168 Fun Facts About Money

The word 'money' comes from the Latin moneta, linked to the temple of which goddess?

Rome's mint stood at the temple of Juno Moneta on the Capitoline.

Which function of money lets purchasing power be saved and spent later?

Store of value is the function inflation erodes: when prices climb quickly, money saved for later buys less, which pushes people to spend it fast or hoard goods instead.

Accounting records more than 7,000 years old, predating coins, have been found where?

Mesopotamia's clay tokens, used to keep count of grain and livestock, go back more than 7,000 years, and one much-debated theory holds that marking them on clay tablets grew into cuneiform.

Sweden's 17th-century 'plate money', which weighed up to almost 20 kilos apiece, was made of what?

Large slabs of copper stood in for small silver coins because copper was worth so much less; their awkwardness helped prompt a Stockholm bank to issue Europe's first banknotes.

The 'heads' side of a coin is formally called what?

The obverse is nicknamed heads because it usually carries a ruler's portrait, while tails, used of coins since the 1680s, simply means the opposite end.

The Romans called coin flipping navia aut caput, meaning what?

Navia aut caput means 'ship or head': early Roman bronze asses showed the two-faced god Janus on one side and a ship's prow on the other.

Which US city's name was decided by an 1845 coin toss, with the coin later put on display in a museum?

Portland, Oregon: Francis Pettygrove, from Portland, Maine, won two of three tosses against Asa Lovejoy, who wanted to name the settlement Boston.

Which 14th-century Italian poet is credited as the first coin collector of the Renaissance?

Petrarch wrote that vineyard diggers kept bringing him old coins to buy or identify, and he once gave Emperor Charles IV a set of Roman coins.

What is the study and collecting of coins called?

Numismatics comes from Greek nomisma, 'coin', a word rooted in nomos, 'custom' or 'law': Aristotle argued that money earned the name because it exists by convention, not by nature.

Which edge motto on Britain's round pound coins means 'an ornament and a safeguard'?

Decus et Tutamen, 'an ornament and a safeguard', was first lettered on the edge of Charles II's 1662 crown to deter clipping and later on the 1983 pound coin.

The 'plugged nickel' of the saying was a coin tampered with how?

Its core swapped for base metal: cheats punched or sawed a plug of good metal out of a coin and filled the hole with something cheap, so a plugged coin was one nobody would take.

Which everyday word for money originally meant a 'money box'?

Cash arrived in the 1590s from French caisse, 'money box', from Latin capsa, 'box'; the name slid from the container to the coins inside, its only meaning by the 18th century.

'Bankruptcy' comes from the Italian banca rotta, literally a moneylender's broken what?

Bench: Italian moneylenders did business from a banca, a bench or counter, and banca rotta was a broken one; the tale that a failed banker's bench was smashed in public is doubted.

The word 'salary' comes from Latin salarium, a term connected to which commodity?

Salary derives from Latin salarium, a Roman soldier's allowance, formed from sal, 'salt'; how far the allowance was actually paid in salt is debated, but the root is not.

Which is the world's oldest surviving bank, founded in 1472?

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena began in 1472 as a Monte Pio, a charitable pawn agency for Siena's poor, and only later grew into a commercial bank; Berenberg (1590) is the oldest merchant bank.

Which medieval order issued letters of credit to pilgrims, an early form of banking?

The Knights Templar let pilgrims deposit valuables at a Templar house in Europe and draw funds in the Holy Land against a letter of credit, an early cheque system.

On a medieval split tally stick, what was the longer part held by the lender called?

The lender kept the longer piece, called the stock; the shorter foil went to the borrower, and the matching grain and notches proved the debt.

In 1834, burning old Exchequer tally sticks in a furnace accidentally destroyed which London landmark?

The Houses of Parliament burned down after a cartload or two of old tally sticks overheated the furnaces under the House of Lords; the Gothic palace that replaced them was designed by Charles Barry.

Wampum's purple beads were cut from which New England shellfish?

Quahog clam shells gave the more valuable purple beads and whelks the white ones; coin-starved colonists then adopted wampum as money for their own trade.

The Roman denarius takes its name from a Latin word meaning what?

Denarius means 'containing ten' because the coin was first worth ten bronze asses; it was retariffed to sixteen asses around 141 BC.

Which modern words for money descend from 'denarius'?

Dinero and dinheiro, Spanish and Portuguese for money, both descend from Latin denarius, as do Italian denaro and the Arabic dinar; dollar and thaler come instead from the Bohemian mining town of Joachimsthal.

Which Roman coin's name means 'two and a half', its original value in asses?

Sestertius joins semis, 'half', and tertius, 'third': two whole asses and half of a third, a sum the Romans wrote as IIS, which is why the coin is abbreviated HS.

