The world may never know what Tim Brender did to make God so mad at him, but the results of that anger will not soon be forgotten. Just one month before moving into a new Madison, Wisconsin, home, Brender realized he'd best get hustling on packing up the place he and his family had been renting. Then Brender's whole world changed.

While working in the basement, Brender knocked a can of spray paint off a table he'd been moving. The can landed on a hammer, which pierced it, sending paint spraying across the basement all the way to the water heater, where the pilot light ignited the paint, starting a flash fire that destroyed pretty much everything in the house. Adding to the misery of it all, the Brenders had no insurance.

In words that'd put any known philosopher to shame, Tim's wife Lani summed the situation's impact up in one sentence: "You don't realize what your stuff is worth," she said, "until you have to tally it up in a dumpster."

» Scott Saxon