Guess what, mango?
What's that?
Well, so you may have heard this before, but did you know there's actually a law that states that only dead people can appear on us currency.
You know, I had heard that before. But what's funny is like why did that become a law? Like why was that important enough to put into writing?
It really is, it's weird, And I was wondering the same thing. So I decided to look back at this, and I'm glad that I did because it's it's kind of a weird and fun story. But it goes back to this superintendent of the National Currency Bureau, and it was a guy named Spencer Clark, and this was back in eighteen sixty six, so a long time ago, and he oversaw the creation of what we're called fractional bills.
And I didn't remember a whole lot about these, but these were bills that were not as big as regular ones. They were five cent, ten cent, twenty five cent, and these other denominations. But they were actually made because the nation was dealing with a coin shortage. This was just after the Civil War, and so Congress had asked the Bureau to make a new fractional bill in honor of William Clark. Now this is the Clark from Lewis and Clark fame. But the document that was passed along to
Spencer Clark only said Clark. Now you may notice that he had the same last name. So as a joke, Spencer Clark decided to interpret that as being about himself, and so he actually had the five cent bill made with his own mug on it.
This is not a joke, Spency. That's pretty gutsy. How did this joke go over well? About as well as you could imagine. Congress was not at all please.
So Congressman Russell Thayer successfully pushed to have a law passed that stated that hereafter, no portrait or likeness of any living person shall be engraved or placed on any bond, securities, notes, or postal currency of the United States. So that is why only dead people can appear on money for now.
Because of Frank, I kind of love that.
I do too. And you know, that's really just one of many fun facts about the things that we see on our money, and that's exactly what we're talking about today. So let's dive in. Hey, the podcast listeners, welcome to part time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always, I'm joined by my good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass showing off one of the world's weirdest piggy bangs. It's this green pig and for some reason it says dill piggle on it.
I don't really, I don't get it.
Yeah, I don't get it either, And apparently he isn't alone in this. Like you can actually buy these on eBay. They're marketed as the perfect piggybangs for foodies. For some reason.
That's another weird one from our friends and producer Tristan McNeil. So, Mango, are you ready to talk money?
I am. I was thinking about money this week and I immediately started thinking about Alex p. Keaton from Family Ties. You over him, of course more than like Scrooge McDuck or Richie rich or Gordon Gecko from Wall Street, Like, this is the character I associate with money. And it's all because of one scene that's somehow like stuck in
my head. It's uh. He was talking about how much he loved money, and some other character would throw a coin into a jar and he'd just identify it by the sounds, so he'd be like nickel Quarter doing an episode on money made me think of that, plus saying Kristen's dill pickle bank.
Yeah.
Anyway, I do want to pick up where you left off, and that's what people we find on our dollar bills and specifically presidents. To me, it's pretty interesting that the earliest coins and bills didn't actually have any presidents on them, and that was partially because of George Washington and who
he was. He made it clear he didn't want his image on any currency, despite other people pushing for it, and this actually made sense because the US had obviously been rebelling against the country that liked putting their heads of states on their money, and instead the founding fathers decided to use imagery that they felt symbolized the type
of government that they were aiming to build. So they used things like an American eagle on one side and then a Goddess of Liberty on the other, which is super interesting because you know, while men and mostly white men are on faces of money right now, like at one point, women were better represented on some of our earliest currencies.
So when exactly did president start appearing on our money?
If I tell you this does account as one of my facts.
You know, it's interesting. I'm looking over Tristan and he is nodding pretty aggressively, and he sets the rules around here, so I guess it has to but I feel like it's worth sharing anyway.
So the first president didn't appear on US currency until nineteen oh nine, and that's one hundred and thirty three years after the country was created, and right around one hundred years after Lincoln was born. And that's actually how it all got started. So Teddy Roosevelt was president at the time, and he wanted to find a way to celebrate that anniversary. He'd actually always a close connection to Lincoln.
I don't know if you remember this, but he'd attended Lincoln's funeral procession as it moved through New York City when he was a boy. I think he was six years old at the time. When he became president, he wore a ring that had strands of Lincoln's hair in it.
So when he actually had the power to do so, he had a series of commemorative pennies made in Lincoln's honor, twenty two million of them in fact, and the American public seemed to like them so much that they just stuck around and everyone kept making.
Them, and so that's what started at all, and presidents just started showing up left and right on these coins or what you know.
Surprisingly, it wasn't the floodgate you might imagine. It was actually another twenty three years before another president appeared, and that was Washington on a commemorative quarter in nineteen thirty two, which of course was also a big hit. So the mint just kept making them.
Oh that's interesting, all right, Well, I want to talk for a minute about the ridges on our coins, you know, the ones along the kind of the edge of the coin. And I think most of us have heard that they're there to help prevent counterfeiting, and you know, because it makes it that much more detailed and hard to reproduce. But there's actually a slightly different origin to these ridges
that I've never heard about. So in the earliest days, the US meant coins were actually made of their actual value in gold or silver or whatever precious metal, and so that meant that a five dollars coin was actually
made of five dollars in gold. The problem was that this metal was so valuable that people started just kind of filing it down on the smooth edges of these coins, and then they would sell off the shavings, and this became known as clipping, and so those who were really good at this could actually shave off just enough where people wouldn't notice, and then they could still use those coins.
But that became much harder to pull off as the ridges were put into place, because you know, if somebody shaved off any coin, it would no longer have those ridges. And so you know, even though those coins are no longer made of these same precious metals, some still have these ridges. And it actually turns out that preventing counterfeiting isn't the only reason for that.
Is it just tradition then?