Which emperor replaced the Roman aureus with the long-lived gold solidus?

Constantine struck the solidus at 72 to the Roman pound; its name became Late Latin soldum, 'pay', which is why a man who serves for pay is a soldier.

In the Bible, which king's yearly income of gold weighed 666 talents?

Solomon's haul, in 1 Kings 10, left him drinking only from gold cups, and the text says he made silver as common as stones in Jerusalem.

In the Gospels, whose two tiny coins did Jesus say outweighed the gifts of the rich?

A widow's two lepta, the 'widow's mite', added up to one quadrans, Rome's smallest coin; Jesus said the rich gave from their surplus while she gave all she had to live on.

Judas's thirty pieces of silver were used to buy what, according to Matthew?

A potter's field was bought by the chief priests to bury strangers in, because blood money could not go back into the treasury; paupers' burial grounds have been called potter's fields ever since.

In Greek custom, a coin was placed in the mouth of the dead to pay which ferryman of the underworld?

Charon took the coin, a small-change obol, as his fare across the river; in Virgil's Aeneid the unburied dead, whom he turns away, must roam the shore for a hundred years.

Which name did medieval Western Europe give the gold coins of Constantinople, still used in heraldry for a gold disc?

Bezant comes from Byzantium; when the old coin had been debased almost to nothing, Alexios I Komnenos replaced it in 1092 with the purer hyperpyron, which Western merchants went on calling a bezant.

Which flower, stamped on Florence's gold florin, gave the coin its name?

The lily made the coin a fiorino, from fiore, 'flower'; first struck in 1252 with John the Baptist on the other side, it was copied across Europe and lives on in the name of Hungary's forint.

The gold ducat originated in which city in 1284?

Venice launched the gold ducat in 1284 after the imperial gold coins its merchants relied on were debased, then kept the design unchanged for over 500 years, until Napoleon ended the republic.

Why was the Spanish dollar nicknamed the 'piece of eight'?

Its value of eight reales gave the nickname; the coin was the model for the US dollar and stayed legal tender in the United States until 1857.

Spanish dollars divided into eighths gave American English which slang term for one-eighth of a dollar?

A bit was an eighth of a Spanish dollar, or 12.5 cents, which is why a US quarter came to be called 'two bits'.

Which gold coin took its name from the French king who introduced it in 1640?

Louis d'or coins carried the head of each King Louis from XIII to XVI; after the Revolution the 20-franc gold napoléon took their place.

Which empress's thaler has been dated 1780 ever since her death?

Maria Theresa's thaler became a trade coin across the Arab world and East Africa, and Ethiopia accepted it as currency, so mints went on striking the familiar 1780 design.

The British guinea took its name from what?

The West African region supplying its gold was the Guinea coast; the name outlived the coin, as British racehorses went on being auctioned in guineas long after the last one was struck.

From 1717 to 1816 the guinea was officially worth how many shillings?

In 1717 Isaac Newton, as Master of the Mint, fixed the guinea at 21 shillings, one pound and one shilling; it stayed there until the 1816 gold standard.

Britain's gold sovereign is best known for which design on its reverse?

Saint George and the Dragon was engraved by the Italian Benedetto Pistrucci, who as a foreigner could never be appointed the Mint's Chief Engraver and had to settle for the title of Chief Medallist.

Which tiny bird replaced Britannia on the farthing, Britain's lowest-value coin, in 1937?

The wren, one of Britain's smallest birds, was a fitting choice for the smallest sum in the currency; it stayed until the farthing ceased to be legal tender at the start of 1961.

Britain's pound sign, £, is a stylised letter standing for which Latin word?

Libra was the Roman pound weight, which is why the £ sign is an ornate L and a pound in weight is abbreviated 'lb'; the pound sterling began as a pound weight of silver.

What name was given to 15 February 1971, when the UK and Ireland scrapped the shilling?

Decimal Day came after banks shut from the Wednesday before to clear cheques and convert every account from pounds, shillings and pence.

In 1968 the Royal Mint opened its new home at Llantrisant, in which UK country?

Wales took over from London as the Mint moved to a new plant to strike the coins needed for the 1971 change of currency; the last coin made in London was struck in 1975.

Which prime minister's government nationalised the Bank of England in 1946?

Clement Attlee's Labour government took the bank into public ownership on 1 March 1946, an early step in a programme that went on to nationalise coal, electricity and transport.

Which gold bullion coin of 1967 prompted rivals such as Canada's Maple Leaf?

The Krugerrand, named for Boer leader Paul Kruger and the rand, was created to sell South African gold; boycotts over apartheid later kept it out of many markets, which opened the door to rivals.

How many 1933 double eagles are known to survive?

