Banquet

Remains of the oldest known banquet were found in a cave in Israel in 2010. The feast dating back to around 10,000 BC, included 71 tortoises roasted in their shells. Archaeologists believe they were eaten during the funeral of an elderly woman of status.

Food and drink had a special importance for the ancient Greeks. Hospitality was a much valued virtue, when the head of the house was entertaining, female slaves ground the corn and prepared the food. The host then cooked the meal sometimes with the help of friends. Any visiting stranger was seated in the best place and it was customary to offer him, before the meal, a bath or foot wash.

Ancient Greek men liked to attend banquets called symposia, a continuation of dinner in which cheeses, fresh and dried fruit, salted cakes and yoghurt in honey were served.

The Greeks believed that mealtime offered an opportunity to nourish the spirit as well as the body. They reclined on couches while eating with poetry, lyre playing and dancing in the background.

After defeating Pompey and his sons Julius Caesar was awarded a ten-year dictatorship. To celebrate his victory over his rival, Caesar gave a banquet at which 150,000 guests were seated at 22,000 tables. It lasted for two days.

The Egyptian Queen. Cleopatra, once gave a lavish banquet for Mark Antony at Alexandra. The Roman expressed his surprise at the outlay involved. Cleopatra, to impress him further, took a pearl eardrop and dissolved it in vinegar to prove she could consume a fortune in a single meal.

Before eating at a Roman aristocrat’s banquet, the guests changed their clothes putting on a woolen tunic provided for this purpose. The dishes were presented first to the master of the house, accompanied by music and a servant executing a dance step. Meanwhile the guests, both men and women, ate reclining.

Roman banquets were livened up by performances by acrobats, dancers, flute players and theatrical performances. Knives and spoons were only occasionally used, most people ate with their fingers despite the prevalence of sticky sauces.

Banquets for the Roman gentry could be bloody affairs. A cook who dished up under-done meat would be stripped and beaten.

Wealthy Roman aristocrats used ice mixed with seaweed to keep fresh fish (they transported ice from the mountains near Rome) along with salt. They then staged lavish banquets where as many as a hundred types of fish could be served.

When a Roman aristocrat had eaten his fill at a banquet, he would get a slave to dangle a feather down his throat so that he could be sick and make room for more food.

Belching at the table was a sign of politeness at Roman banquets.

In 115 BC, the Roman senate tried to ban the eating of dormice, oysters and imported birds at banquets — in an attempt to curb the excessive lifestyles of the upper classes.

In his golden palace, Nero possessed a spectacular dining room in which there was a revolving ceiling which turns day and night, in time with the sky. He had pipes installed under banquet plates to allow his guests to be spitzed with rose scent between courses.

In medieval Japan, it was considered a major social faux pas to eat the food served at banquets, Instead, the diner was expected to just look and appreciate its beauty before cramming as much as you could into their sleeves or pockets to eat later.

After returning to Venice with his father and uncle after 25 years of adventures in China, Marco Polo’s relatives have failed to recognize the strangely clad, ragged folk in their tartar crimson satin robes, who told wild tales about numerous jewels and treasures. So the Polos invited them to a banquet. They entered dressed in their satin robes, before discarding them for damask then for velvet. Finally they slit open their garments and out fell precious Chinese stones, which they presented to their guests.

During the Hundred Years War, Edward the Black Prince was relaxing with his lords when the captured John the Good, the French king, was brought in. He politely invited the French regal prisoner into his tent where they discussed the current state of the battle at Poitiers over a few vessels of wine. Edward then entertained John and some of his leading men at a banquet, the Prince personally served his royal foe at his table, before the French king was sent off to London.

Anne Boleyn had a rather off-putting habit, first observed during her coronation banquet, of vomiting during meals. So one of her ladies in waiting had to hold up a sheet to shield her from other diners at appropriate moments.

The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe died in 1601, several days after his bladder burst during a banquet. It has been said that to leave the banquet before it concluded, would be "the height" of bad manners, and so he remained until his bladder exploded.

At a state banquet hosted by Charles I of England, his French chef, Gerald Tirsain, developed a delicious new variation of flavored snow. Milk, cream and eggs had been added to make it much creamier and sweeter than any other iced dessert, The guests were delighted, as was Charles who summoned the cook, and had him promise to keep the recipe for his frozen cream secret. The King wanted the delicacy only at the Royal Table and offered him £500 a year to keep it that way.

