Meirás to the stateWikipedia says Astrid deduced the truth in the mid-1980s; the Minnesota Historical Society says the 1990s.1974 · Charles Lindbergh had seven secret children in Germany, confirmed by DNA 29 years after his deathThe Star of Mysore account, written in the family's favour, says the state "coerced" the handover during the Emergency: | The 1998 Act states the acquisition was to preserve the palace and keep its public character:1974 · Karnataka took Mysore Palace during the Emergency, lost in court in 1997, and passed a law to take it again in 1998George Bingham said in 2016 that his father was innocent. | The 1975 inquest jury named Lucan as the killer.1974 · Lord Lucan vanished the night his children's nanny was killed in 1974, and the High Court declared him dead in 2016English Wikipedia's Mentmore article gives 1999 for Halabi's purchase; its Halabi article gives 1997. The 6th Earl's death is given as 30 May 1974 in the text and 31 May in the infobox.1974 · The government refused Mentmore for £2 million, and Sotheby's sold its contents for more than £6 million in 1977In the 1941 settlement Frania signed that no legal marriage existed; in her 1978 suit she claimed she was Hunt's lawful wife. The 1978 settlement did not decide which was true.1974 · Oilman H.L. Hunt had three families with 15 children, and the wife from his bigamous marriage sued his heirs four years after his deathMarina Picasso's memoir describes neglect by her grandfather; Jacqueline said excluding the grandchildren from the funeral was Picasso's own wish. Sources also differ on when the estate settled: December 1976 or 1979.1973 · Picasso died with no will and about 43,000 works, and the French state took its tax in paintingsPeterson, as reviewed by Daniel Pipes, says the sultan fired and killed one person; Simon Anglim says the sultan was wounded and a palace guard killed:1972 · Oman's sultan was counting his money when his son demanded his abdication in 1970; he fired a pistol, signed, and flew to London that nightThe family's return is dated 1982 by Wikipedia ( about 1980 by the Christian Science Monitor's "eight years later" ( and 1985 for the Kakira arrangement by the Daily Monitor (1971 · Idi Amin seized the Madhvani sugar estate in 1972; the widow came back to one working tractor, and the heirs split again in 2020An executor's child wrote that "my father was fined $6 million"; the court held Reis, Stamos and Marlborough jointly liable for $9,252,000.1970 · Mark Rothko's executors sold 798 of his paintings to a gallery one of them worked for, and his 19-year-old daughter suedJanie said Al cut Leon out over "chronic requests for money"; Leon said Janie "schemed"; Judge Ramsdell found "Janie Hendrix did not want Leon involved in the family business."1970 · Jimi Hendrix died with no will, and his father's will later cut his brother out of an $80 million estateThe Constitutional Court records a federal contribution of 50 million DM to the Contergan benefits: | Wikipedia gives DM 320 million:1970 · Grünenthal paid 100 million marks into a foundation for thalidomide victims, and a 1971 law wiped out their claims against the companyWUNC gives Mitchell Reels's death as 1970; ABC11 gives 1971:1970 · Two brothers spent eight years in jail for refusing to leave their grandfather's heirs' property on Silver Dollar RoadThe foundation's biography says McCloy "pardons" him. | The record says McCloy commuted the sentence and rejected amnesty while returning the property.1967 · Alfried Krupp was convicted at Nuremberg, got his property back in 1951, and left the firm to a foundation instead of his sonPolish Wikipedia, citing Jarosław Durka's 2011 biography, credits the Italian royal family with his 1939 release; the Institute of National Remembrance credits the Italian embassy.1967 · Prince Janusz Radziwiłł lost about 43,700 hectares to Soviet and communist seizure, and his wife died in NKVD custodyYusupov argued that the deal was a loan in disguise at an unfair price, signed under pressure. The Court of Appeals found £100,000 fair, noted he had legal advice, and held it a sale.1967 · Prince Felix Yusupov sold two Rembrandts to Joseph Widener with a buy-back option, raised the money, and lost them in courtThe family's site says William returned in 1991 and describes a journey of more than 25 years to reclaim the collections: | Czech Wikipedia gives his move as 1990, and English Wikipedia gives 12 years for the palace claim:1967 · The Lobkowicz family lost its castles to the Nazis in 1939 and the Communists in 1948, and a grandson spent 12 years recovering the Prague palacePágina/12 credits an Argentine forensic team with the 1997 find; The New Republic describes a Cuban forensic, diplomatic and legal team:1967 · Bolivian officers cut off Che Guevara's hands in 1967, a minister had them smuggled toward Cuba in a jar, and his body was found under an airstrip 30 years laterThe Mossadegh Project says the will asked for burial at the Freedom Cemetery ( The 1967 AP report says the will asked for the body to be moved to Najaf, Iraq, next to his mother's grave ( Equal Times says the grave is in the living room; the Mossadegh Project says the floor of the house (1967 · Mossadegh nationalised Iran's oil, was overthrown in a CIA and MI6 coup, and was buried under the floor of his own houseThe claimants are counted as 16 (Lawbeat, district court) and 18 (IANS, 2020):1966 · The Nawab of Rampur's eldest son took all his private property in 1966; after 53 years the Supreme Court split it among 16 heirsCrash on 17 December with death on 18 December (Wikipedia; Paul McCartney Project) vs crash shortly after midnight on 18 December (Rolling Stone); the vehicle hit is given as a lorry and as a van:1966 · Guinness heir Tara Browne died at 21 before his £1 million inheritance, and his mother won custody of his sonsMacArthur's Reminiscences omits the payment ( The executive order lists it (1964 · Philippine Executive Order No. 1 paid MacArthur $500,000 in 1942, and the payment stayed secret until 1979Hughes said he destroyed the final journal to protect the children ( Critics said he reordered her poems and controlled her record for his own reasons (1963 · Sylvia Plath died separated but not divorced, so Ted Hughes inherited her work and destroyed her last journalTime (1961) says March got Franco to ban the transfers; the ICJ summary records Spain's position that transfers needed proof the debt came from genuine foreign capital.1962 · Juan March bought Barcelona Traction bonds, had the company declared bankrupt in Reus and took Catalonia's power networkAdams said Kovacs's death left her about $500,000 in debt, much of it to the IRS, and that "filing bankruptcy is just not in my family heritage" ( The record: the estate was appraised at $1,966,472.88, she received a separate $500,000 policy, and her 1962 agreements applied estate money to joint taxes, which cut her personal liability (1962 · Ernie Kovacs's mother sued his widow, Edie Adams, over how she paid his tax debtsNephew Héctor Trujillo says the family took out only 28,000 pesos ( A CIA document cited in the same reporting puts the widow's departure at US$46 million, and an Acento column says Ramfis left with money, gold, silver, paintings and furniture (1961 · The Dominican Republic confiscated the Trujillo family's property by law in 1962, and his remains lie in a cemetery near MadridThe JFK Library calls the deal an "exchange", and a letter found in 2015 has Mary writing that Hemingway would be pleased to see the house given to the Cuban people; scholar Susan Beegel says the government asked her to give it as a gift instead of seizing it, and Mary said she was told it would be expropriated:1961 · Ernest Hemingway's widow gave his Cuban house to Castro's government in 1961 and shipped his papers and paintings out on a shrimp boatYoung said for decades that Judy was adopted; her own posthumous autobiography said Judy was her biological daughter by Gable.1960 · Loretta Young hid her daughter by Clark Gable in orphanages, then "adopted" her, and admitted the truth only in a book published after her deathThe News Minute says she gained possession in 2006 and then gave the property to her brother; Onmanorama says she received nine cents of land worth nearly Rs 2 crore in 2010 and donated it to charity:1960 · Mary Roy's brother told her to leave their father's cottage, she sued, and the Supreme Court gave Kerala's Syrian Christian daughters equal shares back to 1951Fox News (AP) gives the execution date as 16 September 1959: | Pattaya Mail gives 17 September 1959:1959 · Thailand executed Si Quey in 1959 and a hospital museum displayed his embalmed body as a "cannibal" for 60 years before he was crematedAn account by a family member, published by the castle museum, presents Alfred's 1944 departure as the end of a life spent protecting Łańcut and its people, and the author notes it may not be objective: | The historian Jerzy Łojek, cited in Polish Wikipedia, says he gradually sold most of the evacuated movables to pay for a lavish way of life:1958 · Count Alfred Potocki shipped about 700 crates from Łańcut to Vienna before the Red Army arrived, and the castle became a state museumHarry's family says Jack secretly organized the buying syndicate behind his brothers' backs, and Harry's widow said after his funeral, "He didn't die, Jack killed him" ( The record: Variety in July 1956 reported the brothers' joint sale announcement, then a rewritten deal in which Jack bought shares from his brothers' families instead of selling, and Harry's reluctance to sell (1958 · Jack Warner took control of Warner Bros. in 1956 after his brothers sold out; Harry died two years laterPopular accounts blame the fall on Ignazio and Franca's Belle Époque spending. The historian Giuseppe Barone, working from Bank of Italy files, found their private debts, including 143,000 lire owed to Cartier, were 1,911,066 lire, about 15% of the total in the bank's 1908-1909 inspection.1957 · The Florio family built Sicily's largest business group and lost all of it to the banks and the state by 1935Infobae says Dorantes was 16 when the relationship began; Spanish Wikipedia says 15:1957 · Mexico's Supreme Court annulled Pedro Infante's second marriage six days before he died in a plane crashIPS (2003) says the Franciscans handed the fund to the Paihuano municipality; La Tercera (2019) says a foundation linked to it; in 2026 a friar told La Tercera he administers the Franciscan fund:1957 · Gabriela Mistral left her South American royalties to the poor children of her village, and Pinochet's government let anyone publish her work in Chile from 1979Karim's age at succession: 20 (The EastAfrican; OPB/AP) vs 23 (Time, May 1960):1957 · The Aga Khan's will passed over his son Aly Khan and made his 20-year-old grandson imamThe account of Lin's last-minute decision comes from his great-grandson's book as reported by the Central News Agency; no independent source for it was found:1956 · Taiwan's leading landlord Lin Hsien-tang left for Japan "for treatment" in 1949 and never came back, and the 1953 land-to-the-tiller law paid landlords in bonds and sharesWikipedia says he was held "at least through July 1938"; another Wikipedia page says he was held a year and left in March 1939.1955 · The Nazis held Louis de Rothschild hostage in Vienna in 1938 and released him for the family's assetsHistorian Jonathan Conlin says Gulbenkian's children accepted the will and did not contest it; Time reported in 1972 that Nubar was shut out of the foundation and received an undisclosed settlement from its management.1955 · Calouste Gulbenkian left his oil fortune to a Lisbon foundation and his son Nubar about $2.5 millionJames Woodward's death: 1976 (Biography.com) vs 1978 (Wikipedia):1955 · Ann Woodward shot her husband, the owner of Nashua, a grand jury cleared her in 30 minutes, and both her sons later killed themselvesNational Geographic says Harvey took the brain without permission from Einstein or his family, and that his son Hans Albert later gave a reluctant blessing for scientific study ( A 1978 New Jersey Monthly account says Einstein wanted his brain studied, the family agreed, and Nathan watched the autopsy (1955 · Einstein gave his Nobel money to his first wife and asked to be cremated in secret, and the pathologist kept his brain for decadesThe 2007 film said "countless" prisoners died at Stöcken; Stremmel (2010), citing published research, gives 403 deaths and more than 10,000 forced labourers housed there in total.1954 · The Quandt fortune behind BMW used about 50,000 forced labourers, a 2011 family-funded study foundIn his memoir Guderian called the estate a retirement gift ( Goda's article documents a larger first request and confiscated land chosen by Guderian (1954 · Hitler paid his field marshals 4,000 Reichsmarks a month and gave Guderian a confiscated Polish estateThe Irish Times gives the opening as April 1955; Bedfordshire Archives says the Abbey has been open to the fee-paying public since 1954.1953 · The 12th Duke of Bedford was found shot in 1953, and the son he had cut off opened Woburn Abbey to paying visitors to meet a £4.5 million tax debtNhân Dân, 1953, accused her of causing nearly 260 deaths: | Công an Nhân dân, the Ministry of Public Security's paper, headlined her in 2014 as a woman "wrongly dealt with" (xử lý oan):1953 · A landowner whose family gave the Viet Minh 700 taels of gold was shot as the land reform's first example in 1953, and her family found her bones in 1990The Famous Trials account dates the adoption to 1957; a University of South Carolina thesis dates it to 1958:1953 · The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953, child-care agencies petitioned for custody of their sons and the boys' trust fund, and the sons have spent 70 years on their mother's caseThe ABA Journal's 2023 history says Olson's room was on the 10th floor; the sons' 2012 complaint, as reported by the ABA Journal, says 13th floor:1953 · The CIA gave Army scientist Frank Olson LSD without telling him, he fell from a New York hotel nine days later, and the $750,000 his family accepted later blocked their murder suitEva's sisters Erminda and Amelia called the final chapter of her book Mi mensaje, "Mi voluntad suprema", apocryphal; a Buenos Aires civil court ruled on it in 2007, final in 2008, but the outcome is not confirmed†.1952 · Argentina's military seized Eva Perón's embalmed body and buried it in Milan under a false nameIndica says she was dedicated as a devadasi at five; eSamskriti says she was never consecrated to a temple deity; Wikipedia dates the temple's consecration to 1921:1952 · A devadasi singer spent her fortune on a temple for the saint Thyagaraja, was barred from singing at his festival, and held her ownThyssen told Nuremberg interrogators in 1945 and the tribunal in 1948 that he had not written I Paid Hitler and called it a forgery. The historian Henry Ashby Turner examined Reves's papers in 1967 and found draft chapters with corrections apparently in Thyssen's hand, and that Thyssen demanded and received the royalties.1951 · Fritz Thyssen paid for Hitler's rise, lost his fortune to him in 1939, survived the camps and emigrated on his book royaltiesChatsworth's own history says the 10th Duke "died unexpectedly" and