In 1978, two men stole the corpse of Charlie Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva, near Lausanne, Switzerland. Immediately after the body snatching, Chaplin's widow, Oona, received a ransom demand of some $600,000, which she refused to pay, saying that her husband would have thought the demand “ridiculous.” The callers then made threats against her two youngest children. After a five-week investigation, police arrested two auto mechanics—Roman Wardas, of Poland, and Gantscho Ganev, of Bulgaria. Busted, the criminals led police to Chaplin's body, which they had buried in a cornfield about one mile from his family's home in Corsier.In December 1978, Wardas and Ganev were convicted of grave robbing and attempted extortion. Wardas and Ganev apparently stole Chaplin's body in an attempt to solve their financial difficulties. Wardas, identified as the mastermind of the plot, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years of hard labor. Ganev was given an 18-month suspended sentence, as he was believed to have limited responsibility for the crime. As for Chaplin, his family reburied his body in a concrete grave, where he remains, in peace, to this day.
Did Elvis Presley's family stage a plot to snatch the King's body after he died in 1977? An FBI informant says yes, and was also allegedly involved in the scheme. The goal was to persuade Memphis officials to move Elvis from the public cemetery to Graceland, which is now a $15 million-a-year tourist attraction. The late Vernon Presley, Elvis' father and executor of his estate at the time, wanted his son buried on the mansion grounds, but it was in an area not zoned for burials. Three weeks after Elvis died of a heart attack, Vernon had lawyers for the Presley estate petition the Memphis and Shelby County Board of Adjustment for a zoning variance. They cited what they called an attempted theft of Presley's body several days earlier and the expense of round-the-clock security.Obviously, the grave robbery was a hoax, but nonetheless, three men were arrested on August 29, 1977, near the Forest Hill Cemetery mausoleum where Elvis was entombed in a 900-pound copper coffin. One of them was Ronnie Tyler, who later became an FBI informant.Tyler “had been in cahoots with a crooked deputy sheriff, who swooped down and ‘captured' the thieves,” said Ivian C. Smith, former head of the FBI's Arkansas office.On September 28, 1977, the board OK'd Presley's request to move his son's body to Graceland. The singer was reburied there on October 2. More than 600,000 people, at about $77 a head, visit Graceland and Elvis' gravesite each year.
After the lovable and iconic comedian Groucho Marx died in 1977, his remains were placed at Eden Memorial Park in Mission Hills, California. In May 1982, his ashes were stolen from a sealed crypt and were found later that day at the gates of Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Burbank, about 12 miles away. The kidnapper — or, in this case, ash-napper — has never been caught, but questions remain. Why were Marx's ashes stolen and who was the culprit? An obsessed fan looking for the ultimate souvenir? A ghoulish opportunist planning to make a ransom demand, then changing his mind? Or simply someone who thought the comedian should be buried at a more high-profile location closer to Hollywood?Rumor has it (though we don't know for sure), an employee of the cemetery, angry that he was fired, pried the cover off Groucho's niche and stole his urn. He brought it to Burbank in part because Groucho had once said, “I would never be caught dead in Burbank.” Whatever the reason, management at the cemetery responded to the incident by moving Marx's remains to a more remote location in a room inside the mausoleum, and installing security monitoring devices throughout. They have since been reluctant to give out the exact location of any of their more famous residents.
In 1976, former Argentinian president Juan Perón's coffin was placed in the Perón family tomb in Chacarita Cemetery, located in the Chacarita ward of the city of Buenos Aires. Thirteen years later, the Peronist Justicialist Party received an anonymous letter claiming Perón's hands had been removed from his tomb along with his army cap and sword. The letter demanded the party pay an $8 million (U.S.) ransom for their return. Authorities checked Perón's tomb, to find that it had indeed been broken into, and the hands and other items had been removed, including a poem written to him by his last wife, Isabel. Vicente Saadi, the head of the Justicialist Party, refused to pay the ransom. After a criminal investigation, six men were arrested, and five arraigned. However, no one was ever charged in relation to the incident, and the hands were never recovered. There is evidence that the theft had some official support, as the robbers used a key to access the tomb. Many involved in the criminal investigation have since died under mysterious circumstances.
In 1876, Abraham Lincoln's body lay within an aboveground white marble sarcophagus in a handsome tomb on the grounds of Springfield, Illinois' Oak Ridge Cemetery.The only thing standing between the body and any would-be grave robbers was a single padlock on the tomb's chamber door. His sarcophagus wasn't at all burglarproof: Its lid was sealed, not with cement, but with the less permanent plaster of Paris. There was no groundskeeper, no security. After all, who would want to steal Lincoln's body? Enter a gang of Irish counterfeiters from Chicago led by a small-time crime boss named Big Jim Kennally. Early in 1876, Kennally's best engraver of counterfeit plates, Benjamin Boyd, had been sentenced to 10 years in the state penitentiary in Joliet. To pressure the governor to release his man, Kennally recruited two members of his gang, Terence Mullen, a saloonkeeper, and Jack Hughes, a sometimes manufacturer of counterfeit nickels, to kidnap Lincoln's body. For ransom, they would demand $200,000 in cash and a full pardon for Boyd.With the lack of security, the gang should have had an easy time of acquiring the body, but neither Mullen or Hughes had any body-snatching experience. So, they invited a man named Lewis Swegles, who they thought was a grave robber, to help them. They couldn't have made a worse choice because Swegles was a paid informant—a "roper"—of the Secret Service.Swegles reported every detail of the plot to his boss, Patrick D. Tyrrell, chief of the Chicago district office of the Secret Service. On the night he accompanied Mullen and Hughes to Oak Ridge Cemetery, Tyrrell and his agents were lying in wait for them at Lincoln's tomb. Despite being career criminals, they didn't know how to pick a lock, so they cut through the padlock with a file. Once inside the chamber, they found they could not lift Lincoln's 500-pound cedar-and-lead coffin. The men were considering their options when a detective's pistol accidentally went off outside. Mullen and Hughes bolted, but it wasn't much of a getaway—they headed straight back to their saloon in Chicago where Tyrrell arrested them a couple days later.
