The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 19, May 5, 2002, Article 12

ASIMOV'S COIN FACTS

  A friend forwarded the following item from Microsoft's
  Encarta encyclopedia.
  http://encarta.msn.com/column/howtomake67billion.asp

  Isaac Asimov, the scientist and science fiction writer, was
  also a great collector of facts. He gathered some very
  interesting ones about money.  You might think, for example,
  that coins were the first kind of money humans used.  But
  you'd be wrong. We actually wrote checks first. According
  to Asimov, ancient Babylonians inscribed checks on clay
  tablets and used them as their currency.

  And that's not all:

      · The first United States silver coins came from Martha
         Washington's silver service.

      · No banks existed in the colonies before the American
        Revolution. You had to borrow from an individual.

      · In 1895, J. P. Morgan and the Rothschilds saved the
        gold reserve of the U.S. Treasury with a $65-million loan
        -- in gold, no less.

      · The town of Tenino, Washington, issued wooden
        money in 1932. Made of Sitka spruce, the wooden coins
        were worth 25 cents, 50 cents and $1.  They didn't make
        any wooden nickels, though."

  [Most E-Sylum readers will be familiar with some of these,
   and undoubtably some of you will some of dispute them.
   But it's always interesting to see what the outsides pick up
   on in our hobby.  -Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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