When officers arrived they allegedly found cash, “laying all over the area.” Police also say that several residents were out in the hallways complaining about Veras was banging on their doors and running around.

Police eventually found Veras on the first floor in the laundry room, allegedly trying to stuff money into a washing machine. Officers say he did not live at the apartment, had no reason to be there and — what’s more — was the one who pulled the fire alarm in the first place.

Police say they found over $1,000 scattered throughout the halls and in the washer.

Veras was arrested for trespassing. He apparently has a mistaken notion of what money laundering really entails. Link -via Arbroath

I don’t know about you guys, but I sure wouldn’t spend this gorgeous artwork on just anything. No, it would have to be on something awesome like a wookie cookie.

Link Via The Daily What

1. The Stupidest Coin the Government Ever Made: The Racketeer Nickel

(Image credit: Hephaestos at the English language Wikipedia)

In 1883, the United States issued a newly designed five-cent piece called the “V nickel.” The coin got its name because the value was indicated on the back simply with the Roman numeral ‘V,’ sans the word “cents.” After all, it was obvious it was a nickel, right? Apparently not. Turns out, the V nickel was the same size as a U.S. $5 gold piece, and both coins featured a bust of Lady Liberty on the front.

It wasn’t long before light bulbs started going off over the heads of con men all across America. Within weeks of the V’s debut, crooks were gold-plating the nickels and palming them off as $5 gold pieces. Meanwhile, government officials scoffed at the notion that anyone would fall for such an obvious hoax. Unfortunately, they were wrong again. Despite the gold-plated nickels not looking like $5 coins and not being nearly as heavy, most people didn’t notice, because the gold coins were rarely used in everyday purchases.

By April 1883, “gilded nickels” were both a national joke and a growing concern for commerce and law enforcement. The U.S. Secret Service made arrests in 10 states related to the scam. In one raid, they seized a “half bushel” of coins waiting to be plated. But all good things come to an end, and con artists had a hard time getting enough new nickels to keep the racket going. Finally, embarrassed officials put an end to the scam by halting production of the nickels until new dies were prepared. This time, the redesigned backs read “V cents.” Today, the V nickel remains a favorite among coin collectors.

2. The Coin You Carry in Bundles: The Kissi Penny

Money hasn’t always been strictly confined to coins and bills. In Biblical times, for example, people used sheep and cattle as currency. Of course, because deceased livestock don’t paste that well into scrapbooks, numismatists have to draw the line somewhere. And that’s where the phrase “odd and curious money” comes in. It’s a numismatist category used to classify various pre-cash societies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.

One widely collected type of odd and curious money is an iron currency from West Africa known as the Kissi penny or Kilindi. Named for the Kissi people living in and around Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, the pennies are actually rods of twisted iron roughly 1 foot long. Each has a double-pointed tip at one end and a leaf-like piece at the other—distinctive marks that kept “clippers” from being able to whittle away the metal and pawn off the cut coin as whole. The exact value of the Kissi penny is not known, but it wasn’t much. Large purchases were made by binding Kissi pennies into bundles of 20 to 100. Historians do know, however, that Kissi pennies weren’t taken lightly. They were said to possess a soul, and if one was broken, it was repaired by a blacksmith under the guidance of a local priest.

3. The Coin Your Mom Doesn’t Want You to Pick Up: Leper Colony Coins

(Image credit:Flickr user Jerry “Woody”)

Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, was once among the most feared diseases in the world.  Mistakenly believed to be highly contagious, it was a disfiguring and paralyzing condition that, until the 1900s, had no known cure. Sufferers were forced from their homes and exiled into colonies, where they wouldn’t be able to spread the disease to the larger population.

Among attempts to quarantine lepers? Giving them their own currency. Many people feared leprosy could be transmitted by handling money, so special coins were minted (and, in some cases, paper bills printed) for leper colonies in areas including Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, the U.S. Canal Zone, and the Philippines. Some city officials found another convenient use for leper money—paying inmates for their work and allowing them to buy personal items with it. This, so the logic went, prevented prisoners from ever being able to save up “real” money to aid in an escape.