It wasn’t until the 1670s that the fork began to achieve general popularity as an eating implement. Before then at European banquets hands were still being used to serve much of the food, even though the servants were only using their fingertips.

Peter the Great, the Emperor of all Russia, ate simple food and had lousy table manners, regularly trampling across the banquet table, treading on dishes and cutlery with his unwashed feet. However he laid on lavish banquets, modelled on the splendor of Versailles. He preferred to be seated near the door so he could slip away early.

The largest banquet in history was in around 1730 when King August II fed some 30,000 people at a military feast in Radewitz, Poland.

The drink of champagne was made popular by a magnificent banquet thrown by the Marquis of Sillery in France in the middle of the eighteenth century. Once his party had got going, some girls dressed as ancient Greeks celebrating Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, appeared on the floor carrying flower-wreathed bottles of the new drink. The corks were popped and the fizzy wine was poured into unusually large glasses especially made for the occasion.

George IV's coronation banquet in Westminster Hall on July 19, 1821 was perhaps history's most lavish meal, costing the equivalent of £20 million. Turtle soup was followed by salmon, turbot, and trout, venison and veal, mutton and beef, braised ham and savory pies, daubed geese and braced capon, lobster and crayfish, cold roast fowl and cold lamb, potatoes, peas and cauliflower. There were over 1,000 sides dishes, nearly 500 sauce boats brimming with lobster sauce, butter sauce and mint. Peers lobbed whole chickens up to their famished families who were gathered above.

George IV coronation banquet

In ancient Hawaii it was forbidden for men to eat with women and the fair sex were not allowed to eat certain food. The taboo was broken in 1819 when King Kamehameha II held a banquet where he ate with women. They named this festive dinner a Luau.

Queen Victoria was a famously fast eater, often getting through seven courses - 50 dishes - in less than half an hour, which meant many of the guests at a banquet barely got a mouth full.

Mark Twain once quipped "A banquet is probably the most fatiguing thing in the world except ditch digging. It is the insanest of all recreations.”

When he was Papal Nunco to France, the future Pope John XXIII was invited to a banquet. His dinner partner wore an extremely low cut dress, which the prelate affected not to notice. During the meal when dessert was offered however, he selected an apple and offered it to the lady. She refused…he urged “please take it madam. It was only after Eve ate the apple that she became aware of how little she had on.”

When a US President eats at a foreign state banquet, his food is actually prepared and served by White House stewards, who call the hosts ahead of time to find out what everyone will be having.

Sources Radio Times, Food For Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World by Ed Pearce

Battle of Bannockburn

The Battle Of Bannockburn was fought on June 23-24 1314 at Bannockburn, Scotland, between Robert (I) the Bruce, King of Scotland, and Edward II of England.

The battle began when the Scottish forces intercepted an army commanded by King Edward II , which was en route to the relief of a besieged English stronghold, Stirling Castle.

Edward II, attempting to relieve Stirling Castle, led over 2,000 knights and 15,000 foot soldiers, including about 5,000 archers. Bruce had only 500 light cavalry and some 7,000 foot soldiers.

After inconclusive skirmishing between patrols of the two armies, the English forces crossed the stream known as the Bannockburn during the night, establishing their position on the plain beyond it. the Edward's forces launched a mass attack, led by cavalry, on the Scottish positions. The maneuver was badly executed, leaving Edward's knights in boggy ground and the archers out of position in the rear. Bruce blocked the English advance with tightly packed formations of pikemen, then, as the archers tried to deploy, charged with his cavalry and routed them.

This depiction from the Scotichronicon (c.1440) is the earliest known image of the battle

The victorious Bruce attributed his success to the relic of the Scottish Saint, St. Fillan, which he took into battle. He declared it was the Saint’s intercession that gave him victory.

Robert Burns' "Scots Wae Nae" was inspired by Bruce's marching song "Hey Tutti Taitie" which was sung by his troops during Bannockburn.

The defeat of the English led to the independence of Scotland.

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2012. Helicon Publishing is division of RM.

Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks was born in Argyll Street, Soho, London on February 24, 1743. His parents were William Banks, a rich Lincolnshire country squire and member of the House of Commons, and his wife Sarah, daughter of William Bate.

