Have there been instances where armoured cars have expelled their contents with the result being a money free-for-all?
If so, how did they go about getting all the money back?
Here is one instance.
It happened once in Northern Louisiana where I am from although that was a while ago so I am not sure if I can find a cite. The doors on the vehicle went closed correctly an a bag or two of money fell out spraying I-20 with money. Some people quickly stopped and grabbed money but not as many as you might think. Some later returned it as well. This was back in the 80’s.
Not from an armored car, but from an open window, very high up. It happened in NYC, possibly on Wall Street, a number of years ago. This is from my vague memory, wish i had a cite.
There was also a case a few years ago, here in Cleveland. Some money fell out of the back of an armored car, and a guy just picked it up from the street and left. There was a lot of publicity, and he finally turned it in, the next day.
Sounds like something that happened to Henry Sugar.
There have allegedly been occasions in which small denomination coins have rained from the sky, with no apparent source.
Needless to say, this is what is referred to as a Fortean phenomena by the oggy-boogy crowd.
My dad was witness to one such event - he was walking through the middle of town and a large number of quite small foreign coins started falling to the ground all along the street - he picked a few up, as did everybody else - it was a clear blue sky and there was no apparent origin for the coins. However, this was in the middle of Southampton precinct, which is lined with buildings of two stories or more - I think it was probably a student prank - a group of people could have thrown the coins from the roofs of the buildings, then ducked well back out of sight before anyone had cause to look up.
Didn’t the Germans drop fake pound notes over Britain during WWII?
This is even worse than an anecdote because it’s an anecdote dug up from something I was told in my childhood, and I might be misremembering:
Wasn’t there something along the lines of Walt Disney once standing on a New York City sidewalk offering free five dollar bills to anybody who wanted one? The thrust of the story was that there was no catch, but folks thought there was, and few people took the money.
The Nazis did indeed counterfeit pound notes. In fact, they used skilled Jewish concentration camp prisoners to produce it. IIRC, the money was not dropped, but spent by the Nazis to fund the war machine. They may have begun dropping it towards the end of the war in an attempt to destabilize the British economy, but I’ve never heard of such an episode.
I saw a brief documentary about the counterfeiting effort, but would love to hear more about it.
I can believe that as well. Most people are skeptical of strangers offering something of value for “free” especially paper money. There must be some catch. I react that way to virtually all advertisements that try to present something as free.
However, I am sure that my memory is 100% accurate at the detail I describe it at but I don’t think it is citable on the web or anywhere else that I can readily make available because it happened when I was in high school in the late 1980’s. Some people did take the money but most either didn’t bother or returned it later. We have some other Dopers from the same general area so maybe somebody else remembers what I am talking about. It wasn’t a huge deal and was just in the news for a day or so.
Reminded me of this
Not only does it not rain money, but despite what you see in Uncle Scrooge comics, you can’t dive into and swim in a pool full of money, either. You’re thinking of water, folks. If you find it hard to tell the difference between the two, how about I give you change for a twenty?
In 1971 I was a teenager when the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series, beating the Orioles 4 games to 3. My dad took us downtown for the celebration. People in an office building dropped confetti, mostly paper, but put paper money interspersed. My dad realized there would be trouble, and got us out of the area quickly. Lots of elbowing/etc.
There was a book published a year ago, Krueger’s Men: The Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19 by Lawrence Malkin.
And there was a UK miniseries, Private Schulz, which I think I saw on PBS.
I also found a new movie, Die Falscher, which got good reviews at a German film festival but will apparently only have limited release in the US.