Rare book found in dumpster

 In a small town near Lake Tahoe, back in December, 1914, Max Brown was rummaging through a dumpster for a community service project when he spotted a pile of ancient books. It was starting to rain, so the 37-year-old took as many as he could carry home to safety. For six months they sat on his shelf, before he and a friend opened them to check out the delicate pages.

In two of the books he found hand-written inscriptions that said, "From the library of Thomas Jefferson." He emailed an expert at Jefferson's presidential library and asked if she could verify the books' origin. (He did not mention he found them in a dumpster.) The expert declared that they had, indeed, been purchased in 1818 by Thomas Jefferson, who also wrote the Declaration of Independence.