10th March: Money Day

Today is Money Day - so here are ten things you possibly didn't know about money. 

1. The oldest “money” ever found consists of small pieces of obsidian, used in Turkey as far back as 12,000 B.C.
2. The Romans made their coins in the temple of Juno Moneta, the goddess of marriage and women. From her name, we get the words “money” and "mint".
3. Queen Elizabeth II holds the record for appearing on more currency than any other person. Her portrait has appeared on the currency of over 30 different countries.
4. According to JK Rowling, the exchange rate between the 'wizarding' and 'muggle' worlds is approximately £5 to one Galleon. Galleons are frequently counterfeited - usually by leprechauns, whose coins will vanish a few hours after appearing. One Galleon is made up of 17 Sickles - one Sickle being 29 Knuts.
5. Governments will sometimes infuse counterfeit money into an enemy’s currency to wreck their financial system. Germany did it to England in WWII and the Americans did it to the Japanese. Which is probably why the most forgeries of US dollar bills nowadays originate in North Korea.
6. Julius Caesar was the first living ruler to put his head on a coin. Before this, ancestors, family members, animals and previous rulers would appear on coinage. It is not known why he started doing it, although vanity seems a likely reason.
7. Tossing coins dates back to Roman times when flipping a coin was seen as the expression of divine will. Why do we say "heads or tails" when tossing a coin? While one side generally has a head on it, the other side rarely if ever depicts an animal. The expression may have stemmed from the German game, Kopf oder Zahl (head or number) and "tails" is a common mispronunciation of the word 'zahl'. In Roman times they'd call navia aut caput (ship or head).
8. Don't try this at home: one record which doesn't feature in the Guinness Book of World Records  is coin swallowing. It was held by a British man who managed to swallow ten pennies. This was unofficially broken by Liang Yuxin of China, who claims he can swallow eleven coins.
9. Only 8% of all the “money” around the world is actual physical cash. The rest is digital money that exists only on computers. Don't believe that? Think about how often people buy and sell things online, get paid directly into a bank account, and use online banking. Then, it's less surprising that digital currency makes up the vast majority of all cash around the world today.
10. The currency which is most likely to be forged is the pound sterling. According to the central banks, there are 300 fake notes in every one million sterling notes, compared to 100 for the US dollar, 50 for the Euro and 10 for the Swiss franc.

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