the 80 percent rate "had to be paid": | The record adds that the Inland Revenue disputed the 1946 transfer for 17 years and that the doctor at his deathbed was later tried for murder:1950 · The 10th Duke of Devonshire died in 1950 before his tax plan matured, and his heirs took 17 years to pay 80 percent death dutyAdam von Pezold says the family lost the estate to the Gestapo in 1940 and the 1947 law only kept it from them; the UN Committee record shows the decree confiscation was revoked on 30 January 1948 and title passed under Act 143/1947.1950 · Czechoslovakia passed a law to take one family's estate, and the Schwarzenberg heirs have lost every claim to it sinceThe Gourarys said the Rebbe's books were family property passed by inheritance; the courts found they were held in trust for the community:1950 · The Lubavitcher Rebbe's grandson sold books from the movement's library as his inheritance; a federal court ruled the library was never the Rebbe's to leaveESPN gives restitution of $20.5 million; TrueNicks gives $20.4 million:1950 · Calumet Farm passed to a widow for life, then to a grandson-in-law who ran up $127 million in debt and went to prisonHo and Li date the exhibition hall to 1959; the Global Times says the manor became a museum in 1958:1949 · Landlord Liu Wencai died before land reform reached him, his manor became a museum of his crimes, and in 1988 its "water dungeon" was relabelled an opium storeWikipedia dates the Trust's purchase to February 2016; the Fitzwilliam Wentworth Estate dates it to 2017.1948 · The government ordered opencast mining up to Wentworth Woodhouse, and the Fitzwilliam earldom ended in 1979In 2007 Yuko Tojo said "In Japan, there are no war criminals" ( The tribunal convicted Tojo as a Class A war criminal and he was hanged (1948 · US Army papers show Hideki Tojo's ashes were scattered over the Pacific in 1948The Jerusalem Post gives the penalty as five million dinars and the crowd as about 15,000; Edwin Black gives a fine "the equivalent of $20 million":1948 · Iraq hanged its richest Jew, Shafiq Ades, outside his own house in Basra in 1948 and took his estateThe University of Saskatchewan says the fender moved to the College of Law in 1996; Federal Retirees says the courthouse closed in 1997:1948 · Cecil Harris lay pinned under his tractor for 10 hours and scratched his will into the fenderAllowance: father capped it at $2,500 a month and the mother raised it to $8,000 a month (Wikipedia) vs $2,500 a year raised to $80,000 a year (Mental Floss and Crime Library, as reported in searches):1947 · Harry Thaw's mother spent the family fortune to free him after he shot Stanford White, and his will left Evelyn Nesbit $10,000The debris is given as more than 140 tons collected (Wikipedia, Messy Nessy Chic) and 120 tons removed (Amusing Planet):1947 · The Collyer brothers died in their inherited Harlem house under more than 100 tons of hoarded goods, and 56 people claimed the estateThe Bonnard family said Marthe never revealed her relatives and the false declaration was harmless. The 1951 court ruled it a forgery. Family: | Record:1947 · Pierre Bonnard's wife had four unknown nieces; a French court ruled in 1951 that he forged her will, and the family won on appealThe bank's own history gives 1969 for the return of the Warburg name; the Deutsche Biographie gives 1970:1946 · The Nazis forced Max Warburg to give up M.M. Warburg & Co in 1938; his son Eric needed until 1970 to restore the family nameWikipedia says the Federal Court of Justice ruled for Cologne in January 1968; the WW2 Gravestone memorial site says the Higher Regional Court of Cologne did so on 23 January 1968:1946 · Hitler was godfather to Göring's daughter, the city of Cologne gave her a Cranach, and she lost the painting in 1968 and her father's estate in 2015English Wikipedia says the Gestapo arrested Élisabeth and sent her to Ravensbrück in 1941, citing no specific source; the arrest date is not confirmed†.1945 · Vichy expropriated the Rothschild vineyards at Pauillac, and Philippe de Rothschild's wife died at Ravensbrück before Mouton came back to the familyWikipedia dates the theft to Easter Sunday, 21 April 1946; Panorama dates it to the night of 22 to 23 April:1945 · Partisans shot Mussolini, fascists stole his body from an unmarked grave, and the state hid it in a monastery for 11 years before trading it for votesFamily version: the maid Anna hid the netsuke and gave 264 of them to Viktor's daughter Elisabeth: | Record: not on the Gestapo lists, traceable only from a 1950 Austrian export permit for 195 pieces restituted by the state:1945 · The Gestapo took the Ephrussi palace in Vienna in 1938; the family says a maid hid the netsuke in her mattress, and the Jewish Museum says it cannot be provedThe department's site for Candé says the state inherited the château on Fern Bedaux's death in 1972 and passed it to the department in 1974: | French Wikipedia dates her gift to the state to 1951, with a life interest:1944 · Charles Bedaux hosted the Windsor wedding at Candé, died in FBI custody awaiting treason charges, and his widow gave the château to FranceThe grandchildren say Renault was never tried and that his death and the confiscation were unjust. | The 1957 investigation into his death closed without charges, and the courts never ruled on the merits.1944 · Louis Renault died in custody before trial, and France took his company without paying his heirsNew York's Department of Financial Services dates both deaths to 1944; the Geneva ArThemis case note dates Fritz's to 1943. ArThemis puts the heirs' Degas payment at about $500,000; Wikipedia, citing the Chicago Tribune, gives $243,750.1944 · Banker Fritz Gutmann was killed at Theresienstadt, and his heirs sued an American collector to get back his DegasIn 1945 Lucie Rommel denied that her husband was involved in 20 July, and in 1949 Hans Speidel's memoir made Rommel part of the resistance. Lieb places him among those who knew a coup was planned but not that Hitler was to be killed (1944 · Rommel took poison on 14 October 1944 in exchange for a state funeral and pensions for his familyWikipedia's Reza Shah article gives reburial on 7 May 1950: | Its mausoleum article gives the funeral at Rey as 8 May 1951:1944 · Revolutionaries demolished Reza Shah's mausoleum in 1980 and could not find his body, and a mummified body turned up on the site in 2018The settlement is put at $300,000 to $500,000 (J. Weekly, 1998) and at $500,000 (JTA, 2007); her age at death is given as 76 (Wikipedia), 74 (JTA) and 73 (New York Times headline):1943 · Credit Suisse demanded a death certificate for a banker killed at Majdanek; his daughter waited until 1998 for his accountThe Tesla Museum says a US court gave Kosanović custody in January 1943 ( History.com says a US court named him the rightful heir in 1952 (1943 · The US government sealed Nikola Tesla's papers after he died, his nephew took them to Belgrade, and the church and scientists later fought over his ashesWikipedia, citing published histories, gives almost 500,000 burials; the historian Rena Molho gives close to 350,000 graves:1942 · Thessaloniki destroyed its 450-year-old Jewish cemetery in December 1942, used the stones to build, and put a university on the landThe heirs' foundation says the 1940 sale was made under duress at about 15% of a value of 6 to 7.35 million guilders and that Hitler paid 1.5 million; the committee found a voluntary business transaction and gives the Posse price as 1.4 million.1941 · Franz Koenigs lost his drawings to a bank five weeks before the German invasion; Hitler bought 528 and the Dutch state has refused his heirs four timesThe Marland Mansion museum says Marland resigned in October 1928 to begin a career in politics and puts his fortune above $30 million; the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History says the bankers removed him, and Wikipedia gives an estimated $85 million in 1920.1941 · Oklahoma oilman E.W. Marland annulled his adoption of his wife's niece and married her, then lost his company to J.P. Morgan's bankersStephen Joyce said the letters were private family matters ( citing his 1989 NYT letter). The New York Review of Books reported he had also taken a trunk of Joyce papers that never surfaced (1941 · James Joyce's grandson destroyed his aunt Lucia's letters and threatened scholars until the copyrights ran out in 2012The heirs say the collection was looted; the Allen museum said looting "has not been definitively established" and returned the drawing anyway:1941 · Fritz Grünbaum died at Dachau owning about 70 Schieles; his heirs won them back in New York, then one heir sued Christie's over the restVon Saher's position is that the Göring sale was forced and her family never abandoned its rights. | The Ninth Circuit found the family, on legal advice, chose not to file a claim on the Göring works by the 1951 deadline in order to keep the sale price.1940 · Jacques Goudstikker died fleeing the Nazis, Göring took his paintings, and the Netherlands returned 202 of them in 2006The Oxford DNB entry by Richard Perren puts the peerage payment at £25,000; Wikipedia gives £20,000.1940 · The Vestey meat brothers left Britain over income tax, set up a Paris trust and bought a peerageStars and Stripes gives Volkov's death as 16 June 2023; Russian Life gives 17 June 2023:1940 · Stalin's agents killed Trotsky and members of his family; he sealed his exile papers at Harvard until 1980, and the grandson who survived kept his house as a museumgadlu.info dates the raid to 13 June 1940 ( the League of Human Rights history says the Grand Orient supposes its archives were taken on 15 June 1940 (1940 · German units emptied the French Masonic headquarters in June 1940, the Red Army took the archives to Moscow, and France got them back in 2001Wikipedia says the city seized Casa Loma for unpaid taxes in 1924: | The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says the city took over the property in 1933:1939 · Sir Henry Pellatt built Casa Loma with Home Bank loans, the bank failed, and Toronto took the castle for unpaid taxesThe Dutch national biography gives heart attack as the cause; the researcher Kalden writes "perhaps of heart failure, perhaps by suicide."1939 · Banker Fritz Mannheimer died ten weeks after his wedding, his bank failed, and Hitler bought his collection from the creditorsThe banks' account of the 1934 law (protecting Jewish deposits) against Guex's research (tax evasion and capital flight): and1939 · Switzerland made bank secrecy a crime in 1934, and the night guard who took bank files from a UBS shredder in 1997 had to seek asylum in the United StatesThe castle's own website says Ileana left the castle to the state when she went into exile; Mediafax reported in 2009 that the state had kept the castle until a restitution process returned it in 2006:1938 · Brașov gave Bran Castle to Queen Marie in 1920, her daughter lost it in 1948, and Romania returned it to her grandchildren's generation in 2006The hospital's own pages describe the gift and the 1988 amendment ( An independent IP law account confirms the statutory right and its UK-only scope (1937 · J.M. Barrie gave Peter Pan to a children's hospital, and Parliament made the hospital's royalty permanentThe death date is 10 February 1937 in an Italian family history ( and 10 December 1937 in Wikipedia (1937 · Brazil's largest industrial group lost its chosen heir in a car race, passed to the founder's twelfth child, and filed for court protection in 1983Kommersant (2000) says Irina Shchukina sued in Paris in 1993 and lost; Rossiyskaya Gazeta (2004) says she wrote to Boris Yeltsin that year and that her son's suits began after her death:1936 · Lenin's 1918 decree took Sergei Shchukin's 258 paintings, and his heirs' claims in Paris and Los Angeles failedThe French account treats the will as proof of a Toulouse birth; the Uruguayan account says the will's birth statement was a legal device to let his mother inherit under Argentine law:1935 · Carlos Gardel's will said he was born in Toulouse and left everything to his mother, and his estate passed from her to his agent's family while Uruguay says he was born thereAccounts of Irène as the mother who left her family follow Moïse's side; the novelist Natalie David-Weill says that version comes from his lawsuit, which limited her to two hours a week with her children: | the museum's account:1935 · Moïse de Camondo left his Paris house to France in memory of his son; the Nazis deported his daughter and grandchildren, and his ex-wife sold her Renoir portraitThe dredging is dated 1904 to 1907 (FAMSI), 1904 to 1910 (Institute of Maya Studies) and 1904 to 1911 (Wikipedia):1935 · A US consul bought Chichén Itzá for 200 pesos and shipped the Sacred Cenote's offerings to Harvard; his heirs won the land back in Mexico's Supreme CourtThe Dutch committee dates Martha's death to 10 March 1943. The Wikipedia article says she died hours before police arrived on 5 March 1943, the day she was told of the deportation. The committee's date is used here.1935 · Max Liebermann's widow Martha killed herself in March 1943 as police came to deport her, and in 2025 a Dutch committee advised returning a Liebermann drawing from the Rijksmuseum to her heirsAmsterdam: acquired in 1958 properly and honorably. Heirs: the seller had no right to sell. City: | Heirs:1935 · Kazimir Malevich's heirs sued Amsterdam over 84 works held since 1958; in April 2008 the city returned five paintingsOskar sued over Erwein von Aretin's 1954 book, which said he received illegal Osthilfe money, and won in 1956 ( Contemporary press records the 1933 land gift and its tax terms (1934 · Hindenburg's Neudeck estate was put in his son's name, and Hitler's government added tax-free landFlick's defence said he acted "like a lawyer" to protect the Petscheks' interests: | Göring's commission and Flick's role as negotiator in the prosecution exhibits:1934 · Göring took over "the Petschek question" in 1938, Flick's companies got the mines, and the Nuremberg court said the seizure was outside its jurisdictionThe Connaught Telegraph dates the burning to 1 February 1923; mayo-ireland.ie says January 1923:1933 · Anti-Treaty IRA men burned Moore Hall in 1923 because a Moore brother backed the Treaty, and the novelist's ashes lie on Castle Island in Lough CarraHis brother Torsten Kreuger, himself sentenced to a year for fraud over Högbroforsen's accounts, argued that Ivar was murdered as the victim of a conspiracy; French police and a physician found suicide, and no court has found otherwise.1932 · Ivar Kreuger shot himself in Paris in 1932, and auditors found his match empire rested on forged Italian bondsJan's descendants' site says he became sole owner "in accordance with his will"; the documents described in the Czech record show a sale for 50 million crowns, which Thomas J. and his mother challenged as an inheritance.1932 · Tomáš Baťa died in a plane crash, his half-brother took the shoe company, and the family litigated for 15 yearsEncyclopedia.com says a grand jury ruled out suicide; the North Carolina state archives blog says the charges were dropped and the death was ruled a suicide:1932 · A tobacco heir was shot at Reynolda, his pregnant widow was indicted for murder, and their son was paid $6.25 millionWho stripped