4. The Coin from 1780 That’s Definitely Not from 1780: The Maria Theresa Thaler

The English word “dollar” comes from “thaler,” any of several large silver coins issued in the German-speaking countries of central Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries. But by far the most famous is the Maria Theresa thaler, which features a portrait of Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria (1717–1780) on the front. And though the archduchess’ thalers were Austrian coins, they wound up being circulated across North Africa and the Middle East for almost two centuries. Because Austrian traders used them to buy coffee in the Middle East, thalers quickly became popular among Eastern merchants, who came to trust the weight and purity of the coins’ silver content.

The catch? Merchants put their trust solely in the 1780 Maria Theresa thaler. When presented with newer (and perfectly legitimate) thalers imprinted with more current dates or featuring different monarchs, Eastern traders assumed the coins were counterfeits. Eventually, it became such a problem that the Austrian government agreed to mint new Maria Theresa thalers, dated 1780, for foreign trade. In fact, for decades after that prized date, demand for the coins was so strong that mints in Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands churned out their own versions of the 1780 Maria Theresa thaler.

Reportedly, the 1780 thalers were still circulating in parts of Yemen, Muscat, and Oman until the early 1980s. And today, Austria still mints Maria Theresa thalers, though they’re commemorative coins not used for regular trade. Estimates vary, but it’s believed between 400 million and 800 million of them may have been minted during the last 225 years.

5. The Coin You Can Never Take on an Airplane: Spanish Pieces of Eight

In the New World, colonists had to get creative when it came to currency. Because the British were too cheap to mint coins for their American settlements, colonists had to make do with barter, paper money, or whatever foreign coins they could scrape up through trade. Fortunately, Spain’s New World colonies were rich in silver mines, and the Spanish had plenty of coins to toss around.

At the time, Spain minted coins about the same size as the Germanic silver thaler coins of Europe, and Americans took to calling them “Spanish dollars.” But officially, Spanish dollars were valued at eight reals (real being Spanish for “royal”). So how do you make change for a Spanish dollar? For our colonial forefathers, it was easy. Knowing that silver is a fairly soft metal, they’d just take a mallet and a chisel, or even an axe, and slice up the coin like a pizza. The cut slices were called “bits,” or pieces of eight. A 2-real piece was worth about 25 U.S. cents, which is why a quarter is sometimes referred to as “two bits.” Another term for cut coin slices was “sharp silver,” because the points were indeed sharp enough to cut cloth or even skin.

The circulation of pieces of eight and Spanish dollars in America began to decline after the first U.S. Mint opened in Philadelphia in 1792. However, it took a long time for the establishment to catch up with America’s demand for coins, and foreign currency was legal tender in the United States until 1857.

6. The Dreamiest Coin of All Time: The King Edward Coin

When Britain’s King Edward VIII gave up his crown, he also gave up the glory of seeing his face on English currency. Edward succeeded his father, King George V, in 1936, but problems quickly arose after he announced his intentions to wed a twice-divorced American named Wallis Simpson. Rather than dump his scandalous fiancé, Edward played to the fairy-tale dreams of every girl in the world and gave up the crown instead.

Edward VIII’s reign lasted less than one year, which wasn’t long enough for Britain to switch to new coins, so all the British coins minted during his reign still bore the profile of his late father. Certain colonial coins, such as this 1936 10-cent piece from British East Africa, carried King Edward’s name, but not his image. Rare relics of Edward’s short (and romantic) reign, these coins are a numismatist favorite.

As for the hole in the middle, that’s a fairly common design trait of yore. One explanation is that it allowed people to carry their coins on a string or wear them on a necklace, so they’d be easier to keep track of.

7. The Not-Quite Counterfeit Coin: The 1804 Silver Dollar

America’s most famous rare coin is the 1804 silver dollar. Why so special? Because it was actually made by mistake. Due to governmental budget constraints, the production of silver dollars was halted in the early 19th century. And while a few thousand $1 coins were minted in 1804, they were produced frugally, using the previous year’s dies. Ironically, the first $1 coins dated 1804 weren’t made until 1834, when the United States decided to present the King of Siam and the Sultan of Muscat with a diplomatic gift: complete sets of American coins. Records at the U.S. Mint correctly listed 1804 as the last year silver dollars were made, but didn’t specify that the last ones were dated 1803. Consequently, American officials decided to strike a few new dollars with the date 1804, and ended up creating a coin that had never before existed.

