In 1859, Joshua Norton, a bankrupt San Francisco businessman, declared himself "Norton I, Emperor of the United States." The city played along completely. Restaurants accepted his self-printed currency, police officers saluted him, and when a cop once arrested him for lunacy, the public outcry was so great that the chief formally apologized. He issued imperial decrees including one ordering a bridge be built connecting San Francisco to Oakland. The Bay Bridge was built decades later. When he died penniless in 1880, ten thousand people attended his funeral.