Useless Facts About Money
In 1915 the average annual family income in the United States was $687 a year.
In 1975 a birdhouse costing $10,000 was built in Quebec by the city fathers.
In 1060 a coin was minted in England shaped like a clover. The user could break off any of the four leaves and use them as separate pieces of currency.
During the American revolution, inflation was so great that the price of corn rose 10,000 percent, the price of wheat 14,000 percent, the price of flour 15,000 percent, and the price of beef 33,000 percent.
During the early boom days of the gold rush in San Francisco, a glass of whiskey could cost as much as $7.The first coin minted in the United States was a silver dollar. It was issued on October 15, 1794.
On March 16, 1970, a bidder at Sotheby & Company in London paid $20,000 for one glass paperweight.
A quarter has 119 grooves on its circumference. A dime has one less.
Assuming that each fold neatly overlaps its opposite side, a dollar bill can be folded only six times—seven if put into a vise. (Try it.)
Until the twentieth century dogs' teeth were used as money by Solomon Island natives.
More than a million dollars belonging to Adolf Hitler and other prominent Nazis is still unclaimed in American banks. The money was deposited several years before America entered World War II and no one knows what to do with it today.
Until the nineteenth century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.
America once issued a 5-cent bill.
In 1776 a man who made $4,000 a year was considered wealthy.
The Yap islanders in the South Pacific use 18-foot-hgih stone rings as money. The stones sometimes weight as much as 15 tons, which means that when someone is paid in such currency, he goes to where the money is, not vice-versa.
During the early 1920's, at the height of the inflation in the German Weimar Republic, one American dollar was equal to 4 trillion German marks.
It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to and from the New World.