Gavin Andresen creates the famous Bitcoin Faucet, a website that gave away 5 BTC to every visitor simply for completing a captcha. At the time, Bitcoin had virtually no monetary value and Andresen wanted to spread awareness and distribution as widely as possible. The faucet gave away a total of 19,715 BTC before shutting down. Those free coins would eventually be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, making it one of the most generous giveaways in financial history.
Bitcoin Wiki: Faucet