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A Man Throws Millions Of Dollars In Bitcoin Straight In The Trash
Like a lot of people who will never, ever shut up about it, James Howells decided to mine some Bitcoin one day. The difference is that Howells did it in early 2009, when one Bitcoin equaled about $0, and thousands of them equaled ... $0. Howells mined 7,500 BTC before moving on to other time-wasting activities of the era, like browsing cat memes or using Facebook (ask your grandpa what that is).
At some point, Howells spilled a drink on his laptop and sold the working parts on eBay, keeping the hard drive in a drawer in case all those Bitcoins were ever worth some real money (like, enough to buy a new laptop, for instance). In 2013, Howell read about a guy in Norway who put a few bucks into Bitcoin back in 2009 and was now a millionaire. That's when he remembered the hard drive with the 7,500 BTC ... and realized that 1) he'd recently thrown it away while cleaning up his home, and 2) he was a dope.
BBCAt least they didn't put his name in the headli- dammit.
As of this writing, those 7,500 BTC are worth $73 million (editor's note: $62 million) (editor's note 2: wait, no, $68 million), and it's impossible to access them without the private keys on that hard drive. The good news is that Howells knows exactly where the drive is: in a landfill where old electronic equipment gets buried, in accordance with environmental regulations. The bad news is that the city won't allow him to look for it, because digging through 50,000 tons of broken phones and stuff is apparently kind of dangerous. So let's pour one out for Mr. Howells and his lost fortune (as far away from any computers as possible).
5
A Gender Reveal Party Causes An $8 Million Fire
Gender reveal parties are shaping up to be a greater threat to mankind than climate change or nuclear weapons. Case in point: In 2017, Border Patrol agent Dennis Dickey wanted his upcoming kid's genital configuration to be revealed with a bang, so he filled a target with an explosive substance called Tannerite (which is sold in colors like pink or blue for these very occasions). Dickey gathered his family in an Arizona field, shot his rifle at the target, and the baby's gender turned out to be ... fire?
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