the stool. The eaumf.org history blog and Wikipedia say the road workers found the stool and stripped its ornaments ( Rattray, writing in 1923 from the official reports, says the custodians scared the labourers off, moved the stool, and other persons later stripped it ( Hodgson's words: Rattray quotes Claridge's text of the speech but records that Lady Hodgson wrote her husband never said them, and that this is how the interpreter translated him (1931 · The British demanded the Asante Golden Stool in 1900 and never obtained itTime put the estate at about $40 million in July 1933; Wikipedia gives about $100 million:1931 · John Wendel kept his sisters from marrying to hold the family's Manhattan land together, and more than 2,000 people claimed the last sister's estateToyota's own history says Kiichiro invented the loom whose patents Platt bought ( EBSCO says the patents were Sakichi's (1930 · Sakichi Toyoda sold his loom patents to a British firm, the money started Toyota, and the loom company went to an adopted son-in-lawThe Saturday Evening Post (1948) counts more than 26,000 claimants; The Legal Genealogist and the Inquirer give more than 25,000:1930 · Henrietta Garrett died in 1930 with $17 million and no will; more than 25,000 people claimed to be her kin, ten went to jail, and three cousins she never met inheritedThe estate's official history says the family moved in in September 1928: | Wikipedia says October 1928:1929 · The oil heir who carried $100,000 to the Interior Secretary was shot dead in his new mansion five months after moving insoravij.com dates Bejaratana's return to Thailand to 1959; English Wikipedia gives November 1957:1925 · Siam's 1924 succession law barred princesses, so King Vajiravudh's only child, born as he lay dying, could not inherit his throneThe Hoffe family said Brod gave Esther the papers outright; the courts ruled she had no right to bequeath them.1924 · Kafka told Max Brod to burn his papers; Brod saved them, and the fight over them ended in a Swiss bank vault in 2019The foundation presents Simonetta as recognized heir of the composer ( The press record shows the estate split, with most of it held by heirs unrelated to Puccini (1924 · Puccini's fortune passed to his son's widow, then her brother, then reportedly a butler, before the son's illegitimate daughter won it in courtFor 90 years the Harding family said Britton's story was false and that Harding was infertile; Peter Harding said the family had seen her as a "delusional woman who believed in a fantasy" ( AncestryDNA called the match "definitive" (1923 · Nan Britton lost her libel suit over Warren Harding's daughter in 1931, and DNA proved the daughter was his in 2015Amount and date of the settlement. The Griffith Institute records £E35,971 paid in late September 1930 ( Wikipedia states Almina gave up her claim for £36,000 in a 1925 settlement ( Egypt Independent gives £35,867 paid to Carnarvon's daughter ( How the Met obtained the 19 objects: NBC News reports they came to New York in 1948 when the Met closed its expedition house in Egypt ( BiblePlaces reports the Met bought them from Carter's estate (1923 · Egypt kept every object from Tutankhamun's tomb and paid the Carnarvon heirs their costs in 1930Guadalupe Villa Guerrero (Instituto Mora) is Villa's granddaughter; her account of the inheritance lawsuit and seizure is the only non-Wikipedia source found for it:1923 · Pancho Villa's grave was opened in 1926 and his head taken, and his widows' court fight ended with the government seizing his haciendaWikipedia gives the 1881 inheritance as 777 shares valued at $77,700; Skeptoid gives over $360,000 plus $7,900 a year in dividends:1922 · Sarah Winchester inherited a rifle fortune and built a San Jose mansion; the medium who supposedly ordered it was invented in 1967Konowaloff pleaded that the 1933 sale was "an act of party, not an act of state", a secret Politburo deal that broke Soviet law. The courts held that US recognition of the Soviet government on 16-17 November 1933 validated its acts from the start, and that a state's taking from its own nationals does not violate international law.1921 · Ivan Morozov's great-grandson sued Yale and the Met for a Van Gogh and a Cézanne seized by the Bolsheviks, and lost both casesMental Floss reports the expert's view as conditional on the 1905 signature being genuine; the Anthony Campbell review reports that he called the will "undoubtedly a forgery":1921 · Pink Chaffin said his dead father led him to a second will hidden in Genesis 27, and a North Carolina court admitted it in 1925Italian Wikipedia's Galleria Borghese article gives 3.6 million lire; its Villa Borghese article gives 3 million and the year 1901:1920 · Prince Paolo Borghese lost the family fortune in the Rome building crash, and the state bought the Borghese collection for 3.6 million lireNBC gives the 1921 reparations total as about 6.6 billion pounds; the Christian Science Monitor gives 132 billion marks:1919 · Germany paid the last interest on its 1920s reparation loans on 3 October 2010, 92 years after the First World War endedThe observatory's own history says the City Council accepted the 1912 offer and the project was delayed by political debate; the California prison department's history says the city declined because he was an ex-convict:1919 · Griffith J. Griffith gave Los Angeles a 3,015-acre park, shot his wife and went to prison, and used his will to build the Griffith ObservatoryUnclaimed remains were to be scattered at sea after three years (All Things Bukit Brown, wiki.sg); Voice of America reports remains were cremated and the ashes placed in urns in a columbarium:1918 · Singapore took the Ong clan's burial hill for a public cemetery, then dug up more than 4,000 of its graves for a highway, and unclaimed remains were to be scattered at seaIn her 1898 memoir the queen wrote that she signed the abdication as a sick prisoner without counsel, to save her supporters from execution, and "would have chosen death rather than to have signed it": | The Republic's government treated the signed abdication as valid and ended the monarchy on it:1917 · Hawaii's last queen was imprisoned in an upstairs bedroom of her own palace, and the building served as the capitol of the government that removed her until 1969Wartski dates the rediscovery to 2013; the Mieks Fabergé site says Wartski bought the egg between 2013 and January 2014:1917 · The Bolsheviks sold the tsars' Fabergé eggs abroad, and one sold in New York in 1964 as a gold watch turned up with a man who had bought it for scrapMarriage to Bingham: November 1916 (Wikipedia, citing a 15 November 1916 newspaper) vs December 1916 (NCpedia):1917 · Henry Flagler's widow left $5 million to her new husband in a codicil signed eight days before she died, and her family dug up her bodyWikipédia dates the Soviet repudiation decree to 29 December 1917; MoneyVox dates Lenin's refusal of the tsarist debts to January 1918. Connexion dates the French settlement to 1996, the year of the memorandum; the agreement was signed on 27 May 1997:1917 · Russia repudiated the tsar's bonds, France settled for $400 million in 1997, and the holders' association tried to seize a Russian sailing ship and a cathedralIntrovigne (CESNUR) dates the treasure legend to Noël Corbu's press stories from 1956 ( Euronews says the hunt began in the early 1900s when Marie Dénarnaud claimed the priest had buried jewels and coins (1917 · The priest of Rennes-le-Château put his buildings in his servant's name, a restaurant owner spread a treasure story in 1956, and Pierre Plantard tied it to an invented secret orderWyoming: a friend's grandson says the body was swapped ( Record: the June 1917 funeral had an open casket; the embalmer Joe Bona said until his death it was Cody (1917 · Buffalo Bill's 1913 will gave everything to Louisa; Denver newspaper owners held his $20,000 debt, and Wyoming has claimed his body since 1917The Myanmar government journal says British officials told Thibaw Sladen had died in 1910: | Wikipedia's Supayalat article says the reply of 1911 gave Sladen's death as 1890:1916 · King Thibaw handed Burma's crown jewels to a British colonel in 1885, and the Nga Mauk ruby was never seen againWikipedia gives about 86,700 acres sold in 1914: | NCpedia gives an 80,600-acre tract bought in 1916:1914 · George Vanderbilt's widow sold most of Biltmore's land to the United States, and his grandsons split the house from the dairyDate of the ownership notice. Cultural Property News gives the order as issued on 23 March 2023 and published in the Official Gazette dated 28 March 2023 ( ThisDay gives the gazette date as 28 March 2023 ( Day of Ovonramwen's death: Wikipedia records 13 January 1914 (Adedeji) and 14 January 1914 (Barnaby Phillips) (1914 · Nigeria vested ownership of the looted Benin Bronzes in the Oba of Benin in 2023Iyasu's death year. 25 November 1935 ( 1935 (Anadolu Agency, Lifespan 1897 to 1936 (Ficquet and Smidt, The Life and Times of Lij Iyasu of Ethiopia, LIT Verlag 2014, description at autumn 1936 (Richard Pankhurst, 1936 (Library of Congress country study, The Library of Congress study states as fact that Iyasu converted to Islam; Mohammed Ali of Addis Ababa University says there is no proof (Anadolu URL above).1913 · Menelik II's death was kept secret in 1913, and his named heir Lij Iyasu was deposed in 1916 and died a prisonerHis son Eugen Diesel wrote the 1957 Neue Deutsche Biographie entry and says there is no doubt his father jumped ( The Smithsonian notes murder theories involving German spies and business rivals, without proof (1913 · Rudolf Diesel vanished from a Channel steamer in 1913 and left his wife a bag of money with papers showing his debtsChertkov's account dates the forest signing to 22 July 1910; Elif Batuman's reading of the sources dates the stump signing to 1909. Sofia's 1910 diaries give her side.1910 · Tolstoy signed a secret will in the woods to give his copyrights to the publicThe suit date is given as 24 April 1930 (Daily Star, Wikipedia) and 24 July 1930 (Privy Council judgment as reproduced); Banglapedia dates the trial verdict to 22 December 1937:1909 · A Bengal prince was cremated in 1909, a holy man claimed to be him, and the Privy Council confirmed it in 1946; he died two days laterThe society's lawyer told Anderson in 1986 that the bones it held were a boy's ( the 1918 letter names Geronimo (1909 · Geronimo's descendants sued Skull and Bones in 2009 for the skull a member's 1918 letter says was taken from his grave, and a federal judge dismissed the caseVita Sackville-West wrote that the petitioner's case "collapsed half-way through" a six-day hearing before Sir John Bigham ( The Dictionary of National Biography records only that the claim was "finally dismissed by the probate division of the high court in February 1910" (1908 · Lord Sackville's son by a married Spanish dancer sued for Knole and the peerage, and the court ruled all her children illegitimateWikipedia says followers kept vigil two days; the World Religions and Spirituality Project says five. The 1961 gift is given as more than 300 acres and about 350 acres:1908 · Cyrus Teed's followers watched his body waiting for him to rise, until the county health officer ordered him buried; a hurricane later took the tombThe university's president said Stanford died of natural causes ( The Honolulu coroner's jury found strychnine poisoning by an unknown person (1905 · Jane Stanford, sole funder of Stanford University, died of strychnine in 1905 and the university president said it was natural causesStanley's Autobiography, edited by Dorothy, who removed references to other women, describes cruelty in the workhouse ( The 2001 Dictionary of Welsh Biography correction says there is no basis for that account of cruelty (1904 · Stanley was refused burial beside Livingstone in Westminster Abbey, and his papers were sold to Belgium in four partsThe Los Angeles Times reported that Hans killed himself the day after Pauline died; Jüdische Allgemeine says the day before her funeral:1904 · Herzl's testament asked for his children to lie beside him; Israel buried his suicide son and his daughter there 76 years after their deathsThe deathbed line "hold on to the Matchless" is legend with no firm evidence, and the couple had already mortgaged or lost the mine.1899 · Horace Tabor left his wife for Baby Doe, lost his silver fortune in 1893, and Baby Doe was found frozen at his last mineThe Wikipedia article on the prince gives his death as 30 August 1830; most accounts give 27 August 1830†.1897 · The last Prince of Condé was found hanged after willing Chantilly to an 8-year-old prince, who later gave it to the Institut de France while in exileSouth African History Online dates the shooting to 14 March 1898 and says von Veltheim was arrested and jailed for it. Wikipedia says he told the court Barnato and Joel had hired him to kidnap President Kruger, and he was acquitted. ;1897 · Diamond magnate Barney Barnato went overboard from a mail steamer in 1897, a blackmailer shot his nephew Woolf Joel dead the next year, and his son inherited at twoWikipedia names the ploughmen Thomas Nicholl and James Morrow: | Tuatha names them James Morrow and John Nicholl:1896 · The British Museum bought the Broighter gold boat for £600, and the Crown sued the Museum in 1903 to send it to DublinA peer-reviewed article dates the manuscript's return to 1973: | Wikipedia dates it to 1970, during President Suharto's state visit:1895 · Dutch troops took a quarter tonne of gold from the Lombok palace in 1894, and with it the only manuscript of Majapahit's royal chronicleWikipedia dates the eviction to 1892 and says Cohn carried it out; the Homestead Museum says Cohn died in 1889 and his successors won:1894 · California's last Mexican governor signed what he said was a mortgage, the courts called it a sale, and he lost his last ranch at 90Wikipedia puts Fair's net worth at $45 million in its infobox and $50 million in its text:1894 · Senator James Fair locked his fortune in a trust, a school principal produced a pencil will and a marriage contract, and his children turned on herThe Springfield Daily News of 8 June 1927 gives the Animal Rescue League bequest as $20,000 and the estate as close to $700,000; Wikipedia, citing the New York Times, gives $30,000 and over $250,000:1892 · Lizzie Borden was acquitted of killing her father and stepmother, inherited his fortune with her sister, and wrote her sister out of her willA 2024 HeinOnline blog says the court invalidated the will on the ground that the ghost exerted undue influence; the opinion itself says "Affirmed" and sustains the will:1892 · A widow left her inherited fortune to a Lincoln charity home; her family said a planchette and her dead husband's spirit guided her, and Nebraska upheld the will in 1895The Foxearth local history society gives the insured value as £3,500; other accounts give £10,000:1892 · Borley Rectory passed from father to son for 64 years, drew ghost hunters for a decade, and burned in 1939 with the insurers suspecting arsonEnglish Wikipedia says the Red Army most probably plundered the mausoleum ( German Wikipedia says a Wehrmacht unit reportedly moved the remains and grave robbers opened the coffins in 1953 or 1954 (1891 · Moltke bought Kreisau with his 1866 war grant; his great-grandnephew was hanged in 1945 and the family lost the estateWikipedia, citing Gentry (1968), gives Ruth's age as 66: | Skeptoid gives 78:1891 · Jacob Waltz died in 1891 and his carer sold maps to his supposed gold mine; searchers have died looking for it sinceIsabel said she acted to protect her husband's name ( The Grolier Club record calls the burned work the sole manuscript of his revised translation (1890 · Richard Burton's widow burned his manuscript of The Scented Garden and his diaries after he diedThe Van Gogh Museum, which holds the family collection, presents Jo as a deliberate promoter ( Independent accounts record she also sold the work steadily to fund the family (1890 · Van Gogh's brother died six months after him, and Theo's widow built the reputation from the paintings she inheritedCraig, an admirer of Rizal, says the eviction was revenge for a refused gift and calls it a disgrace; he records that Wenceslao Retana, Weyler's defender and later Rizal's biographer, held that the governor-general and landlords acted within their legal rights.1890 · The Dominican landlords evicted José Rizal's family from Calamba in 1890, and the United States bought the friar estates in 1903The House resolution gives his death as October 1889 ( L'Italo-Americano gives March 1889 (1889 · Antonio Meucci could not pay $10 to renew his telephone caveat, Bell got the patent, and Meucci died before the courts ruledDate of death. 