For a raffle, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, mother of the current queen, donated a bejeweled cigarette case in red (rubies), white (diamonds) and blue (sapphires), as well as a piece of shrapnel from the bomb that had hit Buckingham Palace.
In 1976, the UK lent one of four surviving originals of the 1215 Magna Carta to the United States for their bicentennial celebrations and also donated an ornate display case for it.
"Descendants should certainly be consulted," writes Martin Bailey, chief reporter for the Art Newspaper, in the London Evening Standard, "but ultimately the director must run the gallery for the public benefit... Few gallery-goers are interested in who donated a picture and, in any case, this detail is always, quite rightly, recorded on the label".
Those cases who participated in our study through tissue sample donation were on average 2.1 years older than the cases who donated a blood sample (P=0.002).
There were also 1,127 "living donor" transplants last year in which a living person donated a kidney or, in 30 cases, part of their liver to help someone else, usually a relative or friend, but sometimes a stranger.
Cases who participated through tissue sample donation were, on average, 1.5 years older (P = 0.0003) and more likely to have been diagnosed with TNM stage 2 or more advanced cancers (P < 0.0001) compared with cases who donated a blood sample.
Of the 1814 cases and 1531 controls who completed the two questionnaires, 1497 cases and 745 controls donated a blood sample.
In one case, a Hiroshima businessman donated a total of 4.5 million yen to Mr. Nakagawa.
With the example just given about someone donating money, it might be the case that someone says, 'My friend donated a lot of money to a cancer charity.
In other cases, donating a pair of eyeglasses may be just fine if these donations don't undermine an existing local industry.