Today, there are only 15 of these 1804 silver dollars left. Eight of them were from the batch minted as diplomatic gifts. The other seven were produced between 1858 and 1860, when an employee of the Philadelphia Mint decided to get rich quick on the coin collector’s market. Using the mint’s silver and equipment, he struck a number of new 1804 silver dollars to sell to collectors. The phony coins (although illegally produced, they’re technically not counterfeits because they were made at a U.S. Mint) were eventually found and melted down—all but seven of them, that is. One of these re-strikes was auctioned in 2003 for $1.21 million, but that’s chump change compared to the $4.14 million paid for one of the original coins back in 1999.

8. The “Choose Your Own Coin” Coin: Blank Coins

The quality-control regulators at our mints do a great job of catching mistakes, but luckily for collectors, some botched coins do make their way into circulation. Among the more common errors are blank coins, such as this one-cent piece. Coins are made by pressing a die onto a planchet, or coin blank, that’s been punched out of a piece of sheet metal. Sometimes, a planchet slips through the process without being struck, and a blank coin, such as the one above, ends up in an otherwise ordinary roll of pennies. Other common errors include coins struck off-center, coins struck on the wrong planchet (i.e., the image of a quarter stamped onto a penny), and double-struck coins.

9. The Coin You Could Stub a Toe On: England’s Giant Pennies

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Wehwalt)

The original English penny was a silver piece descended from a dime-size Roman silver coin, but that sleek and elegant design began to change in the late 1700s. During that century, Britain struggled with the cost of minting coins and often didn’t bother to mint them in small denominations. Labor costs were high, and those who had money dealt in larger denominations, anyway. Then, in the late 18th century, inventors Matthew Boulton and James Watt (who are often credited with creating the first practical steam engine) invented coin-making machinery that greatly cut production costs.

During the Middle Ages, English monarchs, always in need of money, realized they could make a profit by cranking out pennies with less than a penny’s worth of silver. More and more copper was added to the mix, and by the turn of the 19th century, pennies were entirely copper (or bronze). Of course, because these metals were cheaper, the coins got bigger—much bigger.

For the next century and a half, English pennies stayed big—about the size of a modern U.S. half dollar. They also stayed heavy. In fact, demonstrators in the 1960s sometimes used British pennies to throw at police officers. And in 1966, a woman was arrested in Nevada for plunking British pennies into slot machines meant to take U.S. half-dollar coins.

Inflation eventually drove the price of copper so high that making coins out of the metal no longer made sense. By 1969, a ton of English pennies, worth about $1,080 U.S., could be melted down and sold for more than $1,600 worth of scrap copper. The official end to the giant penny craze came in 1971, when Great Britain decided to decimalize its currency.

Incidentally, the United States once followed in the mother country’s footsteps by minting huge pennies. From 1793 to 1857, America made one-cent pieces that were almost the size of today’s half dollars.

10. The Coin That Taught the Government to Recycle: Steel Pennies

While meat, sugar, and gasoline were in short supply during World War II, Uncle Sam was also having trouble getting his hands on enough copper. Turns out, the country’s entire supply was being used to mint coins. In fact, it’s estimated some 4,600 tons of copper went toward making pennies in 1942—enough to make 120 field cannons or 1.25 million artillery shells. So, in 1943, copper pennies were replaced with pennies made of zinc-coated steel.

Steel pennies were unpopular from the start. Vending machines read them as fakes; streetcar conductors mistook them for dimes; and, after the coins had circulated for a short time, the zinc began to wear off and the steel core began to rust.

By the end of 1943, steel pennies were on their way out. But, how would the government scrounge up enough copper for decent self-respecting pennies? Recycling, of course. Army and Navy personnel were ordered to pick up rifle and artillery-shell casings from firing ranges and even battlefields. The empty brass shells were then sent to the Mint, where they were melted down, mixed with a little more copper, and made into pennies.