His father died in 1761, and when Banks reached the age of 21, he inherited the large estate of Revesby Abbey, in Lincolnshire, becoming the local squire and magistrate, and dividing his time between Lincolnshire and London.

Because of his wealth, Banks was able to indulge his interest in science; he was a passionate and skillful botanist and this took him on several major expeditions at his own expense.

Sir Joseph Banks, as painted by Joshua Reynolds in 1773

In 1768 Banks learned that the British explorer James Cook planned to sail to the south Pacific in the Endeavour to observe the transit of Venus and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown southern land". He joined the expedition, which lasted three years, with his staff of eight, and returned with a large collection of new specimens to find himself a celebrity.

The voyage was the first to be organized and equipped for biological work, even though the Government's secret plan was political - to secure a territorial advantage over the French.

On board the Endeavour there were 17 sheep, 4 South sea Hogs, an English boar, its sow and a litter of piglets.

Banks' collection and classification of biological specimens as a member of the expedition helped establish botany as an academic discipline.

Banks was the first European to report a description of a kangaroo.

He brought back 1300 new plant species and is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him, Banksia.

It was Banks who suggested the idea that Botany Bay in Australia would form a suitable penal settlement.

Banks did much to establish the Botanic Garden at Kew, which he planned as a major collecting center and source of advice on all aspects of plants.

Banks was invested as a Knight of the Order of the Bath (KB) on July 1, 1795 .

Joseph Banks died on June 19, 1820 in Spring Grove House, Isleworth, London, and was buried at St Leonard's Church, Heston.

Source Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999.

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is the legal process by which the property of a person unable to pay debts is taken away and divided rateably among his or her creditors, after preferential payments such as taxes and wages. 

More than 90 percent of bankruptcy proceedings are voluntary. They are initiated by the debtor, who files a petition with the appropriate federal court. A bankruptcy trustee then collects and liquidates the debtor’s non-exempt property for the benefit of the unsecured creditors.

Until ‘discharged’, a bankrupt is severely restricted in financial activities. When ‘discharged' he or she becomes free of most debts dating from the time of bankruptcy.

Debtors who were unable to meet their financial obligations were harshly treated under the legal systems of most countries until relatively recent times. During one period in ancient Rome, creditors were entitled literally to divide a debtor’s body or to enslave debtors and their families. 

The word “bankrupt” is from the Italian "banca rotta," which literally means “broken bench."

In the 16th century, moneylenders often conducted their business on benches outdoors. The word “bankrupt” is from the Italian "banca rotta," which literally means “broken bench."

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) (style of) - A Hand Holding an Empty Purse,

The Statute of Bankrupts of 1542 was the first statute under English law dealing with bankruptcy or insolvency.

Under the laws of England in the reign of King James I (1603–25), debtors who were unable satisfactorily to explain their inability to pay were placed in the public pillory. Debtors might be put to death if their failure to pay their creditors was due to fraudulent practices. 

With the development of more sophisticated trade and commercial practices, steps were taken to ameliorate the condition of defaulting debtors. Since the late 19th century, bankruptcy legislation in the United States has evolved to permit persons who are unable to pay their unsecured debts to be discharged from that responsibility if they were willing to liquidate their nonexempt property for ratable distribution among unsecured creditors.

On November 18, 1760 Castellania, the rebuilt debtors' prison in Valletta, Malta, received its first prisoners. Since then, increased lenience around bankruptcy laws have made prison terms for unaggravated indigence illegal over most of the world.

Troop Sport, a popular streetwear brand in the late '80s went bankrupt in 1990 because of fake rumors that it was owned by the he Ku Klux Klan.

The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving the Houston, Texas-based energy firm Enron Corporation. On December 2, 2001, less than two months after disclosing accounting violations, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, evaporating nearly $11 billion in shareholder wealth. Its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen – then one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world – was effectively dissolved.

The boxer Mike Tyson declared bankruptcy in 2003, despite having received over $30 million for several of his fights and $300 million during his career.

In 2008 Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States . On September 15, 2008, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the exodus of most of its clients, drastic losses in its stock, and devaluation of assets by credit rating agencies.  It was the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history and is thought to have played a major role in the unfolding of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. 

Following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual 11 days later, The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 777.68 points on Se4ptember 29, 2008, the largest single-day point loss in its history. 

