Despite never having even visited the United States, Englishman James Smithson left his personal fortune to the US Government for the creation of a museum -- what we now know as The Smithsonian.
Government being what it is (and was), the Government promptly lost all the money.
It seems Secretary of the Treasury Levi Woodbury decided to invest all of Smithson's gold in high-return (6 percent) bonds being offered by two new states, one-year-old Michigan and two-year-old Arkansas. Both states quickly defaulted and 100 percent of the money was gone.
To the great credit of John Quincy Adams, Congress was forced to fund the full replacement of the money lost by Woodbury's bad investments.
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