13 are known: two in the Smithsonian, the ten seized from the Langbord family in 2005, and the Weitzman specimen, the only one legal to own privately.

Which US coin sold for a record $18.9 million in 2021?

The 1933 double eagle sold in 2021 once belonged to King Farouk of Egypt and is the only one in private hands; ten others that a family handed in for authentication were kept by the government.

Fort Knox, home to a little over half of the US Treasury's gold, lies in which state?

Kentucky's famous vault is officially the United States Bullion Depository; Fort Knox is really the Army post next door, and the vault holds about 147 million troy ounces.

Which English document, in America for the 1939 World's Fair, sat out World War II in the Fort Knox vault?

Magna Carta's Lincoln Cathedral copy was on show in New York when war broke out, so it stayed and was guarded beside the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence until 1944.

In which 1964 James Bond film does the villain plot to irradiate the gold in Fort Knox?

Goldfinger's scheme changed on its way to the screen: in Ian Fleming's novel he sets out to steal the gold, but the film has him plan to contaminate it with a dirty bomb.

Which country was the world's largest gold producer in 2023?

China took the lead in 2007 by overtaking South Africa, which had been the world's largest gold producer every year since 1905.

Gold's chemical symbol Au is taken from which Latin word for the metal?

Aurum became Au when the Swedish chemist Berzelius replaced the old pictorial symbols with one- or two-letter abbreviations of each element's Latin name.

On the karat scale used for gold, how many karats is pure gold?

24 karats means all 24 parts are gold; because pure gold is soft, jewellers alloy it with harder metals, and 18-karat gold is three-quarters pure.

Troy weight is generally thought to take its name from which French town?

Troyes hosted one of the great medieval Champagne fairs, and the weights used there are thought to have given their name to the troy ounce, about 10% heavier than an everyday ounce.

The Welcome Stranger, the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found, was dug up in 1869 in which gold-rush region?

Victoria: two Cornish miners struck the nugget just below the surface near Moliagul, and because no scale could take it, a blacksmith broke it on an anvil to weigh it.

What nickname was given to the roughly 300,000 prospectors who poured into California after gold was found in 1848?

Forty-niners were named for 1849, the peak year of arrivals; they came so fast that California skipped the usual territorial stage and became a state in 1850.

Which town was founded at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers during the 1896 to 1898 gold rush?

Dawson City boomed into a town of many thousands by the summer of 1898, then lost much of its population a year later when word came of a new gold strike at Nome, Alaska.

Which legend began with a Muisca ruler covered in gold dust?

El Dorado means 'the golden one' and first named the man, not a place; only later did the name shift to a lost city of gold that explorers hunted for centuries.

King Midas, of the golden touch, ruled which ancient kingdom in modern Turkey?

Phrygia's King Midas, in Ovid's telling, begged the god Dionysus to take the gift back once his food turned to gold, and washed it away in the river Pactolus.

Which king of Lydia, a byword for wealth, is credited with issuing the first true gold coins?

Croesus struck coins of pure gold and pure silver around 550 BC, then lost his kingdom to Cyrus the Great of Persia; 'rich as Croesus' outlived them both.

Mansa Musa, often called the richest person in history, ruled which empire?

Mali's ruler handed out so much gold in Cairo on his 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca that its value in Egypt is said to have stayed depressed for about twelve years.

Who became the world's first confirmed billionaire, in 1916?

John D. Rockefeller passed the billion mark in 1916, five years after the Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil: his shares in the successor companies soared, so the breakup left him richer.

Carnegie's 1901 sale to J. P. Morgan created which corporation, the first capitalised above $1 billion?

U.S. Steel was capitalised at $1.4 billion when Morgan merged Carnegie Steel with its rivals; Carnegie retired on the proceeds and spent his last 18 years giving away almost 90% of his fortune.

The word 'millionaire' is said to have been coined in France in 1719 for speculators in which scheme?

The Mississippi Bubble made paper fortunes in weeks for buyers of shares in John Law's company, and 'millionnaire' is said to date from that frenzy; the shares collapsed in 1720.

In 2013, Credit Suisse estimated that the richest 1% of adults held about what share of the world's wealth?

46% was the bank's estimate, with the richest tenth holding 86%; at the other end, two-thirds of the world's adults had under $10,000 each and together held just 3%.

The Staatsloterij, drawn since 1726 and the world's oldest lottery still running, belongs to which country?

Netherlands: the Dutch state set it up in 1726 as the Generaliteitsloterij to fill the treasury and rein in gambling, and it took the name Staatsloterij only in 1848.

Legend dates the invention of keno to around 200 BC, under which Chinese dynasty?

Han dynasty legend credits keno to Zhang Liang, said to have devised it to raise money for a city at war; the same tale has its profits later helping to pay for the Great Wall.

