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They say that money makes the world go ‘round, but how much do we really know about it?
Way before the stock market and cryptocurrency, history has gone through many methods of trade.
Before any form of currency, people just traded things literally through the barter system.
For example, you could trade a kilo of wool for 3 barrels of beer, and so on.
For a time, people also used valued spices or ingredients like salt to buy goods.
Around 5000 BC, the ancient civilizations started pressing coins and created the first currency.
7th century China brought us paper money in the Tang Dynasty.
Fast forward to 1920, the U.S. was the first to use credit cards. Now, over 1.6 million
ATMs scatter around the globe.
But how much is there to know about money?
The Romans were the first to stamp the image of a person on a coin.
After winning the war, Roman emperor Julius Caesar featured his portrait on a coin in
44 B.C. for circulation.
At the time, it was an unacceptable act of political arrogance in Rome.
However, the trend clearly caught on.
Nowadays, it’d be strange to find a coin without a face on it.
Knights used special rings as a form of payment.
Because of lurking robbers, knights in the
Middle Ages didn’t want to carry coins in their pockets.
Instead, they wore special rings.
If a knight frequented a tavern, he would stamp the bill with his ring.
The owner would then take the stamped bill to the knight’s castle as proof of purchase.
Siberia used tea bricks as money until WW2.
From the 9th to 20th century, the people of Siberia used tea bricks as its main currency.
The people of China valued these tea bricks over metal currency.
They would eat tea bricks during times of hunger and brew them into
warm medicine which can cure coughs and colds.
Queen Elizabeth II holds the record for appearing on currency.
Since her childhood, Queen Elizabeth II has featured in 15 banknotes.
She appeared first at 8 years old on Canada’s $20 bill.
For the U.S. however, Martha Washington was the only woman to ever appear on its currency.
Early Romans used salt as a form of money.
With refrigeration technology a few centuries away, Romans only had salt to preserve food
like fresh meat. As such, the Romans valued salt so much that it was used as their currency.
Even the word “salary” is derived from “sal,” which means “salt” in Latin.
There are more bacteria in your bills than you think.
Money is dirtier than a household toilet. One NYU study found more than 3,000 types
of organisms on just 80 $1 bills that link to pneumonia and food poisoning.
Before the Federal Reserve in 1913, each bank printed its own money.
Now, factories called “mints” make over 170 different currencies throughout the world.
The largest bill ever printed was a $100,000 gold certificate issued in 1934.
The largest bill took over a month to print from December 1934 to January 1935.
However, you probably won’t get your hands on this bill anytime soon.
It’s only used in official transactions between Federal Reserve Banks and the U.S. Treasury.
There is a $2 bill in the United States.
It’s a rare sight, but you can request it in your local bank!
A $1 bill only lasts 18 months.
Money can’t last forever. Through wear and tear, money needs to be replaced now and then.
Here’s the full breakdown of the average lifespan of bills and coins:
$1 bill: 18 months, $5 bill: 2 years, $10 bill: 3 years, $20 bill: 4 years,
$50 bill: 9 years, $100 bill: 9 years, Coins: 30 years.
"Numismatics" is the official name for studying money.
Numismatics is the study of currency such as coins, tokens, paper money
and related objects.
The ink used to print money is high tech.
Printing money uses 9.5 tons of ink daily.
The ink used for bills is trackable, magnetic, and has color-changing properties.
However, more Monopoly money is printed each year than actual money.
The grooves around the edge of your coins have a purpose.
The grooves along the side of coins keep people from scraping off the faces and selling them
as precious metals.
A quarter has 119 grooves while a dime has 118.
Americans spend $117 billion each year on fast food.
Out of this sum, a huge chunk comes from McDonald’s which earns US$75 million per day.
A penny costs 2.4 cents to manufacture.
Yup, making a penny is more expensive than spending it.
Gambling brings in more revenue than any other industry.
Casinos generate more revenue each year than blockbuster movies, sports, theme parks,
cruise ships, and music combined.
The phrase “In God We Trust” appeared on U.S. currency in 1963.
It’s also their national motto.
Another fun fact about U.S. money is that the eagle
on the American silver dollar was a real eagle named Peter.
The top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of a $5 bill lists all 50 states.
You’d need a magnifying glass to read it, though.
Rats ate $2.1 billion of Pablo Escobar’s loose change.
The infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar had so much spare cash lying around that he lost
over 2 billion dollars to rats. He kept his cash in a warehouse since he couldn’t deposit
them to a bank. This was no issue for Escobar since he only
lost 10% of his savings because of these pests.
One bill weighs one gram.
454 bills weigh one pound.
If you weigh all the bills in the world, it probably would weigh a lot less now compared to before.
Nowadays, only 8% of the world’s currency is in physical money.
North Korea is the largest counterfeiter.
North Korea produces fakes so precisely that
they are referred to as “superdollars,” and require specialized equipment at the Federal
Reserve to be detected. As of 2009, The Secret Service identified
an estimated $45 million worth of these fake bills.
Money engravers are extremely skilled.
Money engravers are responsible for all the markings and images on our money.
The task takes extreme skill, since they have to illustrate backward.
It takes close to 15 years of training to become an engraver.
Secret designs on the $1 bill reference the original 13 colonies.
Unlucky 13? Not for your $1 bill. If you take a closer look at your dollar bill, you’d
notice patterns of 13 in its design: 13 steps on the pyramid, 13 vertical bars on the shield,
13 horizontal stripes on the top of the shield, 13 stars above the eagle, 13 leaves and
13 berries on the olive branch in one of the eagle’s talons, and 13 arrows.
On the Department of Treasury seal, there are 13 stars above the key.
Putting pennies in your garden gets rid of pests.
Pennies buried in a garden will give slugs electric shocks from touching copper and zinc.
Next time you need pest control, you might just want to bury your loose change.
The piggybank dates back to the Middle Ages.
The piggy bank comes from the Old English "pygg",
a type of clay used for making jars and dishes that held money.
As time passed, the word eventually morphed into “piggy bank” with the traditional design changed to a pig.
The most expensive coin sold for over $40 million.
The 1913 Liberty Head nickel was the most expensive coin ever sold at $43.7 million.
It is a rare coin made by a rogue Mint employee. To date, only 5 are known to exist.
Most U.S. dollars contain trace amounts of cocaine.
A 2009 study found that anywhere from 90% to 94% of bills contain the illegal substance,
mostly due to drug transactions and bills being used to snort it.
Throughout the years, money has given as much as it has taken from humanity.
Everything seems to be dictated by money, but hopefully understanding more about it will make you
value it more.
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