On July 18, 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, in light of the city's $18.5 billion debt and its inability to fully repay its thousands of creditors.

On May 3, 2017, Puerto Rico filed for bankruptcy after a massive debt and weak economy. It was the largest local government bankruptcy case in American history.

In most American states, a wedding ring is exempt by law from inclusion among the assets in a bankruptcy estate. This means that a wedding ring cannot be seized by creditors, no matter how much the bankrupt person owes.

Up to 80% of US lottery winners file for bankruptcy within five years.

Source Funk & Wagnall's Enyclopedia

Bank Robber

HISTORY

The first bank robbery in United States history took place during the night of Saturday, August 31 or the morning hours of Sunday, September 1, 1798. An enormous sum of $162,821 was stolen from vaults of the Bank of Pennsylvania at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia. The robbers were Isaac Davis, a member of the Carpenters' Company and a partner, who died of yellow fever within days of the crime. Confronted with questions about his sudden wealth, Davis was promised a pardon in return for full disclosure and full restitution. He apparently never served a day in prison.

Edward Smith was the first indicted bank robber in the U.S. On March 19, 1831, Smith stole $245,000 from the City Bank of New York, using a set of copied keys. He spent $60,000 before he was caught and sentenced to five years hard labor on the rock pile at Sing Sing Prison.

The Tiflis bank robbery was an armed robbery of a bank stagecoach on June  26, 1907 in the city of Tiflis (now Georgia's capital, Tbilisi). The robbery was organized by a number of top-level Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, and executed by a party of revolutionaries led by Stalin's early associate Ter-Petrosian (Kamo). The robbers attacked a bank stagecoach and surrounding police and military using bombs and guns while the stagecoach was transporting money through Yerevan Square (now Freedom Square) between the post office and the Tiflis branch of the State Bank of the Russian Empire. They escaped with 341,000 rubles (equivalent to around $3.86 million in 2017).

The first armed robbery using a "getaway car" took place in Paris on December 21, 1911 when four members of the Bonnot Gang used a Delaunay-Belleville automobile they had stolen a week before to escape after robbing a courier who was bringing cash to the Société Générale Bank. They got booty equal to 5,126 francs, but the rest of it was composed of securities.

The first robbery by Bonnot's Gang on December 21, 1911

Because of a 1700% increase in bank robberies during the Great Depression, the Texas Bankers Association created the Dead Bank Robbers Reward Program. They paid $5000 to anyone who killed a robber during the crime, no questions asked.

Willie Sutton (June 30, 1901 – November 2, 1980) was an American bank robber, who during his forty-year robbery career he stole an estimated $2 million. He never robbed a bank with a loaded gun because he didn’t want anyone to get hurt, and allegedly never robbed a bank when a woman screamed or a baby cried. He eventually spent more than half of his adult life in prison and escaped three times.

Bank robber John Wojtowicz plotted some of his robbery based on scenes in  the 1972 Al Pacino-starring movie, The Godfather. Al Pacino later went on to play Wojtowicz in the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon based on the robbery.

On January 22, 1976, a guerrilla force blasted into the vaults of the British Bank of the Middle East in Bab Idriss, cleaning out the contents of the safe deposit. The boxes of cash and other valuables were estimated by former finance minister Lucien Dahdah at $50 million. It was one of the most lucrative bank robberies in history, occurring during the worst civil unrest period ever in Beirut, Lebanon.

Jonathan Hensleigh, the writer of the 1995 movie Die Hard With a Vengeance, was interrogated by the FBI over his screenplay. The plot Hensleigh devised to rob the bank was so plausible, the FBI wanted to know where he got his information.

In 1995 a bank robber in Florida was asked to wait while the cash he demanded was brought. He waited 20 minutes to find police waiting outside.

On March 18, 2003 approximately US$920 million to US$1 billion in cash was stolen from the Central Bank of Iraq in March 2003. The robbery was carried out by Saddam Hussein's son Qusay, who used a handwritten note from his father to order the withdrawal of the money. The robbery took place shortly after the United States began the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  It was the single most lucrative bank robbery in history, though roughly $650 million was later recovered by U.S. forces from palaces linked to Saddam. Hundreds of millions more were never definitively accounted for. It is believed that the money was used to fund Saddam Hussein's regime and to pay for the insurgency against the United States.