Since 2015, roughly what are the odds of one Powerball play winning the jackpot?

1 in 300 million, or 292,201,338 to be exact, is the price of a 2015 change that raised the white balls from 59 to 69 and cut the red ones from 35 to 26, making small prizes easier to win and the jackpot far harder.

The $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot of November 2022 was won on a single ticket sold in which state?

California: Edwin Castro bought the ticket at Joe's Service Center in Altadena, and the gas station itself was paid a $1 million bonus for selling it.

Which Rome fountain collected an estimated €1.4 million in thrown coins during 2016?

The Trevi Fountain's coins, about €3,000 a day, are collected by the city and handed to the Catholic charity Caritas, which spends them on its charity work.

By tradition, how is a coin thrown into Rome's most famous fountain?

Right hand over the left shoulder, with your back to the water, is the custom: legend says the thrower will return to Rome, the idea behind the 1954 film Three Coins in the Fountain.

Over 13,000 Roman coins, offered to a water goddess, were dug from a well beside which landmark?

Hadrian's Wall passes Coventina's Well, a sacred spring dug out in 1876; dropping coins into water as an offering, as at wishing wells today, goes back at least to Roman times.

What is the Mandarin name for the red envelope of money given at Chinese New Year?

Hongbao, literally 'red packet', is lai see in Cantonese; givers avoid any amount with a four in it, because the word for four sounds like the word for death.

A 2013 Visa survey found the tooth fairy left American children an average of how much per tooth?

$3.70 a tooth was up 23% in a year, a jump put down partly to parents not wanting their child to be the one in the playground who got the least.

Monopoly derives from The Landlord's Game, created in 1903 by whom?

Lizzie Magie designed The Landlord's Game in 1903 and patented it in 1904 to demonstrate Henry George's single-tax theory; Charles Darrow later sold a version as Monopoly.

The properties on the original Monopoly board were named after locations where?

Atlantic City, New Jersey supplied the names, with one slip that stuck: 'Marvin Gardens' on the board is a misspelling of the real Marven Gardens.

Scrooge McDuck was created in 1947 by which Disney artist?

Carl Barks created Scrooge McDuck for the December 1947 story Christmas on Bear Mountain, where the miser tests Donald's nerve; Don Rosa later wrote his life story.

Scrooge McDuck's Duckburg lies in which state, seemingly blended from two real ones?

Calisota is usually read as a blend of California and Minnesota, two states its creator had lived in; the name appears just once in his stories, read out by a postmaster in The Gilded Man.

Pink Floyd's 'Money' is famous for which unusual time signature?

Money runs mostly in 7/4, switching to 4/4 for the guitar solo; it opened side two of The Dark Side of the Moon and became Pink Floyd's first US hit.

The Color of Money is a sequel to which 1961 film?

The Color of Money (1986) continues The Hustler (1961); Paul Newman won his only competitive Oscar for reprising pool shark Fast Eddie Felson.

Nazi Germany's Operation Bernhard aimed to flood which country with forged banknotes?

The United Kingdom was the target: prisoners at Sachsenhausen forged Bank of England notes meant to be dropped over Britain, but the fakes were laundered instead, some of them paying the spy known as Cicero.

Which Great Train Robber escaped prison and lived openly in Rio for decades?

Ronnie Biggs went over the prison wall on a rope ladder and reached Rio, where fathering a child with a local woman blocked his extradition; he flew home to arrest in 2001.

The Great Train Robbers stopped the mail train by tampering with what?

A signal was rigged: the gang blanked out its green light and lit the red one with a battery, so the driver stopped and the crewman who climbed down to investigate was seized.

Robbers took three tonnes of gold bullion in the 1983 Brink's-Mat raid on a warehouse beside which airport?

Heathrow's trading estate held the Brink's-Mat depot, where a gang that had expected a stash of banknotes found 6,800 gold bars and left with what was then Britain's biggest haul.

Burglars tunnelled into a Banco Central vault and took about R$160,000,000 in which Brazilian city in 2005?

Fortaleza: in August 2005 a gang dug a 78-metre tunnel from a rented house into the Banco Central branch and took about R$164.7 million, roughly US$70 million.

What was the US Secret Service's initial responsibility when founded?

Investigating counterfeit currency was the job it was created for in 1865, as part of the Treasury; guarding presidents came only after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.

The United States has accused which country of printing 'supernotes', near-perfect fake $100 bills?

North Korea stands accused of passing the notes through its officials abroad, though some governments doubt it could make fakes this good: they copy real bills down to the security fibres and watermark.

Which Prohibition-era gangster was brought down in 1931 by a conviction for income tax evasion?