I mean, that's definitely one reason, because it was something that was put in place a long time ago. But one of the others is that it's actually another helpful way for the visually impaired to tell what coin they're holding, because some coins have the ridges and others don't, So for example, you know, dimes have reeds, pennies don't, so it you know, it makes a lot of sense when you think about it, all right, Mengo, So what do you want to talk about next?
Well, I do feel like we have to address the fact that pretty much every bill we get our hands on is disgusting.
And oh, so we do. We have to address this.
So there's this one two thousand and two report in the Southern Medical Journal, and it showed that more than ninety percent of bills tested have some form of a harmful pathogen on them. So we're talking about stuff like staphylococcus and other gross things. And the same study actually showed that most bills have at least trace amounts of fecal matter on them, which is also wonderful.
I'm never using anything but a credit card ever.
Again, it feels like it whised to like wash your hands after using dollar bills. But that's not all it's it's wild that one study back in the late nineties found that somewhere around eighty percent of bills in circulation, eighty percent had trace amounts of cocaine on them.
Oh that is wild. So of like all bills they have this. That's so disgusting.
It is, but you know, it's definitely more some types of bills than others. It turns out, if you really want to avoid a hint of cocaine on your bills. It's best to use ones and fives over tens and twenties.
Okay, well, that's something I'll keep in mind. Right. Well, here's something I hadn't paid much attention to. But have you seen the spiky circle that's on the right side of Washington on the one dollar bill. Yeah, this is actually the seal of the Treasury, and it's one part of the dollar bill that has actually had to change a little bit over the years because the number of spikes is intended to match the number of states in
the Union. So they're now, of course fifty there. But this is definitely not the number you find most represented on our bills. So have you noticed that there is a bit of an obsession with the number thirteen? So the shield and the Treasury seal that I just mentioned has thirteen stars to represent the thirteen original colonies, but there are so many more reminders that we have these
thirteen original colonies. There are thirteen stars above the eagles head, thirteen stripes on the shield in front of the eagle, thirteen arrows in one of the eagles talons, thirteen leaves with thirteen olive branches, and something I had not heard before, and that's the fact that there are thirteen letters in Eploribus Unham.
That is strange. You know, as soon as you said the number thirteen, I wasn't thinking thirteen colonies. I was just thinking, like, how unlucky the number thirteen is. And it is funny that it's just like blasted all over our bills. That's crazy. So here's a weird one. We all know. Andrew Jackson is on the twenty dollars bill. There's been all this hubbub whether he should be there, like or whether we can take him off. I know we've talked about replacing him with Harriet Tubman recently, or
someone just less horrible than he is. But there's this weird thing about having Jackson on the bill, and also that people are fighting to keep him there. And it's that Jackson didn't believe in paper money, Like, yeah, he actually used his farewell address as president to blast the idea of paper currency, claiming it had no intrinsic value and that it would quote render property insecure and wages
unsteady and uncertain. So, you know, having him on the twenties almost like having Richard Nixon on your soup labels, which I know is a weird reference, but he didn't believe in soup and he had a band from the White House. Wow.
I wasn't expecting you to bring soup into this. But all right, well we've each got one more fact to share, but before we get to those, let's take a quick break.
Welcome back part time Genius, where we're talking about things we find on our money. So far, we found cocaine, we found the number thirteen a lot. But yeah, I know, during the break you mentioned that you had a fact about that Latin motto e pluribus unham, which I think we all learned in school means out of many one. But that wasn't your last factor, was it.
Well, no, mago, come on, I got better stuff than that. But all right, well this is just one more reference to the original thirteen colonies, as we mentioned. But what I found funny was that the founding fathers may have actually borrowed this phrase from a popular magazine. It wasn't
something that they actually came up with themselves. So there was this British periodical that started back in seventeen thirty two and it ran for nearly two centuries, and it was called gentleman's magazine, and it's not as dirty as it sounds. So anyway, on every issue was this phrase e pluribus unham. But in this case, this was actually referring to the fact that so many articles were coming from so many different sources but all brought together into
one publication. So it kind of makes sense why they would say this. So as gentlemen's magazines started gaining popularity in the colonies, it seems very possible that they were actually inspired by this phrase, and so that may be where it came from. Anyway. All right, mango, so what is your last factor of the day.
Well, I like that you spotted plagiarism basically on our bellor bills. That's pretty amazing. So I think I'm gonna end with the fact about the two signatures you see on every print bill here in the US. One is from the treasurer of the United States and one's from the Secretary of the Treasury.
Wait, so those aren't the same thing.
No, So the treasure actually advises the Secretary about various currency but it's the Secretary that makes the final calls. And the current Secretary of the Treasury is Steve Munuchian, He's actually the seventy seventh person to hold this title, and every one of them has been a man. But this is the more interesting part. The current treasure is
Jovita Kranza or Jovita Karanza. I might be pronouncing that wrong, but she's actually the forty fourth person in this position, and it's actually only been held by women for the past seven decades, dating back to Harry Truman appointing the first female in this role.
That's so weird. So only men in one role and only women for the past seven decades. It feels like just another reminder of how weird people are about gender stuff, isn't it.
Yeah. In fact, Jennifer Lawless, who's the director of the Women in Politics and Student at American University, she actually said this about it quote. Once there's a woman appointed in a position, it's easy to assume that position is one that could be filled by a woman. Once an initial ceiling is broken, once an initial piece of progress is made, there's a tendency to continue down that path.
All right, Well, here's to a woman holding the position of Secretary of Treasury at some point in the not too distant future. I feel like mego for that little reminder of just how weird people are. I feel like I need to give you today's trophy.
Well I will take it because I feel like I haven't earned a trophy in a little bit. But from Tristan Gabe Wilhelmy, thank you so much for listening.