The largest ever bank robbery involved thieves digging a 256 foot-long tunnel 13 foot below street level, which ended directly underneath the Banco Central in Fortaleza, Brazil, on August 6, 2005. The thieves seized 3.5 tons of bank notes worth about R$ 160 million. In the aftermath of the burglary, of the 25 persons thought to be involved, just eight had been arrested, and about R$20 million recovered. While the Iraqi Central Bank robbery in 2003 involved a larger sum of money, it's important to note that the circumstances were significantly different, with the Iraqi robbery being more of a political heist than a traditional bank robbery.

Carlos Hector Flomenbaum was a successful businessman who gained the trust of the ABN Amro bank in Antwerp's diamond center  by bringing the workers chocolates. He was eventually given VIP access to the bank vault. holders. Sometime between March 2 and March 5, 2007, he walked out of the bank with 120,000 carats of diamonds worth about $28 million and vanished.

In December 2014, a guy dressed as Santa Claus robbed a bank in San Francisco. The robbery took place during “Santacon”, an annual event in which hundreds of people dressed as Santa swarm Union Square.

In 2016 there was an attempted bank robbery in Brazil where the perpetrators wrapped themselves in aluminium foil. They believed the aluminium foil would somehow shield them from detection by the bank's security system, perhaps thinking it would block heat signatures or disrupt motion sensors.

The Flaw: Unfortunately for them, aluminium foil doesn't have those properties and they were easily spotted by the bank's internal security cameras.

Joey Cramer, who starred in the movie Flight of the Navigator as a child, robbed a Scotiabank outlet in Sechelt, British Columbia, Canada, in 2016. He wanted to get sent to prison in order to get himself off drugs and save his own life. On August 31, 2016, Cramer was sentenced to a custodial term of two years less a day. 

FUN BANK ROBBER FACTS

"Sutton's Law", which states "that when diagnosing, one should consider the obvious" is named after the famous American bank robber, Willie Sutton. When Sutton was asked "Why do you rob banks?" he replied, "Because that’s where the money is."

Andre Stander, a South African policeman and criminal, robbed banks on his lunch break and often returned as the investigating officer.

The world's oldest convicted bank robber is J.L. Hunter Rountree. At the age of 91 he stole $1,999 (£1,243) from a Texas bank. He was sentenced to 151 months and died in prison a year later.

A man tried to rob two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras.

A bank robbery that takes place out of office hours is classed as a mere burglary in the United Kingdom.

Every day, 20 banks are robbed and an average of $2,500 is taken.

Half of all bank robberies take place on a Friday.

The most common time for a bank robbery is Friday, between 9 and 11 a.m. The least likely time is Wednesday, between 3 and 6 p.m.

Sources US History,  http://www.greatfacts.com/

Bank Note

BANK NOTE HISTORY

Development of the banknote began with the Chinese T'ang Dynasty of (618-907AD) with local issues of paper currency, but it wasn't until 1661 that a bank (Stockholms Banco of Sweden) issued banknotes.

By 960 the Song Dynasty, short of copper for striking coins, issued the first generally circulating paper money.

A Yuan dynasty printing plate and banknote with Chinese and Mongol words.

One of the oddities which struck Marco Polo most forcibly during his travels in the Far East was the use of bank notes. The Italian gave a fascinating description of government officials stamping the notes with a cinnabar seal.

The term "bank note" comes from the notes of the bank ("nota di banco") and dates from the 14th century.

The first banknotes in Europe were issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco on July 15, 1661.These banknotes became popular very quickly simply as they were much easier to carry than the large copper daler, especially for making large payments (a note could be sent in an envelope - previously the large coins had to be transported by horse and cart).

The first paper money in Europe, issued by the Stockholms Banco 

The colony of Massachusetts issued the first paper money in America on February 3, 1690. It was a temporary experiment of banknote issue carried out by Sir William Phips as the Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay to help fund the war effort against France.

The Bank of England issued the first one-pound banknotes on March 2, 1797. They were introduced after a series of runs on the bank caused by the French Revolutionary War drained its bullion reserves and forced it to use paper instead. The notes would continue to be printed until the end of 1984 when the bank opted to phase in the pound coin instead. The pound note was still legal tender in the United Kingdom until March 1988.

Joseph Bramah (1748-1814) was a very prolific inventor, best known for coming up with the hydraulic press. In 1806 he invented a machine for printing bank-notes with sequential serial numbers.

Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was concerned about a proposal by Robert Peel's government banning the circulation of all bank notes below £5 in Scotland, (a law had recently been passed banning them in England), which would have meant the disappearance of the much loved Scottish £1 note. So he wrote a series of letters, called the letters of Malachi Malagrowther, which were published in the Edinburgh Weekly News in 1826, that stressed the importance of Scottish banknotes as part of the Scottish financial system and as an example of Scottish identity. Sir Walter generated such a furor that the government was forced to back down and to this day portraits of him appear on the front of all notes issued by the Bank of Scotland.

Andrew Jackson, who appears on the United States' twenty-dollar bill, was hugely opposed to paper money. This was because during his presidency paper money was printed by individual banks, and their value could fluctuate greatly. Some of it was worthless, and Jackson felt bankers were abusing the citizenry.

Bank notes were originally handwritten and were not fully printed until the 1850s.

The Green Ink used in American currency was invented by a Canadian in 1857. Using chromium trioxide, it is difficult to reproduce by counterfeiters and cannot be destroyed by acid.

President Abraham Lincoln signed the “First Legal Tender Act” on February 25, 1862, in an effort to conserve metal for the American Civil War and to generate much-needed funds. The Act authorized issuance of paper money, United States Notes, to finance the war without raising taxes.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury first issued paper U.S. currency on March 10, 1862 to make up for the shortage of coins and to finance the U.S. Civil War.  The denominations available were $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500, and $1,000.

By the end of the U.S. Civil War, 33 percent of all U.S. paper currency in circulation was counterfeit. This was a devastating situation for a nation struggling to recover economically from such a destructive war. On July 5, 1865, the Secret Service was created as a part of the Department of the Treasury to help suppress counterfeit currency.

The 1896 silver certificate series of American banknotes, also known as the Educational Series (see below), depicted various allegorical motifs and are considered by some numismatists to be the most beautiful monetary designs ever produced by the United States. They were redeemable for their face value of silver dollar coins.

This $2 banknote below features the motif Science presenting steam and electricity to Commerce and Manufacture, designed by Edwin H. Blashfield, on its obverse. On the reverse are portraits of Robert Fulton and Samuel Morse.

Wikipedia

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US government overprinted banknotes to have the word ‘Hawaii’ marked on them. In case of a Japanese Invasion, the US could immediately declare any Hawaii-stamped notes worthless, due to their easy identification.

In 1942, the Nazis cracked the algorithm for the serial numbers and rag content of British Pound notes. Using prisoners with counterfeiting skills, near perfect bills were produced with the plan to scatter them over England by air to induce hyperinflation and collapse the economy.

The phrase "In God we trust" was first used on US paper money in 1957, when it appeared on the one-dollar silver certificate. The first paper currency bearing the phrase entered circulation on October 1, 1957.

In 1987, the Burmese government demonetized the 25-, 35-, and 75-kyats notes without warning or compensation, rendering around 75% of the country's currency worthless and eliminating the savings of millions of Burmese. Dictator Ne Win did it because the notes weren't divisible by his lucky number, 9.

The world's largest paper banknote, the 100,000 Peso, issued by the Philippines treasury in 1998  to celebrate the centenary of the country's independence from Spain, has an area of 119 square inches (768 sq cms).

FUN BANK NOTE FACTS

Paper money is not made from wood pulp but from cotton. This means that it will not disintegrate as fast if it is put in the laundry.

Dollar bills are made of 75% cotton, and 25% linen.

American dollar bills are nicknamed greenbacks after the notes Abraham Lincoln had printed to finance the Civil War - black on the front and green on the back.

Massachusetts-based paper company Crane & Co. has been producing the paper for all the American notes since 1879. Founder Stephan Crane was making paper long before the American Revolution.

Only four women have appeared on British banknotes: Queen Elizabeth II, Florence Nightingale, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and the symbol of the country's national identity, Britannia.

Martha Washington in the only woman whose portrait has ever appeared on a US currency note. Her portrait was on the face of the $1 silver certificate issues of 1886 and 1891, and on the back of the $1 silver certificate of 1896.

In 1932, when a shortage of cash occurred in Tenino, USA, notes were made out of wood for a brief period. They came in $1, $5 and $10 values.