22 June 1885 (lead) and 21 June 1885 (infobox), both at1885 · Kitchener had the Mahdi's tomb destroyed in 1898 and his skull taken, and Parliament debated it before the skull was buried at Wadi HalfaSharon's death is dated 13 November 1885 (Wikipedia) and 14 November 1885 (Stanford's Newlands project); the secret marriage is dated 20 August 1880 (Wikipedia) and 8 August 1880 (Stanford):1885 · Sarah Althea Hill produced a marriage contract and a will from San Francisco's richest man, federal judges ruled them forged, and her husband was shot dead attacking a Supreme Court justiceThe château's site says the state became owner by pre-emption in 1930; other accounts place the transfer after the 1932 judgment.1883 · France seized Chambord in 1915 because its owner served Austria, while his half-brothers, who fought for the Allies, sued him for a bigger shareOne account says the safe held old newspapers, a trouser button and an Italian coin: | Another says a brick and an English halfpenny:1879 · Thérèse Humbert borrowed for 20 years against an inheritance from an American millionaire who never existed, and the safe held almost nothingThe widely repeated claim that 120 descendants met in 1973 and none was a millionaire comes from Fortune's Children (1989) by family member Arthur T. Vanderbilt II; no independent source confirms it†.1877 · Cornelius Vanderbilt left nearly all of $100 million to one son, and the son he passed over argued spiritualism had unhinged himEstate value: about $13 million (Wikipedia), over $14 million (Immigrant Entrepreneurship, German Historical Institute), £15 million (Torbay Council). Children with Sponsler: eight (Immigrant Entrepreneurship) vs ten (EBSCO, Torbay Council):1875 · Isaac Singer left a sewing-machine fortune to children by five women, and a former partner claimed to be his widowThe claim is given as more than 12 million acres (Online Archive of California), nearly 11 million acres (Arizona Highways) and 18,600 square miles (Saturday Evening Post):1874 · James Addison Reavis forged a Spanish barony covering 12 million acres of Arizona, presented a ranch girl as its heiress, and went to prison1News counts the occupation at 506 days: | The Global Nonviolent Action Database counts 507:1873 · The Native Land Court declared Ōrākei inalienable, the Crown took or bought almost all of it, and 800 police and soldiers ended a 506-day occupation with 222 arrestsHelen Hopkins Thom's 1929 book described him as an abolitionist whose father freed the family's slaves in 1807: | The 1840 and 1850 census records list him as a slaveholder, and researchers could not document the 1807 freeing:1873 · Johns Hopkins left $7 million in railroad stock to found a hospital, the stock stopped paying, and records found in 2020 showed he had owned slavesWikipedia says the failure ruined all but 254 of 1,200 shareholders: | The Hunterian says over 1,500 of 1,800 shareholders were bankrupted: | The Bank of England counts 1,819 shareholders:1873 · Trustees holding a dead man's bank shares for his daughters were made personally liable when the City of Glasgow Bank failedWikipedia gives her death as 25 July 1886 in the text and 27 July in the infobox:1870 · Eliza Lynch buried Paraguay's dictator and their son in 1870, was expelled when she came back for his lands, and Paraguay voted in 2025 to move her bones to its Pantheon of HeroesThe Library of Congress dates the sale to 1866; the Mississippi Department of Archives and History dates it to 1867 and the reversion to 1881:1870 · Joseph Davis sold his plantations to the man he had enslaved, and his brother Jefferson Davis sued the family for Brierfield and wonCause of Alemayehu's death. Pneumonia (AFP via Arab News, Pleurisy (Hall 2000, cited at1868 · Tewodros II shot himself at Maqdala in 1868, Britain auctioned his treasury and took his son, and in 2023 Buckingham Palace refused to return the son's remainsEnglish Wikipedia gives 14 months in prison and Spanish Wikipedia 11:1867 · Maximilian made the two-year-old grandson of Mexico's first emperor a prince and his ward, and the boy died a Georgetown language teacher with no childrenWikipedia says the court ruled the second page and signature forgeries; the opinion and the Federal Judicial Center say it decided the case on other grounds and never ruled on forgery: | | Her father's legacy: $7.5 million on his death in 1864 (New England Historical Society) vs nearly $1 million plus trusts worth several million on his death in 1865 (Federal Judicial Center):1865 · Hetty Robinson produced a will page giving her all of her aunt's $2 million, and a Harvard mathematician testified the signature was tracedThe 1876 Act gives 176,602 shares sold against 177,642 assumed by Britain; Encyclopedia.com gives Ismail's debt by 1876 as about £1 billion, the Library of Congress country study as £100 million by 1875:1863 · Khedive Ismail sold Egypt's Suez Canal shares to Britain for £4 million in 1875, and the Ottoman sultan deposed him four years laterThe National Park Service gives Levy's 1834 price as $2,500: | Wikipedia, citing Marc Leepson's Saving Monticello, gives $2,700:1862 · Uriah Levy willed Monticello to the United States, the Confederacy auctioned it, and New York's highest court voided the giftCarol Berkin's biography, as reviewed in H-France, says mother and son lost a first trial in 1856 and an appeal in 1861; Wikipedia dates the claim to 1861:1860 · Napoleon annulled his brother's Baltimore marriage, and Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte's son lost his claim to the Bonaparte inheritance in a Paris courtNo family account exists. Sources differ on whether Sokolov bought the bodies (Wikipedia) or embalmed them under a deal with Lent (Public Domain Review), and on the date of the theft (1976 or 1979).1860 · Julia Pastrana's husband sold her embalmed body after she died in 1860, and it was exhibited, stolen and stored in Oslo until Mexico buried it in 2013Hansard shows Talbot sitting as Earl of Shrewsbury on 10 June 1858; Wikipedia dates the Lords ruling to 1860.1856 · The 17th Earl of Shrewsbury left his estates to the Duke of Norfolk's baby son; a distant cousin won the earldom and Alton TowersThe trust money is given as 600,000 rupees (Wikipedia) and 7 lakh rupees (Kelkar, quoting Damodar Rao's memoir); his first pension as 10,000 rupees a year, later reduced:1853 · The East India Company refused the Raja of Jhansi's deathbed adoption, took the state, and kept the boy's inheritance in trust for goodHis wife and family said he was insane; French doctors certified him sane, and English courts upheld the lunacy finding at every hearing from 1844 to 1851:1851 · Begum Samru's heir was declared insane on his wife's petition, and after his death she contested his will leaving £200,000 to an Indian collegeJohnson acknowledged the daughters, gave them his name and gave them land ( The Fayette County Court recorded that he left no children (1850 · Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson's daughter was ruled illegitimate, and a Kentucky court gave his estate to his brothersDescendants say the remains tested in 1998 were not Naundorff's ( The Leuven and Nantes teams concluded the remains were not the dauphin's, reported in Le Monde on 5 June 1998 (1845 · Karl Wilhelm Naundorff sued the Bourbons as the lost son of Louis XVI, and DNA from the boy's heart ended the claim in 2000Wikipedia says payments were suspended in 1912 and the settlement came in 1966: | Encyclopedia.com gives a 1913 default and a 1967 settlement:1842 · Mexico seized the Jesuit mission fund for California in 1842, and the claim ran 125 years through the first case at The HagueWikipedia says an order of the Master in Chancery allowed the sale in 1901 for £29,000: | The University of Nottingham and the Bar Harbor Historical Society date the sale to 1902, after his siblings gave permission, at an invoice value of $141,032:1839 · A banker's nephews fought ten years over his jewels, and the heir who got the Hope Diamond could sell it only with the court's permissionWikipedia gives February 1836 for the heart's voyage in one section and 1835 in another; the Lapa brotherhood's historian dates it 4 February 1835 from the brotherhood's minutes:1834 · Pedro I left his heart to Porto, the city council and a church brotherhood fought over where to keep it, and Brazil borrowed it in 2022The shooting is dated 19 October 1834 (Wikipedia) and November 1834 (Sally Reeves, frenchquarter.com):1834 · The heiress to the land around New Orleans's main square was shot four times by her father-in-law over her fortune, survived, and built the Pontalba BuildingsThe French heirs argued the trust was invalid; the Supreme Court upheld it in 1844.1831 · Stephen Girard left $7.5 million for "poor white male orphans", and courts fought over the word "white" until 1968Chávez said in 2004 that Bolívar died in poverty; historian Inés Quintero of Venezuela's National Academy of History shows a large inherited estate and a mine sold for 38,000 pounds:1830 · Simón Bolívar's will left only the Aroa copper mines, his sisters sold them in 1832, and Hugo Chávez had his bones dug up in 2010Date of Shaka's death. 22 September 1828 (SAHO article text) and 24 September 1828 (SAHO vital record), both at 1829 (Captain Allen Gardiner's account as given by Jenkinson, Amazulu, 1884, Mpande's death: 18 October 1872 ( 19 November 1872, with 18 October noted as an alternative ( Mpande's flight across the Thukela: September 1839 (Wikipedia, same URL); 1838 (SAHO, same URL).1828 · Dingane and Mhlangana killed their half-brother Shaka in 1828, and their brother Mpande took the Zulu throne with Boer help in 1840Wikipedia gives the Court of Session vote as 14 July 1767; the Dictionary of National Biography gives 15 July 1767.1827 · Lady Jane Douglas said she gave birth to twins in Paris at 50, and the Duke of Hamilton sued to prove her son was a stolen childYork Museums Trust says the street got its name back in 1971 ( Wikipedia says in the 1980s, with 1971 the year a pub was renamed the Railway King (1827 · George Hudson inherited £30,000 from a great-uncle in "suspicious circumstances," became the Railway King, and died with less than £200The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society's 2001 Scholars Commission said paternity was "by no means proven", and in 2002 a majority of the Monticello Association, the white descendants' society, voted against admitting Hemings descendants ( The DNA study and the Foundation's research committee concluded Jefferson was the likely father (1826 · Thomas Jefferson's will freed his two youngest sons by Sally Hemings, and his debts sent 130 enslaved people to auctionEuronews says Mahmud II banned the order in the 17th century ( Sara Kuehn and Wikipedia date the ban to 1826 (1826 · The Sultan abolished the Bektashi order in 1826 and gave its lodges away, Atatürk closed the rest in 1925, and in 2024 Albania proposed a sovereign state for its leaderThe body-swap theory (Georges Rétif de la Bretonne, 1969; Bruno Roy-Henry, 2000) says the British substituted the butler Cipriani; France refused a DNA test in 2002. The 1840 exhumation witnesses identified the body.1821 · Napoleon's will left 10,000 francs to the man who tried to shoot the Duke of WellingtonThe Government of Canada says Cormack removed the remains in 1827; the Dictionary of Canadian Biography says he saw them in their resting place in November 1828:1820 · Settlers seized Demasduit to recover stolen property and killed her husband; their remains sat in Edinburgh until 2020Date of death. South African History Online and the Wikipedia infobox give 29 December 1815 ( Wikipedia's body text gives 1 January 1816 (1815 · France passed a law in 2002 to return Sarah Baartman's remains to South AfricaAlexander Mackenzie (1888) says Lord Seaforth had four sons: | Burke (1883) says three:1815 · A Highland prophecy says the last Seaforth chief would be deaf and outlive his sons, Lord Seaforth's death in 1815 matched it, and historians say the seer may never have existedThe final award is given as $576,707.92 on 13 May 1889 (New Orleans Historical) and $923,788 in 1891 (Historic New Orleans Collection, Wikipedia); the 1813 will was upheld in 1856 (New Orleans Historical) or 1858 (Wikipedia):1813 · Myra Clark Gaines sued for 51 years over her father's lost will and the New Orleans land sold from his estate, and her heirs collected after she diedOne 1846 account says the bones reached Tilly in March 1844; American Heritage says 1837.1809 · Thomas Paine's bones were dug up by an admirer, shipped to England and lostThe descendants say the question of suicide or murder is open and only the remains can answer it ("We deserve an answer," Howell Lewis Bowen, 2009) ( In 2003 Park Service spokesman David Barna said the scholars consulted "unanimously say there is no question that Lewis committed suicide" ( The NPS now calls the death "a heavily debated mystery" (1809 · Meriwether Lewis died insolvent with his drafts refused by the War Department, and 198 relatives have not been allowed to exhume his bodyWorld History Encyclopedia says Zhang Bao kept 20 junks ( The China Project says he kept 80 vessels (1807 · Zheng Yi's widow took command of his pirate fleets, married his adopted heir, and surrendered to the Qing in 1810 keeping her plunderThe Royal Collection says the monument was paid for by the Prince Regent; stpetersbasilica.info cites Notes and Queries that he sent £50 and calls the claim that he paid for it a misunderstanding:1807 · The last Stuart heir lost his fortune to the French, lived on a pension from George III, and left the Stuart jewels to the Prince of WalesThe prize is dated 1775 by Nesta and Encyclopedia.com ( and 1783 by The Chemical Engineer (1806 · The Revolution guillotined Nicolas Leblanc's patron, seized his soda