Al Capone got 11 years after prosecutors proved his income rather than his crimes: a 1927 Supreme Court ruling had made illegal earnings taxable. Money laundering itself became a federal crime only in 1986.

Which country's 1934 law made it a crime for bankers to reveal clients' details?

Switzerland wrote its bankers' discretion into criminal law in 1934, soon after a 1932 French scandal over wealthy tax evaders with accounts at a Basel bank.

Ugland House, one office building that is the registered address of thousands of companies, stands in which tax haven?

The Cayman Islands building, home to the law firm Maples and Calder, was the address of almost 19,000 companies by 2009; Barack Obama called it either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam in the world.

The Panama Papers were leaked from which law firm?

Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in Panama, lost 11.5 million documents to a leaker known only as John Doe; Iceland's prime minister resigned within days, and the firm itself closed in 2018.

Which prime minister introduced Britain's first income tax in 1799, to fund war with France?

William Pitt the Younger taxed incomes over £60, at up to 10% above £200, and hoped for £10 million a year; it raised far less, was dropped when peace came in 1802 and returned with the war in 1803.

The Saladin tithe of 1188 was levied by Henry II to fund what?

The Third Crusade needed funds after Saladin took Jerusalem in 1187, so Henry II demanded a tenth of income and movable goods; clergy and knights who took the cross themselves were let off.

Which amendment, ratified in 1913, gave the US Congress the power to levy a federal income tax?

The Sixteenth Amendment overruled an 1895 Supreme Court decision that had struck down an earlier income tax; the first levy under it started at just 1%.

Which English tax of 1696 to 1851 led owners to brick up parts of their houses?

The window tax was charged by the number of windows, so owners blocked some up; the 1696 act that created it was passed to make good the losses from England's clipped coins.

Danegeld was a tax raised to pay off which raiders?

The Vikings were bought off with Danegeld, literally 'Dane yield', from 991, and kept coming back for more; Kipling later warned that once you pay it you never get rid of the Dane.

Luca Pacioli's 1494 Summa de arithmetica gave the first printed description of which business practice?

Double-entry bookkeeping had been invented some two centuries earlier but was little known until Pacioli, a friar who worked with Leonardo da Vinci, put it in print; the same book gives the Rule of 72.

In many historical societies, 'usury' meant what?

Usury originally meant charging any interest at all on a loan, condemned in Christian, Jewish and Islamic law; only later did the word narrow to excessive interest.

Which president was the first to appear on a circulating US coin?

Lincoln went on the cent in 1909, the centennial of his birth, ending a taboo as old as the Mint: Congress had rejected presidents' portraits for the first coins as too much like a king's head.

The first US cents, struck in 1793 and replaced within months, carried which much-criticised symbol on the back?

A chain of 15 links was meant to stand for the unity of the states, but some people saw in it a symbol of slavery, and the Mint switched to a wreath later that year.

US quarters struck before 1965 were made of what proportion of silver?

90% silver was the standard until 1965, when rising prices brought the metal in the coins close to being worth more than their face value and people began hoarding them.

Which president's portrait was put on the US half dollar in 1964?

John F. Kennedy went on the half dollar within months of his assassination; so many were kept as mementos that the coin was seldom seen in circulation.

The US Mint's Peace dollar was struck to commemorate the peace that followed which war?

World War I's end set coin collectors pressing for a coin to mark the peace; the design, an eagle clutching an olive branch, was approved in December 1921 and replaced the Morgan dollar.

Which country became the first to have a full set of circulating polymer banknotes, in 1996?

Australia finished the switch in 1996 with notes its Reserve Bank had developed with the national science agency CSIRO; the first, a 1988 $10, marked the country's bicentenary.

Dayton saloon owner James Ritty patented which machine in 1879?

The cash register was Ritty's answer to staff he suspected of pocketing the takings; he got the idea on a steamship, from a device that counted the turns of the propeller.

Hero of Alexandria's 1st-century coin-operated machine dispensed what?

Holy water flowed when a coin landed on a pan and tipped a lever that opened the valve; as the pan tilted the coin slid off, and a counterweight shut the flow again.

Charles Fey's pioneering slot machine was named after which symbol on its reels?

The Liberty Bell paid its top prize for three bells in a row; Fey could not patent a gambling machine, so rivals copied it, and the cherries came later on copies that paid out in fruit gum.

In American slang, a $100 note is a C-note or, after its portrait, a what?

A Benjamin takes its name from Benjamin Franklin's portrait on the $100 note, as a Jackson is a $20 and a Grant a $50; the C in C-note is simply the Roman numeral for 100.

In American slang, which note is a 'sawbuck'?

$10 is a sawbuck because the crossed legs of a sawhorse, or sawbuck, look like X, the Roman numeral for ten.

British slang for a pound is popularly traced to which Latin phrase?