Five people have been depicted on U.S. currency during their lifetime. Abraham Lincoln was portrayed on the 1861 $10 Demand Note; Salmon Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, approved his own portrait for the 1862 $1 Legal Tender Note; Winfield Scott was depicted on Interest Bearing Notes during the early 1860s; and Francis Spinner and Spencer Clark both approved the use of their own image on fractional currency.

The Tower of Independence clock on the back of a U.S. $100 dollar bill shows the time as 4:10.

A U.S. dollar bill is .0043 inches thick. It takes 233 dollar bills to make a stack one inch high.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank, the $100 bill has an average life span of 15 years,  the $1 bill lasts an average of 5.9 years, the $5 bill averages 4.9 years of use, the $10 bill gets 4.2 years, the $20 bill lasts 7.7 years and the $50 stays strong for about 3.7 years.

A ripped dollar bill still has its face value, as long as the remaining piece is larger than half.

The words 'United States of America ' appear 12 times on every US bank note.

An estimated two-thirds of all US $100 bills are held outside the US.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.

Canada had to alter their $5 note to make Wilfrid Laurier look less like Spock, the Star Trek character portrayed by Leonard Nimoy.

An example of "Spocking" using a portrait of Laurier from 1907, a similar portrait to the one used on the Canadian $5-bill.

The printing of British £1,000 notes was discontinued in 1943.

The ten-shilling note was officially withdrawn by the Bank of England in 1970.

Traces of cocaine were found on 99% of UK bank notes in a survey in London in 2000.

British banknotes increase in size as they increase in value to help blind people tell them apart.

£100,000,000 notes known as "Titans"  are the highest denomination of banknote printed by the Bank of England. They are used to back the value of Scottish and Northern Irish pound notes and are locked away in the Bank of England.

The reason the portrait of Winston Churchill looks grumpy on the £5 note, is because the photographer had just snatched the cigar out of Churchill's mouth.

When euro notes were issued in 2002, tests in Germany showed that they could survive being washed and spun dry but ironing ruined them.

If you cut an Australian bank note in half, each of those halves are legal tender worth half the face value of the note. So if you half an Australian $10 bill, it becomes valued at $5 and is still redeemable.

It is illegal to step on banknotes or coins on Thailand because the King's face is printed on the currency.

To be legal, prop money for films must be one-sided and less than 75% or more than 150% of the size of a real banknote.

A flu virus can survive on most surfaces for only 48 hours, but can live on a bank-note for 17 days.

A notaphile collects bank notes.

Source Gobankingrates.com

Bank Holiday (or Federal Holiday)

A bank holiday chiefly refers to a national public holiday in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland and the Crown dependencies. The name arises from banks closing their doors for the day, resulting in others having the time off too. In the United States, they are called a federal holiday. 

In 1871, The House of Commons passed the Bank Holiday Act, creating public holidays. The Act designated four Bank Holidays in England and Wales (Easter Monday, Whit Monday, First Monday in August and Boxing Day plus St Stephen's Day in Ireland. 

These first Bank Holidays were brought in thanks to Liberal MP, banker, and scientific writer, Sir John Lubbock. People were so grateful they dubbed them St Lubbock’s Days.

The first Monday of September is when Labor Day is celebrated as a salute to working men and women across the United States. Its origins go back to 1884 when the Knights of Labor held a big parade in New York City and passed a resolution to hold future parades, always on the first Monday in September. It spread and was celebrated in many areas and in many states. Ten years later, U.S. President Grover Cleveland signed an act of Congress, making Labor Day a federal holiday in the U.S.

Columbus Day only became an official American Holiday in 1937. It happened because The Knights of Columbus, an influential male-only Catholic organization, wanted a strong Catholic role model for their children to be dignified by the government. After intense lobbying by the Knights, President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress declared Columbus Day a legal and federal holiday.

May Day was introduced in 1978 in the UK, when the first Monday in May and the final Monday of May in Scotland, were designated as bank holidays.

Maypole dancing. By Kevin Gordon

Argentina is the country with the most national holidays in the world, with a total of 19 days off.

In Japan, if a working day falls between two public holidays, that working day becomes an additional holiday by law, also known as a "Citizen's Holiday". May 4, sandwiched between Constitution Memorial Day on May 3 and Children's Day on May 5, was an annual example of such a holiday until it was replaced by Greenery Day in 2007.