works and published his patent, and the state paid his heirs 49 years after his suicideEmma's 1813 petition said Earl Nelson kept the codicil in his pocket until the day the money was voted to the family ( In the 1946 Commons debate Wilson Harris said she was adequately provided for, while Foot and Gallacher said Parliament ignored Nelson's wishes (1805 · Nelson left Emma Hamilton to the nation; Parliament paid his brother and Emma died in debt in CalaisThe Bakhrushin Theatre Museum says she was freed in 1798, before the marriage: | Calend.ru says Sheremetev freed her and her family after the marriage: . The Russian Biographical Dictionary dates Dmitry's birth to 3 January 1803: | Its article on Praskovia dates the first child's birth to 3 February 1803:1803 · Russia's richest count married his serf actress in secret, she died weeks after their son's birth, and the boy inherited about 150,000 serfsThe trust says Robert inherited the farm from his father and gives 21 acres; the VCU social welfare history says he bought it for £5,000 and gives 24 acres. VCU names the challengers as the children of his half-brother; Wikipedia names Bishop John Inglis, a distant cousin:1801 · A sea captain's son willed his Manhattan farm to retired sailors, a Loyalist's son sued as heir to the Supreme Court, and the ground rents housed 1,000 sailorsAccounts since Baddeley (1908) say Queen Mariam killed Lazarev; Imerlishvili (2014) disputes it:1800 · Georgia's last king asked Russia for protection, Russia abolished his dynasty, and his heirs were suing each other over the royal name in 2019Bushrod Washington wrote that he sold 54 people because of insubordination and the risk of escape, and that families would stay together. A Leesburg paper reported a "drove of 100" walked through town (both citing Niles' Weekly Register).1799 · Washington's will freed 123 people, his heir sold 54 more, and the family sold Mount Vernon for $200,000Popular accounts say the litigation used up the fortune, as in Jarndyce; the legal historian Patrick Polden and Wikipedia's account of his work say the estate was distributed early and the later suits were by outside claimants. | The Post gave his age as in his 100th year; a 1701 birth makes him 96 or 97.1798 · William Jennens died with an unsigned will in his pocket, and claimants fought over his fortune until 1915English Heritage dates the final judgment to 1858; Wikipedia gives the House of Lords decision as 9 June 1859.1797 · Peter Thellusson locked his fortune away for three generations, and Parliament changed the law to stop anyone copying himThe 1976 film "Xica da Silva" and a later telenovela present her as a symbol of freedom; Furtado's archive work shows she held at least 104 enslaved people and passed them to her heirs:1796 · Chica da Silva, born enslaved, made a will naming 14 children as heirs and divided enslaved people among themThe Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia, published under the monarchy in 1897, says only that Paul "died suddenly" in the Mikhailovsky Palace; the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica says he was struck with a sword, strangled and trampled:1796 · Catherine the Great tried to pass over her son Paul for the throne, and Paul made a law that no ruler could choose an heir againEnglish Wikipedia dates the auction 25 August 1793 to 11 August 1794; French Wikipedia says the Convention ordered the sale on 10 June 1793 and that it ran over 1793 to 1796 in 17,182 lots.1793 · The Revolution auctioned Versailles's furniture in 17,000 lots, and a top expert was convicted in 2025 of forging royal chairs for the buy-back marketThe Beltrão family's descent was accepted by Congress in 1969; the IHP historian rejects it from parish records:1792 · Portugal's 1792 sentence declared Tiradentes's children and grandchildren infamous, and Brazil later paid pensions to people who said they descended from himThe Irish Post and Gulf News say Hunter paid Byrne's friends £500: | The Irish Times says Hunter had the coffin stolen on the way to the ship:1783 · Charles Byrne arranged to be buried at sea to escape the anatomists, and John Hunter got his body and displayed his skeleton for 200 yearsLive History India gives the fire as 21 February 1827 in its body text and 1828 in its introduction:1773 · Raghunathrao's men killed the 17-year-old Peshwa in his palace, his widow bore a son who took the throne back, and Pune says the boy still cries for his uncleSale price: £300,000 (UCL Legacies of British Slavery) vs £330,000 (Wikipedia). Year of inheritance: 1770 (Beckford biography site) vs 1771 (Wikipedia):1770 · William Beckford inherited a Jamaican sugar fortune at 10, built Fonthill Abbey, and sold it before its tower fellThe Catholic Encyclopedia gives about 6,000 Jesuits deported from Spain ( the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes gives about 5,000 settled in Italy (1767 · Spain opened sealed orders in every Jesuit town on one night in 1767, seized the order's property, and the Pope's cannon turned the exiles' ships awayWikipedia says Manik Chand received the title about 1713; Banglapedia says Fateh Chand received it in 1723 from the emperor it names as Mahmud Shah:1763 · The Jagat Seths financed the British at Plassey; six years later the Nawab had the two heads of the bank killed and their bodies thrown from a fortThe Encyclopedia of Korean Culture says he died after seven days in the chest; Wikipedia says he answered from inside until the seventh night and was pronounced dead on the eighth day:1762 · King Yeongjo locked his heir in a rice chest until he died, and the heir's son became king and moved the body into a new fortressWikipedia's summary says the verdict returned his estates to James; the 1912 edition of the trial record says the title and estates never came to him.1760 · An uncle shipped his 12-year-old nephew to America as a servant to take the Anglesey titles, and a Dublin jury found for the nephew in 1743The family's epitaph at Southill says he fell "a martyr to political persecution" ( The court convicted him of not doing his utmost to engage the enemy (1757 · Admiral John Byng was shot under the Articles of War, his family kept his estate, and no pardon has been grantedThe Jewish Encyclopedia dates the death sentence to 17 December 1737 at Asperg; the Deutschlandmuseum dates it to 9 January 1738:1738 · Württemberg hanged Joseph Süß Oppenheimer in a cage in 1738 and auctioned his property months before the verdictThe family's historian, Richard Bassett, found the diamond was always Habsburg personal property: | Tuscany cites the 1740 annex and the 1723 inventory of jewels "united to the State":1737 · The last Medici left the Florentine Diamond to Tuscany, the Habsburgs took it to Vienna, and it surfaced in a Quebec bank vault in 2025The 888-children figure (Guinness, textbooks) against Busnot's 1704 report of 600 sons, both cited in Oberzaucher and Grammer ( Ahmad's choice: Wikipedia cites Pierre for selection by the army chiefs, ulama and ministers, and Braithwaite for prior designation by Ismail (1727 · Moulay Ismail of Morocco died in 1727 with hundreds of sons, and his army made and unmade sultans for thirty yearsThe Townshend family says Dorothy died of smallpox and lies in the family crypt ( the legend says she was confined at Raynham until her death (1726 · Dorothy Walpole married the man her father forbade, died of smallpox at Raynham in 1726, and became the Brown Lady photographed on its stairs in 1936The 2021 Foundation report says Guy held £45,500 of stock, which rose to about £200,000: | Wikipedia, citing a 1938 study of Guy's account book, says he sold £54,040 of stock for £234,428:1724 · Thomas Guy sold his South Sea stock at the top of the 1720 bubble and left the profit to found Guy's HospitalUSPG's own history page states the 1710 to 1836 dates and the apology: | The 1911 Britannica entry describes the bequest without mentioning enslaved people:1710 · Christopher Codrington willed his Barbados plantations to a Church of England missionary society, which held enslaved people on them from 1710 to 1836Elliot and Dowson give the death as 21 February 1707 and the battle as 10 June 1707 (Old Style); the Gregorian dates are 3 March and 20 June 1707†:1707 · Aurangzeb was buried under a plain stone as he willed, and his sons fought for the throne; one said "a throne or a bier"The claim is given as 6 million florins (Wikipedia, Austria-Forum) and 5 million (other accounts):1703 · The Habsburg state owed Samuel Oppenheimer millions when he died in 1703; it declared his firm bankrupt and his estate was auctioned in 1763Britannica Japan dates the ronin's deaths to the 2nd day of the 2nd month of 1703; the Yamakawa dictionary gives the 4th day:1701 · The shogunate confiscated Lord Asano's 53,000-koku domain the day he drew his sword, and his retainers waited 21 months to take revengeThe Tribune dates the family's zamindari to 1608; Wikipedia dates the grant to about 1613. Charnock's death is given as 1692 and 1693 because of calendar differences:1693 · The Sabarna Roy Choudhury family sold three villages to the East India Company in 1698, and their descendants won a 2003 ruling that Job Charnock did not found KolkataThe Massachusetts Historical Society says he refused trial to protect his estate and that it passed to his two sons; the University of Virginia's Salem project says the will went to his sons-in-law and that a conviction could not have forfeited the estate under English or Massachusetts law:1692 · Salem pressed Giles Corey to death under stones for refusing a jury trial, and his land went to his sons-in-law under a will he had already signedJSTOR Daily says four pairs of forceps were found in 1813 under the attic floorboards: | The Royal College of Physicians says about 1815 under a trap-door above the porch, and the Maldon district site says five sets in 1815, believed hidden by Peter's second wife, Ann: | . Maldon gives Peter's death as 1683; the RCP gives 1682.1683 · The Chamberlen family kept the obstetric forceps secret for over a century, and their instruments were found hidden in the family house two centuries laterThe state's purchase is dated 1897 by Structurae ( and 1898 by EBSCO and TourMaG (1680 · Pierre-Paul Riquet spent his fortune on the Canal du Midi, died eight months before it opened, and left his heirs the canal and its debtsRam Rai's death is given as 1687 (Shahid Bilas) and 1689 (Lokesh Ohri):1664 · A Sikh guru disinherited his elder son for changing one verse for Aurangzeb, and rival claimants sat at Bakala waiting to be namedThe General History of Taiwan says Zheng Tai killed the nurse and child to satisfy Koxinga; the Draft History of Qing says the generals rebelled, made Zheng Jing their commander and Koxinga bit his fingers in rage before he died:1662 · Koxinga ordered his heir and his own wife killed over a child born to a wet nurse, and died before his generals obeyedThe shrine's 1827 history says Oiwa was a devoted wife whose marriage revived the Tamiya house ( the 1825 play, the source of the ghost story, has Iemon arrange her death (1636 · Oiwa's shrine says she and her adopted-heir husband restored the Tamiya fortunes; the 1825 play has him betray her for a richer matchThe Padshahnama says Dawar Bakhsh was put in safe confinement; Elphinstone, citing Olearius, says he escaped to Persia and was seen there by the Holstein ambassadors in 1633:1627 · Asaf Khan crowned a Mughal prince to hold the throne for Shah Jahan, and Shah Jahan had him imprisoned and killedWikipedia says the Supreme Court awarded Treasure Salvors "all treasure from the vessel": | The opinion held only that Florida officials had no colourable claim to the artifacts, and that a federal court could not decide Florida's ownership without its consent:1622 · Mel Fisher lost his son and daughter-in-law hunting the Atocha, found its main treasure ten years to the day later, and beat Florida in the Supreme CourtCNN Indonesia (2021) says the family's first perkenier was Paulus van den Broeke, brother of an admiral who landed in 1621. In The Jakarta Post (2019) Pongky says his ancestor Pieter van den Broecke reached Banda in 1612 and planted the first nutmeg plantation on Ai in 1624. ;1621 · The Dutch East India Company executed 44 Banda chiefs in 1621 and gave the nutmeg groves to Dutch planters, and one planter family says it has held its grove for 13 generationsThe hall states that Katherine (Anne) Griffith died there in 1620 ( Mysterious Britain, citing Ingram and County Folk-Lore, says the accounts conflict and the skull's origin is unknown (1620 · Burton Agnes Hall has passed by inheritance since 1610, and its builder's daughter is said to be bricked into a wallThe West Horsley Place estate account says the head stayed in a cupboard at the house, was buried at St Mary's, West Horsley, and was seen dug up in 1703 ( The Old Shirburnian Society says Carew buried the head at St Margaret's, Westminster, in 1660 ( Historian Anna Beer doubts the 2014 bag held the head; eyewitness accounts describe a red leather bag (1618 · James I gave Walter Raleigh's Sherborne estate to his favourite over a missing phrase in a trust deed, and Raleigh's widow kept his embalmed head for 29 yearsProbate is dated 22 June 1616 by one source and 16 June by others.1616 · Shakespeare left his wife his "second best bed" and struck his new son-in-law out of the willWikipedia says the Russians killed two of Kuchum's sons in 1598 and captured five sons, eight wives and eight daughters; Brodnikov and Podalko say a brother, a son and two grandsons were killed:1605 · Siberia's last khan lost his capital to Cossacks in 1582 and his family to Moscow in 1598; his descendants served the tsars as Princes SibirskyThe second vassal is named Marzio Catalano (EBSCO) and Marzio Floriani (Wikipedia):1598 · Beatrice Cenci and her family killed her father at his castle, Rome beheaded them, and most of the Cenci fortune went to the pope's nephewThe Jewish Encyclopedia dates the nephew's death to 8 September 1596 and the governor's to about 1595; the Handbook of Texas puts the governor's death in 1590, and Wikipedia gives 13 February 1591:1596 · The Inquisition burned the heir to Nuevo León's governorship with his mother and three sisters in 1596, and his stolen memoir went back to Mexico in 2017The Japanese tourism agency says the shogunate approved of and partly encouraged the split; Wikipedia calls the belief that it was made to control the order a mistaken popular view. The Higashi Honganji's own history dates the land grant to 1600; the tourism agency and Japanese Wikipedia give 1602:1592 · Their mother produced a letter naming the younger son, Hideyoshi removed the elder as head of the Honganji, and Ieyasu gave the elder land for a rival temple in KyotoThe Orthodox Encyclopedia dates the death to 19 November 1581: | The Russian Biographical Dictionary (1897) and Brockhaus-Efron give 19 November 1582:1581 · Ivan the Terrible struck his heir on the head in November 1581, and his dynasty ended with his surviving son in 1598The main source is a history published by Gresham College itself (Chartres and Vermont, 1997): | The Exchange, the will and the 1596 founding are confirmed in a Gresham lecture by Margaret Willes:1579 · Thomas Gresham left