1Roy Collette and Larry Kunkel
For 25 years, two brothers (Roy Collette and Larry Kunkel) re-gifted each other the same pair of pants, in increasingly inventive and difficult packaging, including a 600lb safe, a double-glazed window, a 16-foot rocket ship, and a crushed car, with a card that read "Merry Christmas, the pants are in the glove box."
2. In 1854, American naval officer Matthew C. Perry gifted 110 gallons of American Whiskey to the Japanese emperor. That gift has since evolved into a $6 billion industry, with Japan's Suntory distillery winning 2015's World Whisky of the Year. Today, Suntory owns Jim Beam.
3. In 1926, President Coolidge and his wife were gifted a raccoon as a Thanksgiving dinner gift. They did not want to eat her, so they named her Rebecca and kept her as a pet. She had free range of The White House and would go on trips with the couple.
4. When Samuel Adams received a female slave as a wedding gift, he insisted that "a slave can not live in my house; if she comes she must be free." He was able to free her after years of writing emancipation papers and treated her as an equal family member throughout that time.
5. Before his death, author Robert Louis Stevenson gifted his friend's daughter his own birthday. The daughter had been born on Christmas and complained she felt like she had no real birthday.
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6Elephant Statue
In 1998, United Nations was gifted 11-foot bronze statue of an elephant by the governments of Kenya, Namibia, and Nepal, but UN decided to hide it because the statue has an erect penis.
7. Henry III received a polar bear as a gift from King Haakon of Norway in 1252. The bear lived at the Tower of London and was given a long leash so it could swim in the river Thames and catch fish.
8. Queen Mary of England was gifted a 1:12 scale dollhouse in 1924. It had working lights, books that were specially written by writers for the library, bottles filled with the appropriate drinks in the wine cellar, and model cars made by Rolls Royce. Even the toilets had working plumbing.
9. The gavel used by the UN President is called "Thor's gavel" as it was gifted to the UN by Iceland's first permanent UN representative Thor Thors.
10. There was a tradition in Norway, Denmark, and the Faroe Islands where a girl would knit a "willy warmer" (also known as cock sock) to their boyfriends to see how seriously he took their relationship. If the gift was rejected, it was seen as evidence that he was not ready for marriage.
11Carnegie & Rockefeller Gifts
Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, two extremely wealthy entrepreneurs, sent each other gag Christmas gifts. Rockefeller sent Carnegie a cardboard vest to make fun of his poor childhood. In return, Carnegie sent a fine whiskey to Rockefeller, a devout Baptist who had given up drinking.
12. Abram Petrovich Gannibal was an African child who was kidnapped, taken to Russia and was presented as a gift for Peter the Great. The Tsar freed him and raised him as his godson. Gannibal became a Major-General and the Governor of Reval. He is the great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, considered the greatest Russian poet.
13. When Richard the Lionheart got married, he was busy with the Crusades, so his bride came to Cyprus for the wedding. Richard then deposed the ruler of Cyprus, claiming the island for England. Richard wrapped the ruler in gold and silver chains and presented him to the new queen as a wedding gift.
14. An English submarine named HMS Trident on a combat patrol in World War 2 accepted a Russian reindeer as a gift. The reindeer spent six weeks at sea, slept under the captain's bed, and got fat off of condensed milk. It then spent the rest of its life in an English zoo.
15. In 2002, Hayao Nakayama, Sega’s president gifted all $695 million of his own company stock to save Sega from going bankrupt due to the Dreamcast. He died shortly afterwards following an arduous battle with cancer.
16Saturn
A Mississippi-born alligator named Saturn was gifted to the Berlin Zoo in 1936. It escaped during the allied bombing in 1943. British soldiers found Saturn 3 years later and gifted him to the Soviet Union. He died at Moscow Zoo on May 22, 2020 at the age of 83.
17. While on a hunting trip, guitarist Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains forgot that November only had 30 days, missing a scheduled performance on December 1st. The next day, he received a calendar as a gift from Columbia records.
18. The day Jimi Hendrix died, Eric Clapton had bought a left-handed Fender Stratocaster as a gift for him. He intended on presenting it during a Sly Stone concert at the Lyceum that night, but Hendrix never showed up. The next day, Clapton learned why.
19. China owns all of the pandas in the world and rents them out to other countries for $1 million a year. The only exception to this is the 2 pandas that China gifted to Mexico in the '70s but with the agreement that if they had offspring China would own them.
20. There are only 4 authentic Thai pavilions built outside of Thailand, one being in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a gift to the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the Thai government for the large Thai student population. The pavilion does not contain any screws or nails of any kind.
21Mickey Mouse Watch
Emperor Hirohito of Japan was a huge fan of Mickey Mouse. He was given a Mickey Mouse watch as a gift during his special tour of Disneyland in 1975. For years, even on formal occasions, His Majesty was observed wearing the watch.
22. In 2000, 16-year-old Henry Cavill was an aspiring actor who had a chance encounter with Russell Crowe. Crowe sent him a gift box with a note saying "Dear Henry, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Russell." 13 years later, they starred together in “Man of Steel.”
23. Chinese Emperor Qianlong was in love with an Uyghur woman named Iparhan who naturally produced a fine fragrance from her skin. She was given as a gift to the Emperor and carefully escorted all the way to the imperial palace in Beijing, washing every day in camel's milk to preserve her mysterious fragrance.
24. Every Christmas since 1952 the US Air Force has airdropped gifts over the islands of Micronesia, making it the oldest ongoing Department of Defense mission and the longest-running humanitarian airlift in the world.
25. A struggling young Harper Lee once received one year's wages as a gift from a friend with the note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." She used her time off to write "To Kill a Mockingbird."
