My friend Russell mislaid his USB memory stick, he looked high and low for it. He never found it and pretty much forgot about it, but every so often he would moan that he hoped someone hadn't found it and got all his personal documents that were on it. Anyway, after about 6 months, he suddenly heard a strange scraping noise in the washing machine, so he stopped it and felt around the rubber seal, only to find his old memory stick. He dried it off, plugged it in and hey-presto! it worked. He showed me it, I even used it after, it was really shiny too.