London a free college, and Parliament sold the building for a tax office in 1768Diogo's death is given as 1542 (Wikipedia), 1543 and about 1545 (Jewish Encyclopedia); the age at which the niece's half was to be released is given as 15 and 18:1569 · Gracia Nasi's sister Brianda sued her in Venice for half the Mendes fortune and denounced her as a secret JewTDV gives 23 July 1562 for the execution, a promised 1,200,000 gold pieces and 500,000 florins paid: | Wikipedia gives 25 September 1561 and 400,000 gold coins:1562 · Süleyman paid the Shah of Persia to hand back his son Bayezid, who was strangled in Qazvin with his four sonsDavis (1983) argues Bertrande knowingly accepted the impostor; Robert Finlay (1988) argues she was deceived.1560 · An impostor lived as Martin Guerre for three years, took his wife and land, and was hanged when the real Martin walked into courtWojciehowski gives Pegu's offer as at least 300,000 cruzados: | Austin (1873) gives 400,000 cruzados and doubts the tooth was taken at Jaffna:1560 · Burma's king offered a fortune for the Buddha's tooth, Goa's archbishop ground it to powder, and two new teeth appeared within six yearsThe château's own site dates the building to 1513 to 1517: | French Wikipedia gives 1515 to 1521:1559 · Chenonceau was taken for a royal debt, taken from a king's mistress by his widow, and auctioned to a bank after its owner's ruinSpanish Wikipedia has Marina reaching Chile in 1554 and dying in Santiago; Memoria Chilena (Biblioteca Nacional de Chile) gives 1555 and Concepción:1553 · Pedro de Valdivia's wife waited 27 years in Spain, learned on her voyage that he was dead, and the governor married to his former mistress did not pay her pensionE. W. Ives (1992) held the 30 December date genuine and called Seymour's protectorate a coup that discarded the will; R. A. Houlbrooke argued a gifts clause was inserted after 12 January 1547; D. Head (2025) holds the will genuine.1547 · Henry VIII's will was signed with a stamp, not his hand, and its validity was disputed for 20 yearsThe Bowes Museum dates the burning to 17 July 1537 and says James accused her of witchcraft; Martin Coventry gives 3 December 1537, and the Wikipedia account, citing Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, calls the witchcraft charge a myth:1537 · James V burned Lady Glamis in 1537, took Glamis Castle and its silver, and the legend says she still kneels in the chapelWikipedia says Margaret was buried at Chelsea and moved to the Roper vault after William's death; the Canterbury Archaeological Trust says the head was buried with her in the vault in 1577:1535 · Henry VIII beheaded Thomas More and took the family's property, and his daughter bribed a man for his head, which a Canterbury parish voted in 2025 to dig upThe Elliot and Dowson editor converts Humayun's accession date to "29th January, 1530," which conflicts with Babur's death in December 1530; the blinding is commonly dated 1553, a date the extracts do not give†:1530 · Babur's son Kamran held his infant nephew Akbar on the walls of Kabul under fire, and Humayun had Kamran blindedSarmiento says Tupac Inca's mummy was burned in 1533 (chapter 67): | Garcilaso de la Vega says he saw Tupac Inca Yupanqui's body intact in Polo de Ondegardo's house before he left Peru (Royal Commentaries, book 5):1527 · Atahualpa's captains hanged Huáscar's wives and children on the Cuzco road, burned a dead king's mummy, and killed Huáscar so Pizarro could not free himThe family foundation gives the Fuggerei's founding as 1521, with 142 apartments: | English Wikipedia gives 1516, with construction from 1514 to 1523, and 147 apartments:1525 · Jakob Fugger paid for Charles V's election, and his heirs lost much of the fortune when the Spanish crown stopped payingA family member said in 1994 that the real bones lie in an unmarked spot on the Vidigueira estate† ( The state tomb at Jerónimos holds the remains moved in 1880 and 1898, which Ravenstein in 1898 called "supposed" to be his (1524 · Vasco da Gama was ordered out of his home town of Sines in 1507 and asked to leave Portugal before the King made him a count in 1519EBSCO gives the surrender as 27 December 1522 ( R. Cohen's 1920 history says only that the knights resisted for six months (1523 · The Knights of St John surrendered Rhodes in 1522, sailed away with 4,000 islanders, and rented Malta from the Emperor for a falcon a yearWikipedia reports a 2007 transfer of the remains back inside the church ( Escapada Rural says they have been in the churchyard outside Santa María since 1945 and the church still opposes burial inside ( El Debate (July 2026) places them at the foot of the steps before the main door (1503 · Pope Alexander VI built a state in central Italy for his son Cesare Borgia, and Cesare lost it after his father's deathTDV gives 40,000 gold pieces to the Knights and 120,000 to the Pope for three years: | Wikipedia gives 40,000 ducats a year to the Knights and 120,000 crowns, the Holy Lance and 45,000 ducats a year to the Pope:1495 · Mehmed II's younger son lost the throne to his brother and spent 13 years as a paid captive of the Knights of Rhodes, the Pope and the King of FranceThe war chronicle Ōninki says Tomiko asked Yamana to protect her son, which set off the war; the Sekai Daihyakka entry says there is no proof of this, only that she wanted him to be shogun:1490 · A childless shogun adopted his brother as heir in 1464, then his wife bore a son, and the quarrel burned Kyoto for 11 yearsThe Harvard Law Review gives the decision as 10 July 2020 in its text and cites a decision dated 2 July 2020 in its footnote:1481 · A Turkish court ruled in 2020 that Mehmed II's endowment deed still bound Hagia Sophia as a mosque, while an Armenian foundation could not recover its confiscated Istanbul innDate of the Great Privilege: 10 February 1477 ( 11 February 1477 ( Date of the wedding: 19 August 1477 (same NDB URL); 18 August 1477 (1477 · Charles the Bold died at Nancy, the King of France seized Burgundy from his 19-year-old heiress, and her marriage gave the Netherlands to the HabsburgsNewsweek România reports Rosetti found animal bones and refuse under the slab: | Rough Guides says the 1933 excavation also found a ring and buckle traceable to Vlad's father:1476 · Vlad III Dracula's head was sent to the sultan, and the grave at Snagov opened in 1933 held no bodyMartínez dates Nezahualcóyotl's death to 1472; Chimalpahin's annals record it in 1471 after 41 years of rule:1472 · The chronicles say Nezahualcóyotl had his bride's betrothed killed in battle, executed their son for treason, and named a 7-year-old heir on his deathbedAcosta says Polo found Pachacuti's body and sent it to Lima: | Garcilaso lists the five bodies he saw as Viracocha, Tupac Inca Yupanqui, Huayna Capac and two queens, with no Pachacuti:1471 · The dead Inca kings kept their palaces, servants and estates, and the Spanish seized their mummies in 1559 and lost them in a Lima hospitalSuicide (Annals of Sejo), poison (Seonjo era) and an ordered killing (Sukjong era):1457 · Danjong's uncle took his throne, and three Joseon records give three accounts of how the 16-year-old died in exileWikipedia's summary says the son killed a knight of Lancaster: | Allen Wright says he killed someone in a joust: | The Ballad Index says the knight went into debt to ransom his son:1450 · The Gest of Robyn Hode says a knight pledged his lands to an abbot for £400 and Robin paid the debt; a 1598 play made Robin an earl robbed by his uncleDawlatshah dates the death 8 Ramadan 853 (25 October 1449); the gravestone says 10 Ramadan:1449 · Ulugh Beg kept back his son's share of the treasury, and the son defeated him, had him sentenced, and let the emirs kill him on the road to MeccaThe German History in Documents introduction says Kottanner reached the queen the day after the theft; Medievalists.net dates her arrival at Komárom to 22 February 1440:1439 · A lady-in-waiting stole the Holy Crown of Hungary in 1440 so a baby born hours later could be crowned kingSarmiento says Viracocha's body was burned by Gonzalo Pizarro (chapter 25): | Garcilaso says he saw Viracocha's intact body, "the head being as white as snow", in Polo de Ondegardo's house: | Markham's note says Cieza de León and others make Urco succeed and then lose the throne:1438 · Sarmiento records that Inca Viracocha named his illegitimate son Urco heir, fled the Chanca attack, and died stripped of his property after his other sons killed UrcoThe Neue Deutsche Biographie says he spent almost three years in the debtors' prison ( Wikipedia dates his jailing to February 1422 and his release to April 1426 (1426 · A Hanseatic merchant was jailed for debt in Bruges for years, died weeks after release, and his widow was sued out of her houseWikipedia and EBSCO date Tezozómoc's death to 1426; Bueno Bravo's article places it in 1427 and calls the cause unclear:1426 · Tezozómoc named one son heir; another son took the throne and killed him, and the cities he had ruled destroyed AzcapotzalcoBrockhaus-Efron dates the blinding of Vasily Kosoy to 1434: | John D. Windhausen dates it to 1435:1425 · Moscow's grand prince was blinded by his cousin in 1446, after his mother tore a disputed gold belt from another cousin at his weddingThe will was proved shortly before 8 March 1423, so he probably died just before then (ORB, citing the Husting roll); the Guildhall Library exhibition gives 23 or 24 March 1423:1423 · Richard Whittington left no children and his fortune to London; his executors rebuilt Newgate prison and founded almshouses that still operateWikipedia dates the marriage before 1373 and its infobox to 1368, and says the Livre was first published in 1612; Encyclopaedia Universalis dates the Livre to 1409 and Flamel's birth to about 1330:1418 · Nicolas Flamel left his property to his Paris parish church, a 1612 book made him an alchemist, and treasure hunters ransacked his house for goldBritannica Japan says Hồ Quý Ly was beheaded in Nanjing: | English Wikipedia says he was made a common soldier in the Ming army and his date of death is unknown:1407 · A royal in-law took Vietnam's throne from his own grandson in 1400, and China invaded claiming to restore the true heirAtlas Obscura dates the reburial November 1942: | Wikipedia dates it 20 December 1942:1405 · Soviet scientists opened Timur's tomb on 19 June 1941 over the objections of Samarkand's clerics, and the keeper who read out its warning was ordered arrestedThe Armenian Prelacy says the Célestins tomb was desecrated and a new cenotaph set up at Saint-Denis in 1815: | El Español says his remains still rest at Saint-Denis:1393 · The last king of Armenia was ransomed from Cairo, made lord of Madrid for life, and his title passed to the kings of CyprusThe daily cost is given as 30,000 dirhams (Wikipedia, Madain Project, citing al-Maqrizi) and 20,000 dirhams (Current, 2021):1361 · Plague estates paid for Sultan Hasan's Cairo mosque, a minaret fell and killed about 300, and the sultan was murdered and never buried in his tombThe city of Erfurt gives the community as about 1,000 members; Wikipedia cites Graetz's figure of 3,000:1349 · A Jewish moneylender's silver lay under his Erfurt cellar from the 1349 massacre until archaeologists found it in 1998Villani's figures convert to about £262,000; Russell's documented lending of at least £433,000 is higher, and English Wikipedia's Peruzzi article calls the Edward-only explanation "simplistic":1343 · Edward III did not repay the Bardi and Peruzzi, and both Florentine banks failed in the 1340sThe Catholic Encyclopedia gives the price as 80,000 florins and says Clement declared her innocent; the Dizionario Biografico says she received only 62,000 florins and that the cardinals' inquiry was blocked:1343 · King Robert's will left Naples to Joanna, her husband was strangled, and she sold the city of Avignon to the pope while the murder was examinedMost popular accounts name the predecessor Abu Bakr II; Wikipedia, citing Ibn Khaldun, says no mansa of that name reigned and names Muhammad ibn Qu ( Levtzion (1963) notes al-Umari's account does not name the ruler ( n. 36).1324 · Mansa Musa said he took Mali's throne because his predecessor sailed into the Atlantic and never came backThe Dizionario Biografico says the brothers transferred the lands to Giacomo in 1292; Wikipedia says Giacomo disinherited them in 1297:1297 · A Colonna cardinal kept his brothers' lands, the pope razed Palestrina in the fight, and a Colonna seized the pope at AnagniWikipedia says the hospital building was demolished in 1910: | Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities says the site now serves as an eye and dental hospital:1290 · Sultan Qalawun built Cairo's great hospital with forced labour after a vow in a Damascus hospital funded by a captured European king's ransomWikipedia's article on Khurshah dates his death to 1256 in its text and ends his imamate in 1257 in its succession table (1256 · The last lord of Alamut surrendered to the Mongols in 1256, the Persian historian Juvayni burned the castle's library, and the imam was killed on his way home from the KhanTuranshah's murder: 2 May 1250 per Wikipedia ( April 1250 per Engelsberg Ideas ( ARCE gives al-Salih's death as 2 May 1250 ( against 22 November 1249 in Engelsberg Ideas. Burial: Wikipedia says she was interred in the mausoleum ( ARCE says this is unclear.1249 · Shajar al-Durr hid the death of Sultan al-Salih Ayyub in 1249, became sultan after his heir was killed, and was beaten to death in 1257The University of Victoria edition calls the 5,000 marks an inheritance tax of one third; Harry Freedman calls it the price to repurchase the estate, with 4,000 marks for Edward the Confessor's shrine:1244 · Henry III took a third of David of Oxford's estate in 1244 and held his widow Licoricia in the Tower until it was settledThe Toàn thư records the 1232 burial of the Lý kin and in the same entry says it may not have happened, since Phan Phu Tiên did not record it: | The Korean clan's descent from Lý Long Tường is clan tradition reported by Korean and Vietnamese newspapers; the Vietnamese chronicle does not record his flight†:1226 · Vietnam's only reigning empress was made to hand the throne to her child husband in 1225, and the chronicle says the Lý clan was buried alive in 1232Number of individuals reburied. 