Money isn't made out of paper; it's made out of cotton.
There are four cars and eleven light posts on the back of a $10 dollar bill.
If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
The
pictures on the back of old English £5 notes are 360º
The word
millionaire was first used by Benjamin Disraeli in his 1826 novel Vivian Grey.
If you stack one
million US$1 bills, it would be 110m (361 ft) high and weight exactly 1 ton.
A million dollars'
worth of $100 bills weighs only 10 kg (22 lb).
One million
dollars' worth of once-cent coins (100 million coins) weigh 246 tons.
TIP is the acronym
for "To Insure Promptness."
The term "Blue
Chip" comes from the colour of the poker chip with the highest value, blue.
Nessie, the Loch
Ness monster is protected by the 1912 Protection of Animals Acts of Scotland.
With good reason - Nessie is worth $40 million annually to Scottish tourism.
Of the more than
$50 billion worth of diet products sold every year, almost $20 billion are spent
on imitation fats and sugar substitutes.
Annual global
spending on education is $80 billion.
US and European
expenditure on pet food is $17 billion per year.
The global
expenditure on healthcare and nutrition is $13 billion.
Money notes are not
made from paper, it is made mostly from a special blend of cotton and linen.
In 1932, when a
shortage of cash occurred in Tenino, Washington, USA, notes were made out of
wood for a brief period. The wood notes came in $1, $5 and $10 values.
The world's largest
coins, in size and standard value, were copper plates used in Alaska around
1850. They were about a metre (3 ft) long, half-a-metre (about 2 ft) wide,
weighed 40 kg (90 lb), and were worth $2,500.
The first credit
card was issued by American Express in 1951.
About 30% of
consumers use their credit card as their main means of buying Christmas goodies,
70% do not save to buy Christmas gifts and 86% of consumers do their Christmas
shopping during December.
Excessive use of
credit is cited as a major cause of non-business bankruptcy, second only to
unemployment.
Statistics show
that people with high, medium and low income groups spend about the same amount
on Christmas gifts.
Iraq is the 6th
largest oil supplier to the US.
The investing term
"Blue Chip" derives from the colour of the highest value of poker
chip, blue.
In the 1400s,
global income rose only 0,1% per year; today it often tops 5%.
The average age of
Forbes's 400 wealthiest individuals is 63.
In 1955 the richest
woman in the world was Mrs Hetty Green Wilks, who left an estate of $95 million
in a will that was found in a tin box with four pieces of soap.
The richest woman
today is Liliane Bettencourt, the daughter of L'Oreal's founder. She has a net
worth of $14 billion (depending on how the stock market did today).
Queen Beatrix of
the Netherlands is the second wealthiest woman, with $5,2 billion.
Queen Elizabeth II
is the 10th wealthiest woman in the world.
The term
"smart money" refers to gamblers who have inside information or have
arranged a fix, the gambling term for insuring the outcome of an event by
illegal methods.
Small-time gamblers
who place small bet in order to prolong the excitement of a game are called
"dead fish" by game operators because the longer the playing time, the
greater the chances of losing.
In gambling
language, for a gambling house a "sure-thing" is a wager that a player
has little chance of winning; "easy money" is their profit from an
inexperienced bettor, an unlucky player is called a "stiff."
Australians are the
heaviest gamblers in the world; an estimated 82% of Australians bet. That is
twice as much per capita as Europeans or Americans. Yet, Australia, with less
than 1% of the world population, has 20% of the world's poker machines.
There are more than
7 million millionaires in the world.
80% of millionaires
drive second-hand cars.
In 1900, the price
of gold was less than $40 per ounce. It reached $600 in 1930, now struggling to
reach $400 per ounce.
If Los Angeles
County was a country, it would be the 19th largest economy in the world.
If California was a
country, it would be the 5th largest economy in the world.
Tobacco is a $200
billion industry, producing six trillion cigarettes a year - about 1,000
cigarettes for each person on earth.
The 200 richest
people in the world doubled their worth in the 4 years ending 1998.
In 1965, CEOs
earned on average 44 times more than factory workers. In 1998, CEOs earned on
average 326 times more than factory workers and in 1999, they earned 419 times
more than factory workers.
The income gap
between the richest fifth of the world's people and the poorest measured by
average national income per head increased from 30 to one in 1960, to 74 to one
in 1998.
A third of the
world's people live on less than $2 a day, with 1,2 billion people living on
less than $1 a day.
In the 17th
century, wool fabrics accounted for about two-thirds of England's foreign trade.
Today, the leading wool producers are Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and
China.
The NASDAQ stock
exchange was totally disabled in on day in December 1987 when a squirrel
burrowed through a telephone line.
In 1990, the word
"recession" appeared in 1,583 articles in The Wall Street Journal.
Global sales of
pre-recorded music total more than $40 billion.
Tourism is the
world's biggest industry, affecting 240 million jobs.
