Karl Smallwood with Today I Found It, reports:

In 2005 a homeless man called Ted Rodrigue stumbled upon a briefcase filled with crisp $20 and $50 bills totaling $100,000 (about $123,000 today). Ted was then told by screenwriter Wayne Powers that the money was his to keep and do with as he wished, so long as he would allow a film crew to document the result. Rodrigue, understandably, jumped at the opportunity, leading to a somewhat controversial documentary- Reversal of Fortune.

According to an interview with Powers, the genesis of the documentary stemmed from his time in LA where he was frequently asked for money by the homeless, prompting him to ponder, “What would a homeless person do if I gave them a million dollars?” Powers was curious if such a substantial amount of money could change a person’s life for the better or if it’d simply make it worse. He took this idea to an executive …  executives loved the idea, but weren’t exactly thrilled at the idea of paying out a million dollars, eventually talking Powers down to $100,000.

... With funding in hand, all Powers needed was a homeless person to give the money to. According to him, he picked Ted after filming several conversations with him and coming to the conclusion that Ted was a man who’d been dealt a bad hand and deserved a break for once.

Mostly homeless for about two decades when filming began, the then 45-year-old Rodrigue survived by collecting cans and bottles. On an average day, he noted he could make about $20 or so doing this- enough to buy himself food, alcohol, and cigarettes. On a good day, he could sometimes earn as much as $35.

... the filmmakers didn’t interfere with Ted’s life or his spending in anyway, merely observing and documenting his day-to-day life. They did, however, give Ted access to a financial advisor whose advice he was free to solicit or ignore as he chose.

So what was the result?

Soon after finding the money, news of Ted’s wealth spread to his associates in the homeless community who came to him asking for help. Being a generally nice guy, Ted kindly obliged, paying off many of his “friends” debts and providing for them financially. Around this time, Ted also met a woman who magically became attracted to him the moment she found out he’d acquired $100,000.

... About a year later, Ted appeared on Oprah in an episode entitled “Are You Ready for a Windfall?” 

... It was on this episode that Ted sheepishly revealed that he’d spent or given away all $100,000 within 6-8 months of receiving it, and that he was, once again, homeless.

Powers concluded:

So to answer the question of what happens when you give a more or less drug-free, reasonably psychologically sound homeless person $100,000… pretty much the exact same thing that often happens when you suddenly give a non-homeless person a relative fortune compared to what they’re used to- as with many big ticket lotto winners, they often end up worse off or in the same state as before they got the cash, perhaps with a little depression added in for good measure, something of a Flowers for Algernon effect.

At the Federal Reserve Bank in NYC, five stories below ground, 50 feet below sea level, and locked behind a 90 ton steel door, lies a maze of 122 vaults containing a stockpile of gold from the various nations of the world, deposited there for safekeeping. The weight of the vault and the gold inside is greater than the limits of almost any other foundation. A single compartment can house some 100,000 bricks of gold, each weighing approximately 30 lbs and valued in six figures each. As of October 2001, it held the largest gold repository in the world with approximately 7,700 short tons of gold bullion, more than Fort Knox.

According to the Federal Reserve Website:

The vault is able to support this weight because it rests on the bedrock of Manhattan Island ... Gold bars are transported by elevator from street level to the vault’s basement location. Once inside the vault the bars become the responsibility of a control group consisting of three representatives: two members of the New York Fed gold vault staff and one member from the New York Fed internal audit staff. These three individuals must be present whenever gold is moved or a compartment is opened in the vault—even to change a light bulb ...

Each compartment is secured by a padlock, two combination locks and an auditor’s seal. Compartments are numbered rather than named to maintain the confidentiality of the account holders.

A Union City, California, family is full of gratitude this Thanksgiving season as a family treasure was retrieved from the bowels (pardon the pun!) of the Union Sanitation District's sewer lines.

The HUFFINGTON POST reports, "Workers recovered an heirloom from the sewer more than six weeks after the family's toddler flushed it down the toilet."

The heirloom--a valuable diamond and sapphire ring--was dearly cherished by the Tapal where it had been passed down from generation to generation. It seems, however, that the family's 3 year old son didn't quite appreciate its value as he dropped it into the toilet and proceeded to flush it down.

A search for the ring conducted by a plumber turned up nothing, so they called the USD as a last-ditch effort. That's when workers Johnny Powell and Victor Vasut, fathers themselves, stepped up to help.

Crews flushed sewer lines in the Tapal's neighborhood multiple times in search of the ring, and were about to admit defeat when they finally found it on Nov. 14. Per a USD media release, the family treasure had traveled more than a third of a mile from the Tapal's house, tumbling around corners and nearly falling into a larger sewer line where recovery would have been all but impossible.

"It's rare to find something like this. It's like a needle in a haystack," Collections Supervisor Shawn Nesgis told USD.

After what we assume was a very thorough cleaning, the ring is now back where it belongs.