Quid pro quo, 'something for something', is the popular story behind 'quid', but dictionaries are cautious: the word may simply be Latin quid, 'something', and its origin is uncertain.

In British slang, which sum of money is a 'pony'?

£25 is a pony and £500 a monkey in British slang, so twenty ponies make a monkey; dictionaries list the sum without explaining where the name came from.

British slang calls which sum a 'bullseye', matching the score for hitting the centre of a dartboard?

£50 matches the 50 points for a dartboard's inner bull, double the 25 for the ring around it; in older slang the same word meant a crown, a five-shilling coin.

US paper dollars have been called 'greenbacks' since which war, when notes were first printed green on the back?

The Civil War forced the Union to issue paper money backed by the government's credit, not by gold or silver, from 1862; the green ink on the reverse gave the notes their name.

In pre-decimal British slang, what coin was a 'tanner'?

Sixpence pieces were tanners, a nickname whose origin dictionaries call uncertain; the coin outlived the old money, staying in use at 2½ new pence until 1980.

The slang 'buck' for a dollar is thought to come from frontier trade in which goods?

Deerskins, or buckskins, served frontiersmen and Native Americans as a unit of exchange with merchants; 'buck' for a dollar, recorded from the 1850s, is probably short for buckskin.

Which charge card, launched in 1950, was the first accepted at many different businesses?

Diners Club, by its own account, was born when founder Frank McNamara, dining with clients in New York in 1949, found he had come out without his wallet.

The word 'tip', meaning to give a gratuity, originated in the cant of which group?

'Tip' began as thieves' cant around 1600 meaning simply 'to give or hand over', before narrowing to a gratuity in the 18th century; the 'To Insure Promptness' story is a myth.

Marco Polo reported that Kublai Khan's paper money was made from the bark of which tree?

Mulberry bark, from the tree whose leaves feed silkworms, was made into sheets and stamped with the Khan's seal; Polo wrote that the Khan had found the secret of alchemy.

Sweden's Riksbank, founded in 1668, is the world's oldest surviving what?

Central bank: the Riksbank replaced Stockholms Banco, which had issued Europe's first banknotes and failed; its founder, Johan Palmstruch, was sentenced to death for mismanagement and then reprieved.

The shekel of the ancient Near East was first a unit of weight, pegged to a quantity of which crop?

Barley was money before metal was: temple accounts reckoned deposits and debts in grain, and the shekel was pegged to a set weight of it long before anyone struck a coin.

US dollar bills are printed not on wood-pulp paper but on a blend of cotton and which other fibre?

Linen makes up 25% of every dollar bill and cotton the other 75%, so the note in a wallet is closer to cloth than to the paper in a book.

From 1982 the copper-plated US penny was made almost entirely of which cheaper metal?

Zinc has made up 97.5% of the penny since the switch during 1982, hidden under a thin copper skin, which is why the newer cents weigh 2.5 grams against the old 3.11.

Programmer Laszlo Hanyecz made the first known bitcoin purchase by paying 10,000 coins for which food?

Pizzas, two of them from Papa John's, cost Hanyecz 10,000 bitcoins on 22 May 2010. Fans of the currency now mark the date as Bitcoin Pizza Day.

Which African country issued a 100 trillion dollar banknote in 2009 as hyperinflation wrecked its currency?

Zimbabwe redenominated its dollar three times in four years before giving up on it. The 100 trillion notes, worthless when issued, later became popular with collectors.

Peter the Great made Russian men pay a tax, proved by carrying a metal token, to keep which of these?

Beards were taxed from 1698 as part of Peter's drive to bring Russian society in line with Western Europe. Men who paid had to carry a 'beard token' to prove it.

Which flower's rarest bulbs sold for more than a house during a Dutch speculative bubble that burst in 1637?

Tulip mania is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble in history. A single Viceroy bulb was worth upwards of five times the cost of an average house.

Which scientist lost at least £10,000 in the South Sea Bubble while serving as Master of the Mint?

Isaac Newton worked at the Mint for the last three decades of his life, yet the South Sea Company's collapse around 1720 may have cost him more than £20,000.

The Economist has compared the buying power of world currencies since 1986 using the price of which fast-food item?

Big Mac prices began as a semi-humorous guide to exchange rates, dreamed up by the journalist Pam Woodall. Economists now widely cite the index as a real-world test of purchasing power.

Which bird on the back of Canada's one-dollar coin, introduced in 1987, gave the coin its nickname?

Common loon artwork was a late substitute: the 'loonie' was meant to show two men paddling a canoe, but fears of counterfeiting forced a new design for the reverse.

In legend, Lady Godiva rode naked through which English city to free its people from her husband's taxes?

Coventry's legend also gave English the phrase 'Peeping Tom', after the one townsman said to have watched her ride and been struck blind or dead for it.