143, one per container (University of Pretoria poster, 150 (SAHO,1220 · Mapungubwe's royal dead were dug up in 1933 and reburied on their hill in 2007, but the gold rhinoceros stayed in a university museumThe Georgian Encyclopedia dates her co-rule to 1179; World History Encyclopedia dates her coronation as co-ruler to 1178:1213 · Georgia's King George III had no son and crowned his daughter Tamar co-ruler, and the place of her grave is still disputedLemire's archival history, as reviewed, gives 700 residents and 135 houses: | Hespress and the Institute for Palestine Studies' Jerusalem Story give about 650 people made homeless: and | Hespress counts about 110 houses in the early 20th century.1193 · A waqf fed Maghrebi pilgrims in Jerusalem for 774 years, and its quarter was bulldozed in one night in June 1967Britannica dates al-Adil's reign as sultan from 1207: | Wikipedia says he controlled all Ayyubid lands by 1202:1193 · Saladin left a gold ingot and 47 silver dirhams, not enough for his grave, and his brother took the empire from his sons1187 · Two Muslim families have opened the Church of the Holy Sepulchre every day for centuries, and dispute which of them came firstGoza says the estate details come from the Manabon Soga monogatari, and the scholar Sakai Kōichi treats parts of that account as fiction: | The encyclopedias summarised on Kotobank state the seizure of the Itō estate as fact:1176 · The Tale of the Soga Brothers says a guardian took his ward's estate, the ward killed the guardian's son, and the son's boys killed him 17 years laterHistoric UK and Wikipedia give the suspension as 1796 and the subsidence as 1803: | The EFDSS gives 1794, says Sir Henry agreed to stop it and gave the Crawls' revenue to the church, and gives 1802 for the collapse: | Tradfolk says the family itself suspended it and gives Ascension Day, not Lady Day, as the date:1150 · Tradition says a dying Lady Tichborne crawled round 23 acres for a bread dole and cursed the family if it ever stoppedThe Hangzhou government guide says the clearing and reburial were in 1163; most sources give 1162:1142 · Song China killed its leading general on a charge its chancellor admitted might not exist, held his family 20 years, then restored his name and reburied himDzieje.pl ends the fragmentation at the end of the 13th century; the Polish state education portal ends it with the 1320 coronation:1138 · Bolesław III had his half-brother blinded, then split Poland among his sons in 1138, and the country stayed divided for about two centuriesCharles C. Mann reports that Eight Deer was captured and sacrificed; John Pohl reports that Four Wind had him assassinated on a hunt (both as summarised at Pohl's FAMSI page:1115 · The Mixtec codices record that Lord Eight Deer killed his wife's father to take Tilantongo, and that the boy he spared later killed him and married his daughterThe Encyclopedia of Ukraine places the blinding at Zvenyhorod and notes other sources say Bilhorod, and dates the Vytychiv congress to 10 August 1100: | Brockhaus-Efron places it on the road to Bilhorod and dates the princes' ruling on Terebovlia to 1101:1097 · The princes of Rus' agreed at Liubech in 1097 that each would keep his father's lands, and two of them then blinded a thirdThe Institute of Ismaili Studies reports Nizari sources that al-Mustansir designated Nizar, and notes the 1122 letter concedes Nizar was proclaimed heir ( The same page cites the Coptic History of the Patriarchs for Ahmad being designated during the final illness. Wikipedia says no formal designation of Nizar is recorded ( Al-Mustansir's death: 29 December 1094, or 6 January 1095 in some sources (1094 · The vizier al-Afdal put al-Musta'li on the Fatimid throne in 1094 over his elder brother Nizar, and the Ismailis splitThe 19th-century historian E. A. Freeman believed the thigh bone reburied in 1642 was lost in 1793.1087 · William the Conqueror's funeral stopped when a man said the church stood on his father's stolen landSolomon ibn Verga, cited by the Encyclopaedia Judaica, gives "more than 1,500 householders" killed; the editor of the Fordham translation of Ibn Daud gives about 150 families:1066 · Joseph ibn Naghrela inherited his father's place as vizier of Granada and was killed in the massacre of 1066Raverty's Tabakat-i-Nasiri puts Muhammad's death in 432 AH; Baizawi puts Mahmud's death in 420 AH (1029) and Mas'ud's in 433 AH (1041); Raverty's note says Mas'ud may have ordered the blinding himself:1030 · Mahmud of Ghazni left his throne to one son; the other blinded him, and the blind brother's son later killed the victorWikipedia cites Hilal al-Sabi for al-Zahir's proclamation seven days after the disappearance and other sources for 27 March 1021 ( The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records both the accusation against Sitt al-Mulk and the sources that omit her (1021 · Sitt al-Mulk set aside the Fatimid heir after the caliph al-Hakim disappeared in 1021 and put his son al-Zahir on the throneThe Primary Chronicle names Sviatopolk as the killer: | N. N. Ilyin named Yaroslav, a view criticized by A. V. Nazarenko:1015 · The Primary Chronicle says Sviatopolk had his brothers Borys and Hlib killed in 1015, and Yaroslav buried them as saints after taking KyivThe Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the woodblock edition to 1860: | Wikipedia refers to an 1859 edition:995 · An emperor gave Japan's oldest medical book to one physician family, and the author's descendants spent centuries trying to get it backThe History of Song says the mother dictated the oath; a Song memoir cited in Li Tao's notes says Taizu chose his brother himself and Zhao Pu's oath came later:976 · Song records say the founder's mother made him leave the throne to his brother, and on the night he died the messenger fetched the brother instead of the sonWikipedia says Abu Tahir died of smallpox in 944; Saudipedia says he died of smallpox in 950, the year of the return:944 · Qarmatian raiders took the Black Stone from Mecca in 930 and held it for about 20 years before dropping it in a mosque in KufaPink Tentacle dates the removal of the building to 1928; the Japanese Wikipedia article dates the memorial to 1927:940 · Masakado fought his uncles for land, called himself the new emperor, and his head mound in Tokyo moved the Finance MinistryThe Ben-Zvi Institute's account says the pages were lost in the 1947 riot and the codex was given to Ben-Zvi: | Friedman says it was seen whole long after 1947, that no evidence shows significant pages missing on arrival in 1957, and that the state took custody against the courier's instructions:930 · Aleppo's Jews were told their 1,000-year-old Bible was burned in 1947; it reached Israel in 1957, and the community sued for itThe History of Liao says she wished to be buried with him, was dissuaded by relatives and officials and cut off her right hand; the Zizhi Tongjian says she first had over 100 officials killed at the tomb and cut off her hand when one refused:926 · The Liao History says Abaoji's widow cut off her right hand and put it in his coffin instead of following him into deathThe Avalon translation of the Chronicle places Æthelwold's death in its entry for 905; Wikipedia dates it to the Battle of the Holme, probably 13 December 902:899 · Alfred the Great's will answered his nephews' claim to their father's land, and one nephew rose against Alfred's sonChampat Rai Jain says Rishabha made Bahubali heir apparent; Wikipedia says Bahubali received the southern kingdom of Asmaka; the statue is dated 981 (Karnataka Tourism) and 983 (Wikipedia):850 · Jain tradition says Bahubali beat his elder brother for the kingdom, gave it up, and stood a year in meditation troubled that he stood on his brother's landBerzin calls Ösung the son of the senior queen and Yumtän the son of the junior queen: | Wikipedia lists Yumtän as the son of the first wife:842 · Tibetan Buddhist histories say a monk shot Emperor Langdarma in 842; his two sons by different queens split the empireTheophanes and Zonaras place Irene's exile on Lesbos; the Chronicle of 1234 and Bar Hebraeus say she became a nun in Athens:797 · Empress Irene had her son Constantine VI blinded in the room where he was born and ruled Byzantium alone from 797INAH dates Chan Muwan II's accession to 776; Wikipedia says Yaxchilan's king installed him around 790 and dates a Room 1 lintel to 12 January 787:790 · Bonampak's king had his heir presented on the painted walls of his temple, and the heir never ruledWorld History Encyclopedia says his Khazar wife Theodora was the sister of the Khazar leader Ibuzir: | Dumbarton Oaks says she was the khaghan's daughter:711 · Justinian II lost his throne and his nose in 695, took Constantinople back in 705, and was killed with his son in 711Guenter thinks the ruler named Muwaan Mat between 612 and 615 was probably Lady Sak K'uk' herself: | Skidmore, following David Stuart, says the name marks a male maize deity, so the ruler was more likely male, though Sak K'uk' was at least regent:683 · Pakal took Palenque's throne at 12 after an enemy sacked the city and the king died, and his son cut three rulers out of the official king listThe Nihon Shoki gives Ōtomo no reign; the Fusō Ryakki, Mizukagami and the Dai Nihon Shi say he reigned, and the Meiji state agreed in 1870:671 · Emperor Tenji passed over his brother for his son in 671, and the brother raised an army, won the throne and had the official history written by his own sonSources disagree on whether the princess was Khosrow II's daughter given by Umar (Hai Gaon) or Yazdegerd III's daughter given by Ali (Ibn Daud), and on whether she converted:660 · The exilarch Bostanai married a Persian princess; after his death his other sons claimed her and her children as slavesUNESCO's register says Uthman "was assassinated while reading it": | Islamic Awareness reviews the dating and answers that this manuscript is not the one Uthman was reading:656 · Tradition says Caliph Uthman was killed while reading this Quran; Russia took it as a trophy, and Lenin gave it backFatima's side: Muhammad gave her Fadak in his lifetime (al-Ma'mun's letter, in al-Baladhuri): | Abu Bakr's side: prophets leave no inheritance (al-Bukhari 4240):632 · Fatima asked Abu Bakr for her inheritance from Muhammad; he refused, she did not speak to him again, and caliphs returned and seized the land of Fadak for 200 yearsWikipedia gives Kassapa's reign as 473 to 495 in the text and 479 to 497 in its king list; Geiger's note dates him by a letter that reached the Chinese court in 527:473 · The Culavamsa says Kassapa walled up his father alive after the king showed him a reservoir as his only treasureThe discovery is dated 2005 by Andina and 2006 by Wikipedia, and the foundation's pages give 2004:450 · The Lady of Cao was buried with war clubs and a crown, the first Moche woman found with a ruler's emblems, with a teenage girl beside herThe Jewish Encyclopedia dates the edict against Gamaliel to 17 October 415 and the tax decree to 426; Wikipedia, citing Pharr's translation of the Code, dates the edict to 20 October 415 and the end of the patriarchate to 429:425 · Rome stripped the last patriarch of the house of Hillel, let no son succeed him, and took the patriarch's tax for the imperial treasuryHistoria Augusta (Zenobia suspected, retirement at Tibur): | Zosimus (no plotters named, death on the journey):267 · Palmyra's ruler and his heir were murdered in 267, and his widow Zenobia ruled for her own son; one Roman history says she was in on the plotThe Sanguozhi says Cao Cao had him killed for disobeying the summons: | The 14th-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms says Hua Tuo proposed opening Cao Cao's skull and Cao Cao suspected a murder plot: . The Song scholar Ye Mengde (1077 to 1148) called the Hua Tuo biographies mythological:208 · Cao Cao had his physician Hua Tuo put to death, and Hua Tuo burned his book of methods in prison when the jailer would not take itThe Historia Augusta says Julianus paid each soldier 30,000 sesterces, more than promised; its editor notes Herodian says he did not pay because the money was not available:193 · The Praetorian Guard sold the Roman Empire to Didius Julianus for 25,000 sesterces a soldier, and he lasted 66 daysSaldarini (Biblical Archaeology Review, 1998) dates the marriage to Judah to 128; Wikipedia, citing the Jewish Women's Archive, gives 125; the find is dated 1960 (Wikipedia) and 1961 (Center for Online Judaic Studies):132 · Babatha hid her lawsuits over her son's guardianship and her dead husband's orchards in a cave during the Bar Kokhba revoltThe Catholic Thing, summarising the New York Times, says the coffin was in Padua by 1177: | The Orthodox Church in America says the relics may have been moved from Constantinople during the Crusade of 1204:80 · Christian tradition says the body of Luke "the beloved physician" was moved from Thebes to Constantinople and Padua, and an emperor took the head to PragueTacitus says Nero refused the property in 62; Cassius Dio says Seneca had given him his entire property:65 · Seneca offered Nero his 300-million-sesterce fortune, was refused, and three years later was ordered to die and denied the tablets to write his willSuetonius presents Claudius as turning back to Britannicus when he sealed the will: | Tacitus says the will put the stepson ahead of the son:54 · Claudius's will was never read in public, and Nero poisoned Claudius's son Britannicus four months after taking the throneSuetonius gives the cloak as the reason ( 35.1); Cassius Dio gives his wealth ( 59.25).40 · Cleopatra's grandson Ptolemy inherited Mauretania from his father Juba, and Caligula summoned him to Rome and had him killedSuetonius's Galba says Galba never received even the reduced sum: | Suetonius's Caligula and Cassius Dio say Gaius paid Livia's legacies:29 · Livia left Galba 50 million sesterces in figures, and her son Tiberius read it as 500,000 and paid nothingSuetonius says Lentulus killed himself through fear of Tiberius: | Tacitus records his death without a cause and praises his fortune as innocently acquired:25 · Suetonius says Tiberius frightened a man worth 400 million sesterces into suicide to inherit, and Caligula sent poisoned sweets to men who named him heirThe hoard was hidden in 1989 on President Najibullah's order (Wikipedia) or in 1979 (NBC News); the count is about 20,600 (Wikipedia) or 22,000 (NBC News):1 · A nomad chief and five women were buried with 20,000 gold objects in Afghanistan; keyholders hid the hoard for 14 years, and in 2021 it went out of sight againJosephus says Julius Caesar sent her: | parthia.com places the gift in the 20 BC exchange with Augustus (Julius Caesar died in 44 BC):2 BCE · A slave woman sent from Rome persuaded the Parthian king to send his four sons to Rome, then her son killed him and married herDonatus places the death at Brundisium; late manuscripts of Servius place it at Taranto.19 BCE · Virgil asked for the Aeneid to be burned, and Augustus ordered it publishedPlutarch gives Ptolemy Philadelphus Phoenicia, Syria and Cilicia and does not name a grant to Selene ( ch. 54). Dio gives Ptolemy Syria and the land west of the Euphrates to the Hellespont, and gives Selene Cyrenaica ( 49.41). Dio says the two sons were spared as a favour to Juba ( 51.15.6); Wikipedia calls their fate unrecorded (30 BCE · Mark Antony gave Cleopatra's children kingdoms in 34 BC, and after 30 BC Octavian killed Caesarion and gave the others to his sister to raiseAppian places the killing at the temple of Artemis Leucophryne at Miletus ( 5.9); Josephus places it at the temple at Ephesus ( 15.4.1).41 BCE · Cleopatra's sister Arsinoe IV fought Caesar, walked in chains in his triumph and was killed at a temple on Antony's orders, and the skeleton said to be hers was a boy'sSuetonius says Piso had the will read in Antony's house and the gift was 300 sesterces; Plutarch says Antony demanded a public reading and gives the gift as 75 drachmas.44 BCE · Julius Caesar's will, opened after his murder, made Octavian his son and gave every Roman 300 sestercesSmith's Dictionary says the Senate accepted the will and made Pompey guardian ( Wikipedia says the Senate was occupied and Pompey alone approved it ( Smith dates Ptolemy XIII's