Intersting facts about money

August 1, 2009 | In: History facts

The early currency of the United States was printed with the slogan “Mind your business”!

The slogan, which is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, appeared on early US coins and paper currency. These early monies also included the word “fugio”, Latin for “I fly”, the “I” in question being Time.

Theft has become common by the invention of money. Temples have become the prime target as it is commonly visited by everyone including thieves.

If you had 10 billion $ notes and spent one every second of every day, it would require 317 years for you to go broke.

Largest numerical denomination bill ever is 1 Milliard Hungarian Peng? (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) in 1946. It was only worth twenty cents US!

The origin of the “$” sign has been variously accounted for, however, the most widely accepted explanation is that the symbol is the result of evolution, independently in different places, of the Mexican or Spanish “P’s” for pesos, or piastres, or pieces of eight. The theory, derived from a study of old manuscripts, is that the “S” gradually came to be written over the “P,” developing a close equivalent of the “$” mark. It was widely used before the adoption of the United States dollar in 1785.

Tax collections in Egypt and Mesopotamia have become very easy when they started using the silver and the gold bars as their currency in near about 2500 B.C.

The 100 dollar note has been the largest denomination of currency in circulation since 1969.

The paper which was used for the U.S. bills is not made from trees. It has 75 percent of cotton and rest is linen.

The biggest coins in the world weigh close to four tons!

These coins were used on the island of Yap, in the Caroline Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The coins were made from limestone found in caves on other islands hundreds of miles way, and were valued according to the quality of the limestone, the weight of the coin, and the difficulty transporting it. Many men lost their lives transporting these huge rocks back to Yap.

Even the small denominations of currency on Yap were pretty large – the smallest coins were about nine inches (23 cm) across!