The world's first cash machine was unveiled by the comedy actor Reg Varney at an Enfield branch of which bank?

Barclays put the machine outside its branch in north London, and a blue plaque on the building now commemorates the world's first cash dispenser.

In which Oliver Stone film does the corporate raider Gordon Gekko declare that greed is good?

Wall Street won Michael Douglas the Best Actor Oscar. His famous line was based on a real speech in which the financier Ivan Boesky said 'Greed is all right'.

Barrett Strong's 'Money (That's What I Want)' was the first hit for which record label founded by Berry Gordy?

Motown's first hit reached number two on the R&B chart in 1960. Its co-writer Janie Bradford was working as the label's receptionist when Gordy played her the half-finished song.

Which pseudonymous creator of bitcoin told a colleague in 2011 of having 'moved on to other things' and then vanished?

Satoshi Nakamoto developed bitcoin and wrote its white paper, then fell silent. Nobody has proved whether the name hides one person or several.

Which Tom Cruise film about a sports agent made a catchphrase of the line 'Show me the money!'?

Jerry Maguire also gave pop culture 'You had me at hello'. The American Film Institute ranks the money line 25th on its list of 100 movie quotes.

Which British band's hit 'Money for Nothing' features Sting singing the line 'I want my MTV'?

Dire Straits gave Sting a co-writing credit on the song: his backing chorus is set to the same notes as the Police hit 'Don't Stand So Close to Me'.

Which Shakespeare moneylender demands a pound of flesh when the merchant Antonio cannot repay a loan?

Shylock is defeated through the efforts of Portia, and Antonio walks free. 'Pound of flesh' has since become slang for any especially onerous obligation.

Which New York financier was turned in by his own sons in 2008 for running the largest known Ponzi scheme?

Bernie Madoff confessed to his sons that the business was 'one big lie'. The fraud was estimated at $65 billion, and a judge gave him the maximum sentence of 150 years.

Which Florence family ran the largest bank in 15th-century Europe and became the city's unofficial rulers?

Medici money came first and power followed: Giovanni di Bicci founded the bank, and his son Cosimo the Elder became unofficial head of the Florentine state in 1434.

Which animal, cast in bronze by Arturo Di Modica, was left without permission outside the New York Stock Exchange?

Bull and truck arrived late one December evening in 1989, and Di Modica left the 7,100-pound statue under a Christmas tree as a gift to New Yorkers.

Which nickname did Union paper dollars earn during the American Civil War from the ink on their reverse side?

Greenbacks were emergency wartime money. Abraham Lincoln signed the First Legal Tender Act in 1862, authorising notes that soon began trading at a discount to gold.

Which symbol sits above the unfinished 13-step pyramid on the back of the US one-dollar bill?

Eye of Providence imagery came to the bill in 1935 as part of the Great Seal. The popular Masonic theory is shaky: Masons took up the eye only years after the seal was created.

Which US coin is the smallest in diameter and the thinnest of all those minted for circulation?

Dime measurements are 17.91 millimetres across and 1.35 millimetres thick, so the ten-cent coin is smaller than the one-cent and five-cent coins that are worth less.

Modern US coins stamped with a small letter D were struck at the branch mint in which city?

Denver inherited its letter from the mint at Dahlonega, Georgia, which had used the same D mark and closed before the Colorado branch opened.

Counterfeit-detector pens mark fake banknotes because their iodine ink reacts with which substance in wood-based paper?

Starch turns the ink black or blue, while genuine notes made from cotton fibre contain none and stay unmarked. Treating a fake with dilute vitamin C can fool the pen.

The baht, which began as a weight of silver cast into bullet-shaped coins, is the currency of which Asian kingdom?

Thailand's baht was a unit of weight before it was a unit of money. Solid silver 'bullet coins' of that weight were probably in use as early as the Sukhothai period.

The real, launched in 1994 under a plan to stabilise a runaway economy, is the currency of which South American country?

Brazil's real replaced the cruzeiro real, a currency that had lasted less than a year and was itself worth 1,000 of the cruzeiros before it.

Which US president ended the dollar's convertibility into gold, effectively closing the Bretton Woods system?

Richard Nixon paired the move with wage and price freezes and a surcharge on imports in August 1971. He said convertibility would return after reforms, but it never did.

A Berlin loaf of bread cost 200 billion marks during the hyperinflation that struck which period of German history?

Weimar Republic prices ran out of control in 1923: the same loaf had cost about 160 marks a year earlier, and by November one US dollar bought 4.2 trillion marks.

The zloty, whose name literally means 'golden', is the currency of which European Union member?

Poland's zloty began as a name for foreign gold coins circulating in the 14th and 15th centuries. Its subunit, the grosz, is a cousin of the old English groat.

