Richard Halliburton holds the bizarre historical record for paying the lowest toll ever to traverse the Panama Canal, handing over just 36 cents in 1928 for the privilege of swimming the entire 50-mile length.

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Richard Halliburton holds the bizarre historical record for paying the lowest toll ever to traverse the Panama Canal, handing over just 36 cents in 1928 for the privilege of swimming the entire 50-mile length. The canal authorities treated him exactly like a standard shipping vessel, requiring him to be weighed to calculate his exact displacement for the toll fee. Coming in at a whopping 150 pounds, this adventurous idiot paddled alongside massive freighters and navigated crocodile-infested waters just to prove a point. Meanwhile, modern cruise ships regularly pay upwards of half a million dollars for the exact same transit. There is something profoundly delightful about bureaucratic inflexibility forcing a major international waterway to officially process a guy in a swimsuit as if he were a cargo barge, just so the accountants could ensure their precious maritime ledgers remained perfectly balanced