drowning to late 48 BC or early 47 BC (same Smith URL).51 BCE · Ptolemy XII's will named Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII joint heirs under Roman protection, and the heirs went to warStrabo writes that "Ptolemy slew both Archelaüs and his own daughter" ( Wikipedia says Archelaus died in battle defending the kingdom (55 BCE · Berenice IV took her father's throne, had one husband strangled within days, and was executed when Rome restored her father for 10,000 talentsAppian says Nicomedes died childless: | Sallust's Mithridates says Nysa bore him a son: | Livius dates the will to 77 BC; the Appian translation's note dates it to 74 BC:74 BCE · Nicomedes IV left Bithynia to Rome, Mithridates said the queen had borne him a son, and Mithridates invadedThe Han History says she died of worry after a rebuke; the Shiji supplement says Wu sent her to her death to keep her from power:87 BCE · Emperor Wu chose his youngest son as heir and had the boy's mother put to death, according to a supplement to the ShijiLivius says Apion needed Roman help to establish his rule ( Smith's Dictionary says he succeeded "apparently without opposition" in 116 BC ( The stele's date is 155 or 154 BC; Grzybek (2017) places it in early spring 154 BC ( Livius gives March 155 BC.96 BCE · Ptolemy VIII willed Cyrene to Rome in 155 BC, and his son Ptolemy Apion's will handed it over in 96 BCBevan dates the flight to Cyprus to 132/131 BC ( Christopher Bennett dates it and the murder to 130 BC and notes that the son Justin says was killed (38.8.12) may not be Memphites (130 BCE · Ptolemy VIII married his sister Cleopatra II and then her daughter, and when his sister held Alexandria against him he sent her their son's head, hands and feetThe stele names Olympiodorus, not Heliodorus, as overseer of the temples; scholars suggest either unrest required Heliodorus himself, or the author of 2 Maccabees used the better-known name:175 BCE · Second Maccabees says a king's minister came to seize the widows' and orphans' deposits in the Jerusalem Temple; a stele pieced together in 2005 and 2006 names the minister and a royal order on temple fundsThe Shiji dates the indictment to Emperor Wen's fourth year (176 BC): | Anne Behnke Kinney (Columbia University Press) dates Tiying's petition to around 167 BC:176 BCE · The Shiji says a physician with five daughters and no son was sentenced to mutilation, and his youngest daughter's petition ended the punishmentBevan dates the announcement of the death to about the end of 203 BC and calls the will "the will, or supposed will" ( Ptolemy V's reign is usually counted from 204 BC (204 BCE · Courtiers hid Ptolemy IV's death, killed his queen, read out a will naming themselves regents, and the Alexandrian crowd killed them and their familyNapoleon.org dates the find to 19 July 1799 ( Budge dates it to August 1799 (204 BCE · French soldiers found the Rosetta Stone in 1799, General Menou claimed it as his own, and Britain took it under the 1801 surrenderThe Zhao Zheng shu, a Han bamboo manuscript bought by Peking University, says the dying emperor accepted Li Si's proposal to make Huhai heir. Xing Yitian of Academia Sinica (2025) argues it is a persuasive-anecdote text copied around Emperor Wu's reign that Sima Qian probably knew and rejected:210 BCE · The Shiji says the First Emperor's chancellor and his seal-keeper forged his last letter, and his eldest son killed himself on the forged orderJustin and Smith's Dictionary say two sons were killed ( Bevan writes of one murdered child (269 BCE · Arsinoe II married her half-brother Ptolemy Keraunos to protect her sons, he had two of them killed in her arms, and she then married her full brotherArrian's Greek "tōi kratistōi" means "to the strongest"; Livius notes it may also be heard as "to Craterus", one of his generals.323 BCE · Alexander the Great left his empire "to the strongest", and his general Ptolemy hijacked his bodyApollodorus says the will was forged and Phormio held the bank's money: | Phormio's speaker says the will was deposited with witnesses and Apollodorus received over 40 talents:370 BCE · The freed-slave banker Pasion willed his widow and his bank to his own freed slave Phormio; his son Apollodorus sued and was finedFrance 24 says the auction was in Hong Kong; Wikipedia says Sotheby's in London:480 BCE · The Pali canon says eight peoples demanded the Buddha's ashes; one share, found in 1898, was pulled from auction in 2025Behistun says Bardiya was killed before Cambyses went to Egypt; Herodotus says during the Egyptian campaign:522 BCE · Cambyses killed his brother Bardiya in secret; a man ruled Persia under the dead brother's name until Darius killed him and took the throneDaniel calls Belshazzar king and Nebuchadnezzar's son: . Cuneiform texts call him Nabonidus's son and crown prince:539 BCE · Babylon took the Temple vessels; Daniel says Belshazzar drank from them the night he was killed, and Ezra says Cyrus returned 5,400The Zuo zhuan blames Zhuang Ji's accusation and names no Tu'an Gu; the Shiji blames Tu'an Gu and adds the hidden orphan and the substitute baby:583 BCE · The Zuo zhuan and the Shiji give two accounts of how Jin destroyed the Zhao clan and gave its lands back to the one surviving boyThe ration tablets list five sons of the king of Judah; 1 Chronicles 3:17-18 names seven sons of Jehoiachin:687 BCE · The Bible says King Hezekiah showed Babylon's envoys his treasury, and Isaiah told him his heirs would lose it; Babylonian tablets record rations for a captive king of JudahDate of composition. Conti Rossini, Littmann and Cerulli: 1314 to 1322 (as quoted by Hubbard 1956, via Budge, 1922 preface: earliest form in the 6th century AD (950 BCE · The Kebra Nagast says Menelik I, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, took the Ark to Aksum and that only his male line may rule EthiopiaMaspero's research dates the find to about 1871; the 2003 identification of Ramesses I's mummy, bought around 1860, has been used to argue for 1860 (1000 BCE · The Abd el-Rassul brothers sold royal mummies from a hidden tomb for a decade, until the eldest confessed in 1881Punishment: impalement, "the punishment for violating a royal tomb" ( thieves held for Pharaoh to decide, sentence not recorded ( §541).1110 BCE · Eight thieves confessed to stripping the gold from the mummies of king Sobekemsaf and queen Nubkhas, and an inquiry under Ramesses IX recorded itNumber disinherited: three named children, Neferhotep, Henshene and Khanub ( four ( The daughter Menatnakhte appears on both the inheriting and the excluded lists ( Date of the will: about 1145 BC ( 1154 BCE (1144 BCE · Naunakhte of Deir el-Medina cut the children who did not support her out of her willThe Museo Egizio says the conspirators were "allowed" to take their own lives ( Wikipedia counts 28 executed and 10 suicides ( Reign end: c. 1157 BCE (Museo Egizio, same URL); the brief's c. 1155 BC is not confirmed by a source opened here.1157 BCE · Queen Tiye plotted to put her son Pentawere on the throne of Ramesses III, and a 2012 CT scan found the king's throat had been cutGardiner (1905) states "The verdict went in favour of Mes" while noting the verdict section is lost ( the Wikipedia summary of Gaballa (1977) says the result is not known but that he seems to have won ( Gardiner dates the qenbet hearing to "the year 18" with the query "Or 16th, or 17th?" and dates Khay's earlier case to year "14 + x" (1261 BCE · Mes sued to recover land granted to his ancestor Neshi under Ahmose I, after a court ruled against his mother on a false registerThe purchase is dated about 1860 ( the 1860s ( and 1861 for much of the collection ( World Archaeology says it was probably looted in 1871 and reached Niagara at the start of the 20th century (1291 BCE · A mummy sold in Luxor around 1860 spent over a century in a Niagara Falls curiosity museum before it was identified as Ramesses I and sent homeNicholas Reeves argues that traces of Tutankhamun's cartouches lie under Ay's in the burial scene and that it first showed Tutankhamun burying Nefertiti; The Past notes there is no conclusive evidence for his hidden-chamber theory (1319 BCE · Ay had himself painted burying Tutankhamun and took the throne, and Horemheb then erased Ay and dated his own reign from Amenhotep IIIThe JAMA authors name the father as most probably Akhenaten ( National Geographic's report says Smenkhkare cannot be ruled out ( and other scholars favour Smenkhkare (1323 BCE · DNA tests in 2010 found that Tutankhamun's parents were brother and sister, and that the two stillborn girls buried in his tomb were his daughtersWho murdered Zannanza: Ay is the prevailing suspect ( "long thought to be the work of General Horemheb, possibly with help from the vizier Ay" (1327 BCE · The Deeds of Suppiluliuma say a widowed Egyptian queen asked the Hittite king for a son to marry, and the prince Zannanza died on the wayThe 2010 study judged the KV55 man most probably Akhenaten ( Eugen Strouhal and Juan Belmonte dispute the age and identity and favour Smenkhkare ( Archaeology magazine reported in 2000 that Munich and Cairo were negotiating the gold's return; no source found states the outcome (1336 BCE · A king's coffin in tomb KV55 had its gold face hacked off and its names cut out, and the gold from its base turned up in a Munich museumThe New Arab quotes Simon as attaching a condition that the museums return the bust if Egypt asked† ( The foundation's president Hermann Parzinger said in March 2024 that no documents cast doubt on the legality of its presence in Berlin (1340 BCE · The Nefertiti bust left Egypt in 1913 listed as a plaster princess, and Berlin has kept it through a century of Egyptian demandsFrei et al. (2015) place her origin outside Denmark; Thomsen and Andreasen (2019) find her values local to Egtved:1370 BCE · The Egtved girl was buried at 16 to 18 with a child's cremated bones, and scientists still disagree on whether she came from Germany or from EgtvedSpeiser's reading (teraphim as title to the estate) and Greenberg's (no legal effect):1400 BCE · Genesis says Rachel stole her father's household gods as Jacob fled, and Jacob unknowingly swore death on the thiefThe Bible Gateway Encyclopedia of the Bible says whether the children were stoned depends on whether "them" in Joshua 7:25 includes them, and on whether they knew of the theft: | The Talmud (Sanhedrin 44) gives one view that they were complicit and Rav Huna's view that they were brought only to watch and learn:1400 BCE · The Book of Joshua says Achan hid silver and gold from Jericho in his tent, and Israel stoned him in the Valley of Achor with his sons and daughters presentEncyclopaedia Judaica: adoption was a device to evade a ban on selling land outside the family: | Speiser, 1936: a declaration conveying land "presupposes or implies a sale-adoption," whatever the "legal disguise":1450 BCE · Nuzi law kept land inside the family, so the landowner Tehip-tilla had himself adopted by seller after sellerYear of the mummy identification: 2007 ( 2006 (1458 BCE · Hatshepsut took the throne from her stepson Thutmose III, who had her statues smashed and her images erased two decades after her deathSturtevant and Bechtel (1935) date the text to about the middle of the 17th century BC; Wikipedia gives c. 1525-1500 BC:1500 BCE · After four reigns of Hittite princes killing each other, King Telipinu wrote the order of succession into law and spared the men who had plotted against himThe Petrie Museum record names three witnesses and the wife Sheftu, also called Teti: | A Hull & Hull law blog, citing Duhaime's Law Museum, dates the will to 1797 BC, names the wife Teta and counts two witnesses:1800 BCE · Around 1800 BC an Egyptian priest left everything to his wife and named a guardian for his son, in one of the oldest wills knownA stela from Abydos is read as dating Senusret's co-rule from about Year 20 of his father's reign ( Grimal, following Obsomer and Vandersleyen, holds that the coregency never existed (1962 BCE · Amenemhat I was attacked by his own guards after supper, and his son raced back from a war in Libya to take the throneWessex Archaeology: possibly father and son: | DNA, 2022: not first- or second-degree relatives:2300 BCE · A man from the Alps was buried near Stonehenge with Britain's oldest gold; the younger man beside him shared a rare foot bone, but DNA rules out father and sonReisner's theory has the officials deceive Khufu ( The Past's account holds that embalmers and priests stole the body and left the sarcophagus empty, as in other tombs (2580 BCE · The hidden tomb of Khufu's mother Hetepheres held her organs in a sealed chest, but her sealed sarcophagus was empty when it was opened in 1927Science (via HNN, 2009) reports the reward as 150,000 euros; the 2010 settlement report gives 175,000 euros:3300 BCE · Two hikers found Ötzi in 1991, a survey put him 92 metres inside Italy, and the finders fought South Tyrol in court until 2010 over the rewardSBS (March 2025) describes Kelly's case as a bid to halt the reburial of Mungo Man and Mungo Lady; The Spectator (March 2025) and Wikipedia say they were buried in 2022: | | . Mungo Lady's return is dated 1992 by SBS and 1991 by Smithsonian.40000 BCE · Mungo Man and Mungo Lady, Australia's oldest known people, came home after decades in Canberra, and their reburial split the three nations who own them
Fame
Hollywood and TV92
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Literature and art180
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Modern estates21
2015 to 202614Money and business
Business dynasties64
Science and medicine53
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Foundations33
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Jailed and executed34
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Land and wealth transfer23Family fights and the law
Secret heirs61Divorce and feuds54
Probate and trust law38
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Lasting legacies22
Ghosts and legends50
Explorers27The people
Stars, moguls, rulers and their heirs from 3000 BCE to 2026, by era and by field. Each portrait opens the case.
Every case by fameCases by religionCases by membershipBest-known in each era
Eras
Now2000 to 2026463Postwar1945 to 2000485
World wars1914 to 1945150
Industry and empire1800 to 1914249Empires and conquest1500 to 1800185
Medieval500 to 1500197
Ancient worldto 500199The human dramas behind estate law
Secret children and false heirsWho counts as a child and an heir110
Cut out of the willForced heirship and the spouse's share51
New wives, nurses and girlfriendsUndue influence and capacity61
Forged and faked willsProving that a will is real37
Died without a willIntestacy: the state writes the will60
Brothers and sisters in courtExecutors' and trustees' duties108
Conditions from the graveConditions and the rule against perpetuities40
Bodies, bones and burialsWho controls the remains316
Burned papers and destroyed workLiterary executors and copyright109
Murder and sudden deathThe slayer rule and simultaneous death328
Crowns and successionSuccession, primogeniture and regency361
Seized by the stateEstate tax, confiscation and restitution239
Fortunes from conquest and slaveryTitle to taken wealth79
Given awayCharitable trusts and family foundations120