The world's oldest modern securities market began in 1602 to trade Dutch East India Company shares in which city?

Amsterdam's exchange grew up around a single stock: a newly chartered company holding a 21-year monopoly on all Dutch trade in Asia.

Which famous Egyptian inscription, carved in three scripts, records a decree cutting taxes for the army and priests?

Rosetta Stone text is largely a political bargain: Ptolemy V cut some taxes and abolished others, and the priests pledged in return to keep his birthday as a temple festival.

The insurance market Lloyd's of London grew out of which kind of business opened by Edward Lloyd in 1686?

Coffee house regulars from the shipping trade met at Lloyd's to arrange marine insurance, and for a time the owner published a newspaper of shipping schedules for them.

Which investment bank filed the largest bankruptcy in US history in September 2008, holding over $600 billion in assets?

Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 after rescue talks failed. The Dow Jones fell more than 4% that day, its biggest points drop since the days after the September 11 attacks.

Which Latin American country became the first in the world to make bitcoin legal tender, in September 2021?

El Salvador's experiment was short-lived: a poll that November found 91% of Salvadorans preferred the US dollar, and bitcoin's legal tender status was rescinded in early 2025.

M-Pesa, the phone-based money transfer service launched by Safaricom in 2007, began in which African country?

Kenya's M-Pesa takes its name from M for mobile and 'pesa', the Swahili word for money. It was aimed at pre-pay phone users who had no bank account.

Which soul group's hit 'For the Love of Money' later became the opening theme of the TV show The Apprentice?

The O'Jays recorded the song for their album Ship Ahoy. It was written by the Philadelphia hitmakers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff with Anthony Jackson.

'The love of money is the root of all evil' comes from a New Testament letter traditionally credited to which apostle?

Paul is the traditional author of the First Epistle to Timothy, where the line appears, though many scholars judge it the work of an unknown writer using his name.

Which country's pengő suffered the highest hyperinflation ever recorded, with prices doubling about every 15 hours?

Hungary scrapped the pengő after the Second World War, swapping 400 octillion of them for a single new forint and striking 29 zeroes off the currency.

Giant limestone discs called rai stones, quarried mainly on Palau, served as money on which Micronesian islands?

Yap islanders treasured the huge stones and used them for important ceremonial gifts, even though the rock itself had to be brought in from other islands.

Ghana's currency, the cedi, takes its name from the Akan word for which sea shell once used as money?

Cowrie shells circulated beside coins and gold on the Gold Coast until 1901, although the money cowry is not native to West African waters and came from the Indian Ocean.

The word 'dollar' descends from the Joachimsthaler, a silver coin first minted in the 1500s in which historic region?

Bohemia's mining town of Joachimsthal, now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic, named the coin. 'Joachimsthaler' was shortened to 'thaler', which other languages bent into 'dollar'.

Which Roman emperor taxed urine from public urinals and, in Suetonius's telling, insisted the money did not smell?

Vespasian is said to have held a gold coin up to his son Titus and asked whether the smell offended him. The story gave Latin the proverb 'pecunia non olet'.

Rogue trader Nick Leeson's hidden losses in Singapore brought down which British merchant bank in 1995?

Barings lost £827 million on Leeson's unauthorised futures bets on the Japanese markets, and the collapsed bank was bought by ING for £1.

The 1792 pact that founded the New York Stock Exchange is named after which tree the brokers traditionally met under?

Buttonwood shade was the traders' usual meeting place on Wall Street. The 24 brokers who signed agreed to deal only with each other and to charge a fixed commission of 0.25%.

The 1944 Bretton Woods conference that shaped the post-war monetary order met at a hotel in which US state?

New Hampshire's Mount Washington Hotel hosted 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations, and the agreements they signed set up the International Monetary Fund.

Charles Ponzi's 1920 scheme promised a 50% profit within 45 days from trading which postal item?

Reply coupons bought cheaply abroad could in principle be redeemed at face value in America. A critic worked out that 160 million would have to exist to cover his investors' money.

The motto 'In God We Trust' first appeared on which short-lived US coin designed by James Longacre?

Two-cent piece production ended when the coin was abolished in 1873 and large quantities were melted, yet since 1938 the motto it introduced has appeared on all American coins.

Which South American country abandoned its sucre in 2000, exchanging 25,000 of them for each US dollar?

Ecuador's old currency, named after the Latin American leader Antonio José de Sucre, lost 67% of its exchange value during 1999 after a financial crisis.

Which country's one-euro coin shows the Vitruvian Man, a figure drawn inside a circle and a square?

Italy put its other euro coin designs to a vote, but the economy minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi had already decided this one would carry Leonardo da Vinci's drawing.