Five Insane Things Bought for A Dollar

5 Insulin

In 1921, Sir Fredrick G. Banting and a handful of other scientists changed the world when they successfully isolated insulin from a dog pancreas in a University of Toronto lab. Banting himself thought it unethical to even put his name on the patent, and his cohorts who did patent it sold their miracle concoction to the university for a single Loonie. Thanks to their foresight and sacrifice, countless people have been able to receive the life-saving drug, for free, in perpetuity. 

…Is what I would write if three pharmaceutical companies didn’t use scientific semantics to extort sick people around the world. Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, the gatekeepers of insulin, employ a tactic called “evergreening” — every few years, they’ll make a truly insignificant change to the molecular makeup of the drug, or even the container it’s stored in, and patent it as a whole new invention. That would be like Walt Disney giving Mickey Mouse a new penis every few decades and copyrighting him as a new guy.

4 Stephen King

The horror mogul decided one day that, since he could already afford all the cocaine on the planet, he wanted to “give back a little of the joy the movies had given me.” Since the late ‘70s, he’s allowed film students and other newbie filmmakers to adapt any of his books into film or stage productions, for a single dollar. Ever the wordsmith, King came up with a perfect, not-at-all eyebrow-raising name for it: “Dollar Babies.” 

One early beneficiary was a 20-year-old French expat who adapted King’s short story, The Woman in the Room in 1984. You probably haven’t seen this 30-minute short, but you’ve almost definitely seen his other work. King was impressed with this particular Baby, and kept in touch with the filmmaker — Frank Darabont. The two would work together later in their careers on The Mist, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

3 Coca-Cola

Asa G. Candler didn’t invent Coca-Cola, but he did… not perfect it either. Candler, a businessman, bought the majority stake in the already popular product from its inventor, a pharmacist and big-time idiot who didn’t have an ounce of marketing savvy in his whole body. Candler was able to begin building it up into the global powerhouse it is today, but he had one major blindspot: He thought people would only want to drink this drug-infused goop straight from the udder.

His nephew tried to convince him to invest in bottling the stuff, but Candler repeatedly brushed him off. And when a couple of Tennessee entrepreneurs came a-knockin’, Candler agreed to hand over the bottling rights for nothing more than a crisp dollar bill. Which he never even bothered to collect.

2 Star Wars

When Star Wars premiered in 1977, George Lucas was so nervous, he literally fled the contiguous United States, taking a Hawaiian vacation so he could avoid the bad press he expected would pour in. By the early ‘80s, he was whistling a much different tune. He knew nothing but success: His talented editor wife had made him two smash hits in a row, with a third on the way, and he thought he had another ace up his sleeve with Howard the Duck.

He must’ve been feeling mighty charitable, because in 1981, he sold the radio rights to his alma mater’s campus radio station for a buck. A bunch of USC college students got to help put together a 13-episode radio drama using the original score and sound effects from the most popular movie of their day. Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) and Mark freaking Hamill recorded parts for it. They followed it up with a sequel series in 1983, and Billy Dee Williams joined Daniels and Hamill in the booth.

1 All the Plutonium for the Manhattan Project

In 1942, Uncle Sam decided he needed a weapon that could blow up the planet, at any moment, for the remainder of human history. As it became clear just how much toxic, unstable ore they would need to pull off this kind of stunt, the cohort of companies willing and able to produce that much plutonium was whittled down to one: DuPont.

DuPont was fresh off of extremely credible allegations of war profiteering during World War I, so they knew they’d take even more heat if they made any money off of this deal. While lots of money did exchange hands — the government paid $5 million for a plot of land in Washington, and god knows how much more to relocate the natives and gentrifiers who lived in the area — DuPont threw up their hands and did all the work for exactly one dollar. 

And they never profited off of human suffering again, the end.