Buried deep in the Indonesian jungle is a very odd structure, shaped like a giant chicken. The long-abandoned building, known as Gereja Ayam (Chicken Church), is a popular tourist attraction in the hills of Magelang, Central Java.Rumor has it this strange building was designed to be a church, but according to its creator, it is neither a chicken nor a church. Daniel Alamsjah, 67, revealed that he was working in Jakarta when he suddenly received a divine message from God to build a prayer room in the form of a dove. Within six months, locals offered him 3,000 square meters of land on Rhema Hill for two million rupiah ($170). He paid off the amount over four years and started constructing his dream project in 1994. The place is now open to visitors of all religions. Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians travel there to use it for worship.According to Daniel, the building was once used as a rehabilitation house for disabled children, drug addicts, and the mentally challenged. Most of the interiors were incomplete, however, and the house had to shut its doors in 2000 due to insufficient funds. Regardless, people continue to visit the site and admire its beauty. The serene location and the mystery surrounding the building also make it a great place for unique weddings.
It looks like a backdrop for Jack Sparrow to sail toward, but this pirate island was actually built by an eccentric millionaire on his English country estate. Situated in the middle of a lake, it includes a working pub named The Black Doubloon, a boat dock, a waterfall and a beach. Coffer Cabin even contains a specially designed pirate bed.The owner has not been named, but he is under 40 and is said to have been inspired by “his love of all things pirate." He commissioned the construction of Challis Island on his 60-acre Cambridgeshire estate in 2011 and was said to be “over the moon” with the result. He apparently bought himself a pirate costume and is preparing to live like his idols in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (the films in which Johnny Depp plays Sparrow.)The island, built three feet above the lake from scratch, also includes landscaping features such as a beach, stream, a lagoon and a waterfall. It was built by The Master Wishmakers, who specialize in making wealthy clients' dreams come true without using "plastic imitation theme park trickery."
In 2005, a millionaire built an amazing aquarium fence around his luxury Villa in Turkey. The giant fish tank contains hundreds of fish and has become a huge tourist attraction.
A decade ago, Mehmet Ali Gökçeoğlu replaced the metal fence at the front of his property with a 50 meter-long aquarium filled with hundreds of fish and octopuses. Located just a few feet away from the shores of the Aegean Sea, Mehmet Ali Gökçeoğlu's property has become one of the most popular tourist spots in Çeşme. It attracts up to a thousand visitors a day, according to its owner. The villa itself is pretty impressive, but it's not what draws so many people to this place. They come to see the aqua-fence.
Building the transparent structure was the easy part of the project. The hard part was linking the aqua-fence to the Aegean through a 400 meter-long buried pipeline, so the water could be changed continuously to keep the aquarium looking clean and its inhabitants happy. Gökçeoğlu hired a team of private divers to perform the task and ended up paying approximately 40,000 Turkish Lira ($21,000) to fulfill his dream. The businessman says seeing people line up outside his house staring at his creation makes it all worthwhile.
To make sure no one comes close enough to damage his fragile fence or steal some fish, the owner set up a surveillance network of 17 cameras with facial recognition. Visitors can look, take photos and record videos, but getting too close will probably set off some kind of alarm.
State-of-the-art offices for Chinese game developer NetDragon Websoft are shaped like Star Trek's USS Enterprise. The company's founder, Liu Dejian, spent around 600 million yuan ($150 million) constructing the 260-meter sci-fi building.
The company made sure they had the proper permission to build in the likeness of the starship by contacting the TV show's rights holder, CBS.
Work began in 2010. The building is specifically inspired by the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E, which appeared in all three Star Trek movies in the late 1990s and 2000s. It is located in the city of Changle in China's Fujian province and was finished in October 2014.
The building features 30-foot metal slides between levels and automatic sliding gates. Inside the giant spaceship is a life-sized Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton replica, modeled after a specimen discovered in South Dakota in 1987.
Dejian, 43, is China's 320th richest person, and according to Forbes, his family is worth a reputed $600 million.
He hit the headlines when he drove his cement mixer, emblazoned with the words "Toxic Bank Anglo," into the gates of the Irish parliament. Two months later, self-styled Anglo Avenger Joe McNamara was back in Dublin city Centre, this time staging a protest from atop a cherry picker.
McNamara is known in Ireland for a series of protests against the Anglo-Irish Bank and the government's handling of the Irish financial crisis. But in 2011, the 42-year-old developer pulled his biggest protest yet. He built his version of Stonehenge on an Achill Island hilltop off the Mayo coast. The 15-foot high circle is 30 meters in diameter and almost 100 meters in circumference, with 39 standing stones and lintels. It took six months to plan and was built during a single weekend.
What it does not have, however, is planning permission. The Mayo County Council requested a court order to force McNamara to remove the edifice as it had been built without the required paperwork. McNamara claimed that the structure was exempt from planning rules because it was an "ornamental garden." It is still standing to this day.
