December 13 - A Real, Historical WOMAN - on MONEY!!

  Posted on December 13, 2021

This is an update of my post published on December 13, 2010:

Have you ever thought about the design of money? Somebody gets paid to decide whose face appears on coins and bills, and what words and other pictures adorn the two sides. Somebody gets paid to decide on the size and composition and color of coins.

And sometimes those somebodies make mistakes.

The Susan B. Anthony dollar was the first U.S. coin to present a portrait of a real woman.  On the reverse side, a picture of an eagle flying over the moon honored the Eagle lander of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Susan B. Anthony was a hero in the cause of women's
rights - especially women's right to vote!

What not-so-real woman appeared on earlier coins? Answer below.



Today is the anniversary of the production of the Susan B. Anthony dollar, in 1978.

This coin was one of the most unpopular coins in history. Many people got one or two and stuck them away as keepsakes—but then avoided getting or using the coin any further. In other words, the coin barely circulated. Why was it so unpopular?

It was almost the exact same size as a quarter, and it was silver like a quarter.

Coin designers wanted to make the coin different by making it an eleven-sided coin rather than a round coin—a hendecagon—but vending machines would have had a difficult time with a non-round coin, so the designers just drew the hendecagon picture on the obverse and reverse sides of the coin and used the same reeded edge used for quarters.

With the same size, color, and edge as quarters, is it any surprise that the coin was easily confused for quarters? People didn't like being confused, and they lost money every time they made a mistake with the new coin—again, is it any surprise the coin was unpopular?

Four quarters makes a dollar...
But...wait!

Even the U.S. Mint had problems distinguishing the “Susie Bs” (as collectors refer to the coin) and quarters!

The Susan B. Anthony dollars were only minted a few years. 

Do you know the design on the next dollar coin, released in 2000? 

What made that coin different from quarters (and Susie Bs)?

Answers:

What not-so-real woman appeared on coins earlier than the Susan B. Anthony dollar? 

Lady Liberty.

There have been quite a few coins that feature
Lady Liberty - and she has looked very different
from coin to coin!

The latest version of Lady Liberty is Black.

Do you know the design on the next dollar coin, released in 2000? 

Sacagawea and her baby on the obverse, and an eagle on the reverse.

What made that coin different from quarters (and Susan B's)? 

Gold color and plain edges.

More...

Interested in coin collecting? Get some info here.

 

Also on this date:

 Republic Day in Malta 

 Artist Emily Carr's birthday

 Anniversary of a prophecy

 by Dickens

 Saint Lucia Day in  Scandinavian countries

 

 Anniversary of Tasman's “discovery” of New Zealand

 Anniversary of the invention of Simon  Beck's Snow Art

 Anniversary of the last (so far) Moonwalk

December 3, 2009

Happy Birthday, Gilbert Stuart


















Born in 1775, Stuart was a great
American painter famous for his portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other Presidents.

Above is his most famous portrait, called The Athenaeum, which is a portrait of Washington.

...It was never completed, although he and his daughters painted more than 130 reproductions of it, which they sold for US $100 each.

...And it has been on the US $1 bill for almost the entire lifetime of the $1 bill.

Money

Did you know that...

• The first US $1 bill had a portrait of Salmon P. Chase.

Who the heck was Salmon P. Chase?

He was the Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln at the time when the bill was first issued, 1862. In 1869 the dollar bill was redesigned to have the Stuart portrait of Washington.

• The first woman to appear on US money was Martha Washington, who was featured on a $1 “silver certificate” in 1886.

• Today the US only prints bills up to $100 in value, but there used to be bills for $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $100,000!

Seems like Monopoly money, huh?

Whose pictures were on these high-denomination bills?

$500: William McKinley (25th President)
$1,000: Grover Cleveland (22nd & 24th President)
$5,000: James Madison (4th President)
$10,000: Salmon P. Chase
Hey, there's that guy again!
$100,000: Woodrow Wilson (28th President)

When the $100,000 bill came out in 1934, the US dollar was worth a lot more than it is now. According to Wikipedia, that much money in 1934 would be the equivalent of $1,591,521 today!

Can you imagine holding a piece of paper worth more than one and a half million dollars?

• There are two US bills now in use that have portraits of people who were NOT presidents. Do you know who they are?

• Money around world tends to have portraits of important citizens, words, symbols or national “seals,” and pictures (often of things that have to do with the person honored).

Brazil has pictures of animals, such as a hummingbird, a turtle, and a golden lion tamarin, on the back side of its banknotes.

Canada has pictures of children playing, art, and a map on the back side of some of its banknotes.

You can check out just about every kind of money here.

• The money from Ecuador used to be called sucres, and 5 or 6 sucres equaled one US dollar. However, the sucre lost so much value in the 1980s that, by 1990, you needed 800 of them to get US $1!

Then it got worse.

By 1999, it cost 25,000 sucres to get just one US dollar!

So now Ecuador uses US dollars as its official currency.

You can see how your country's currency stacks up to other money from around the world here. (For example, type an amount of US dollars and see how many Euros that is worth.)

Play Money!

There are printable $1, $2, $5, and $10 bills from around the world here.