Showing posts with label currency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label currency. Show all posts

December 24 - Yap Constitution Day in Micronesia

  Posted on December 24, 2021


This is an update of my post published on December 24, 2010:






Micronesia is the name given to a group of thousands of small islands in the Pacific Ocean. Nearby are the many islands of Melanesia, Polynesia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.




Many of the islands included in the region called "Micronesia" make up the sovereign nation of the Federated States of Micronesia. One of the country's four states is Yap, which celebrates the writing of its constitution on this day.


One of the things Yap is notable for is its stone money or Rai stones. These disks of calcite are pretty big, compared to most currency such as U.S. coins and bills. The Rai stones wouldn't fit in a wallet or purse. That's because they are from 1 to 12 FEET (30 centimeters to 4 meters) in diameter!!!


The value of the Rai stones depends on their size and their history (most stones were brought from other islands many, many years ago). The least valuable are the smallest - still, a foot-wide disk of stone is not a convenient coin to jingle in one's pocket!

Most of the time, these stones are not moved when ownership changes. People just know who each of the 6,500 stones belong to!

Of course, nowadays the people of Yap use Western-style money. As a matter of fact, they use actual Western currency: the Federated States of Micronesia uses U.S. dollars as its official currency! Still, the Rai stones are used in traditional and ceremonial exchanges and are seen as national symbols.



Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

December 3 - Happy Birthday, Gilbert Stuart

Posted on December 3, 2020


Re-publishing an early entry for December 3:








Born in 1775, Gilbert Stuart was a great American painter famous for his portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other U.S. 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? (Answers below)
  • 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 had pictures of animals, such as a hummingbird, a turtle, and a golden lion tamarin, on the back side of its banknotes.

Canada has had 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.


ANSWERS: Alexander Hamilton ($10 bill) and Benjamin Franklin ($100 bill) were never U.S. Presidents. Harriet Tubman, also never a President, is soon slated to replace former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

May 1 - Constitution Day in the Marshall Islands

Posted on May 1, 2019

The Republic of the Marshall Islands had a signed and officially adopted constitution on this date in 1979.

Even though it is an independent nation, it is considered to have a "free association" with the U.S. - a leftover from World War II, when the U.S. took control of Asian and Polynesian islands occupied by Japan. Micronesia uses the U.S. dollar as its currency (but a lot of nations that AREN'T associated with the U.S. do that, as well).  Other services from the U.S. include defense, subsidies, use of U.S. agencies such as the U.S. Postal Service.


By the way, I mentioned the Marshall Islands using the U.S. dollar - but I just read that the nation is planning to create a new cryptocurrency to also use as legal tender! Wow!

Bitcoin is pretty much the first and most famous cryptocurrency, and there are a few Bitcoin ATMs as well as online and regular old "brick-and-mortar" stores where you can use Bitcoin - a digital, therefore non-physical, kind of money - to buy real, physical objects!


Like, apparently, Subway sandwiches and Microsoft computer software products!


China has banned Bitcoin, and its use to pay for goods and services is illegal in Russia (which I guess means that it is banned there, too?). Several South American nations have banned its use as a currency and also as an investment. 

Other nations, such as the U.S., Canada, and Germany, are much more friendly to Bitcoin - although of course they take efforts to make sure it is not used for money laundering or other illegal purposes! The U.S. Treasury considers Bitcoin a money services business, Canada considers Bitcoin exchanges as bartering, and Germany deals with Bitcoin differently depending on if they are dealing with Bitcoin "miners," investors, users, or companies accepting Bitcoin in exchange for goods and services.

Still, I don't think that any nation has yet developed their own cryptocurrency. Is this the way we are headed? And, if so, is that a good thing?




Also on this date:





(First Wednesday of May)

Plan ahead:


Check out my Pinterest boards for:
And here are my Pinterest boards for:

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)