A Portuguese aristocrat's bequest of his fortune to 70 total strangers!!!

He could have left it all to a charity, any charity - perhaps one that cares for cats as Jonathan Jackson of Columbus, Ohio, envisaged when he drew up his own will in the late 19th Century?

Mr Jackson left money for the creation of a "cat house", according to The People's Almanac, where cats had sleeping quarters, a dining hall, an exercise area, specially designed roofs for easy climbing, a conversation room and - why not? - an auditorium where they could listen to the accordion.

Instead, Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara opted for setting a cat among the pigeons: 70 people listed in a Lisbon phone directory were contacted out of the blue after his death to be told he had made them his beneficiaries.

They had been chosen at random from the directory, in front of two witnesses at a registry office 13 years before...read more for remainder
It certainly came as a shock to them, a top Portuguese lawyer told the BBC News website.

In the first place, people do not, as a rule, make wills in Portugal. In the second, Portuguese aristocrats are getting thin on the ground, let alone eccentric ones. In the third - to be chosen by phone directory? No wonder that some feared they were being scammed.

"Every day you hear of pranks people play on old people," 76-year-old heiress Helena told Portuguese weekly newspaper Sol.

Not that there is anything new about odd last wills and testaments.

Beverly Hills socialite Sandra West, 37, left most of her $3m fortune to her brother; her wish to be buried reclining in her baby-blue Ferrari and dressed in her favourite lace nightgown was granted after her death in 1977
McNair Ilgrenfritz, a wealthy American music-lover and composer, left $125,000 to be claimed by a major opera house should it agree to stage one of his self-penned operas; the New York Metropolitan Opera declined the request though it described his Phedre and Le Passant as competent
Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson tried to leave his birthday to a friend who complained of being born on Christmas Day; he asked that Annie H Ide treat his birthday (13 November) with "moderation and humanity... the said birthday not being so young as it once was"
The Portuguese legacy appears genuine enough - it is just that Luis Carlos had arranged his own departure to be a departure from the norm.

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