Pop Quiz: 5 fun (yes, fun) life insurance facts

1) Astronaut Insurance
Not surprisingly, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and the other Apollo Astronauts had a pretty tough time finding an insurance company that would write them a life insurance policy. So they took matters into their own hands by doing what?
- A) Insisting that NASA create a “Failure Fund” that would pay an annual sum to the family of any astronaut who perished in the line of duty.
- B) Leaving behind plenty of autographs, which they assumed would skyrocket in value if they never made it home from the moon, so their families could have some financial protection.
- C) Painting a series of self-portraits which would be sold at auction by Southeby’s in the event they were no longer around to earn a paycheck for their families.
- D) Boosting their savings by taking on part-time jobs as skywriters over the skies of Miami, where they famously misspelled Norwegian King Olav V’s name during his 1968 state visit.
2) Extreme Coverage
The largest life insurance policy ever written was issued to whom?
- A) David Geffen, producer, music mogul and film executive, who held a life insurance policy with a $100 million coverage amount.
- B) J.K. Rowling, who insured her life for the staggering sum of $126 million.
- C) Al Capone, who, at the time of his death in 1947, held an insurance policy with $3 million in coverage. In todays dollars, that would be the equivalent of $32,469,000.
- D) An anonymous billionaire in the technology industry, who set up a policy worth $201 million in 2014.
3) A Peculiar Policy
A man named Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral da Camara started quite a commotion when he died in Lisbon, Portugal because his life insurance policy stipulated what?
- A) That his policy would be paid to 70 people who Cabral da Camara had chosen at random from the pages of a Lisbon phone book.
- B) That the proceeds of his life insurance policy be placed into an irrevocable trust used to establish and fund the country’s first and only Soup, Stew and Chowder Museum.
- C) That he, himself, be listed as the policy’s sole beneficiary and all payments from the policy be placed in the form of cash in a briefcase which was handcuffed to his wrist and buried with him.
- D) That his wife and two adult children use the money they received from the policy to pay for plastic surgery that would “make them look less like a trio of dyspeptic ferrets.”
4) Pampered Pets
While it’s not as simple as naming your pet a beneficiary of your policy, it is possible to set your pet up as a beneficiary using a living trust established for the pet’s care. And some people seem to be dead-set on leaving their furry or feathered friends a small fortune. So which of these pampered pet stories is actually true?
- A) Famed businessman Howard Hughes bequeathed $800,000 to “Nibbles,” his pet parakeet.
- B) Egyptian monarch Cleopatra instructed that upon her death, “Arrow,” her pet leopard was to receive 324 debens of gold. That’s equal to about 65 pounds!
- C) Hotel magnate Leona Helmsley, left her dog, a Maltese named “Trouble,” $12 million in her will.
- D) Movie star Charlie Chaplin stipulated that one-quarter of his entire fortune be divided equally between “Augustus” and “Julius,” his two Siamese cats.
5) Old Roots
The concept of life insurance goes way back. But just how far, exactly?
- a) 1703 AD, when author Daniel Defoe, while imprisoned for publishing his satire “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters” penned a three-page pamphlet called “Insuring the Life of the Common Man Against Sundry Forms of Demise.”
- b) 610 AD, when Heraclius, shortly after assuming the throne of the Byzantine Empire, mandated that all “citizens of free birth” must pay into a fund that benefits the families of soldiers killed in battle.
- c) 1643 AD, when Spaniard Giacomo Fernando de Vaquez invented a form of life insurance known as “Dinero Perdido del Marinero” (“Lost Sailor Money”) during the Golden Age of Exploration.
- d) 600 BC, when the Greeks and Romans came up with the idea of “Benevolent Societies.” These member organizations would collect a fee in exchange for the promise that they would care for the family of any member who died.
Phone
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Pop Quiz: 5 fun (yes, fun) life insurance facts

Life insurance doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, it can be downright amusing! See if you can separate the truth from fiction with these five questions about strange-but-true life insurance facts.