A dog helped find a famous soccer trophy. The dog was named Pickles, and the trophy was the Jules Rimet Trophy, given to the winners of the FIFA World Cup.

It was a Sunday afternoon, the 20th of March, 1966. The trophy was in a glass cabinet, on display as part of a postage stamp exhibition at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, England. FIFA, the international football organization, had lent the trophy to England as a part of a promotion for the 1966 World Cup, which was to be played in England in the summer of that year. It wasn't a usual thing, but England had been granted permission to publicly display the trophy in the months leading up to big event. The display had opened in January. Protecting the trophy was round-the-clock security.

The trophy disappeared on that day. The two security guards stationed near the display cabinet both responded to a disturbance elsewhere in the exhibition hall; when they returned to the display cabinet, the trophy was gone.

A phone call to a senior football authority alerted organizers to the theft and promised to return the trophy in return for a ransom of £15,000. When authorities arrived at the point at which the exchange was to take place, they found a package containing the removable lining from the top of the trophy. The rest of the trophy was still missing. Scotland Yad launched an investigation.

One week later, a man named David Corbett was taking his dog, Pickles, for a walk in Beulah Hill, South London. Pickles encouraged Corbett to examine a package next to a car. Wrapped in newspaper was the missing trophy. Corbett returned the trophy to authorities, who gave him a reward of nearly £5,000. The National Canine Defence League awarded Pickles a silver medal. When England won the World Cup a few weeks later, organizers invited Pickles to the celebration banquet.

As a result, FIFA created a replica of the trophy, so the original could be kept safe. That replica resides in the National Football Museum, in Manchester, England.

Pickles earned accolades far and wide. Spillers, a pet food manufacturer, named him Dog of the Year and gave him a year's worth of free food. Pickles also appeared, as a dog named Pickles, in the 1966 film The Spy with a Cold Nose, a comedy about a dog, equipped with a listening device, being presented as a gift to the leader of the Soviet Union.

Pickles died in a freak accident the following year. His collar is on display in the National Football Museum, and one of London's famed blue plaques adorns a wall near where he found the missing trophy.