The campaign worked. All U.S. pennies minted in 1944 and 1945 were made from World War II shell casings. Yet, the new coins presented their own problems. Sometimes, the brass shell cases and fresh copper weren’t mixed completely, giving some of the coins noticeable brass streaks. Also, the explosive residue in the shell casings often stained or discolored the pennies.

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The article above, written by David A. Norris, is reprinted with permission from the September-October 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

The most expensive item on the list? Six swans a swimming that will run you $6,300. While the item measurements make sense, I just can’t fathom how eight maids a milking only costs $58 when nine ladies dancing goes for $6,294.03. I guess that’s why I’m not an economist.

Link Via Consumerist

Image Via cobalt123 [Flickr]

Here’s an idea I can really get behind! Flattr proposes a new holiday -Pay A Blogger Day on November 29th.

Flattr, a startup that seeks to motivate Internet users to pay for content they love, is launching the first Pay a Blogger Day Nov. 29. The team hopes inspired Internet users will send some monetary token of appreciation — by buying a song, ebook, t-shirt or giving them a “Flattr click” — towards their favorite songsters, podcast creators, open-source software developers and bloggers.

“We think that many blogs are insightful and witty and people just expect them to be free even though there are a lot of effort and love put into them,” Flattr co-founder Linus Olsson told Mashable. “It’s about time to try to give them something tangible back, at least one day of the year.”

Olssen knows that bloggers won’t get rich, but it may provide some needed encouragement.

“If you’re an amateur blogger and get one beer from your readers it could be the best beer you ever had,” Olsson says.

Link to story. Link to website.

Randall Munroe at xkcd put together a chart about money, so massive that you’ll have to enlarge a few times just to read it. The statistics cover what things cost, what people earn, business profits, taxes, government spending, utilities, war, and more. The amounts of money for each are laid out in blocks for comparison. That’s a lot of blocks. What is shown here, as compressed as it is, is just a portion. Link -via Boing Boing

But why? Why is it that spending our money on others—prosocial spending—makes us happier?

It’s partly because giving to others makes us feel good about ourselves. It helps promote a view of ourselves as responsible and giving people, which in turn makes us feel happy. It’s also partly because spending money on others helps cement our social relationships. And people with stronger social ties are generally happier.

The consequences of this notion can work in a circle. Not only do you want to buy gifts that bring happiness to others, it will make them even more happy to know that they gifts they give you are treasured. Link

Ten years ago, America suffered the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history. For most people, the memories inspire both pain and patriotism, but for some, they inspire thoughts of cold hard cash. Cracked has a collection of the most shameless attempts to cash in on the day of suffering, from video games to wine to cartoons, the money-making schemes are so tasteless they are simply depressing.

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With a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of $737.9 billion, the LA metro’s economy is bigger than Turkey’s ($732.2) and slightly smaller than the Netherlands’ ($782.3) — the equivalent of the 18th largest nation in the world.

If your city isn’t listed, where do you think it might fit in?

Link

Link Via Consumerist Image Via doncav [Flickr]

Don’t think for a second that Google’s business is limited to internet services. Indeed, they have their hands in a variety of industries, most recently, they’ve been testing out the beer-making business. That’s right, Google has paired with Dogfish Head beer to make their own Belgian Dubbel beer called Urkontinent.

The final brew included some impressive ingredients sourced around the world: Wattleseed from Australia, toasted amaranth from South America, green rooibos from Africa, myrica gale from Europe, and Hive Plex Honey from Google’s own California beehives. Taken all together, the beer is described by Dogfish as being hearty, with notes of coffee and chocolate covered cherries. Also, it packs more than double the average alcohol content of average beer.

To be fair, Google’s not making any money from the venture, they just want to see how the process works and to use the beer’s creation as a marketing tool. If you saw some Google beer, would you try it?

Link Via Geekosystem

After all, these items are certainly out there as this great article on Mental Floss points out.

Link

Can you teach a monkey the basics of market economy?

In this article over at our pal mental_floss, Allen St. John wrote about an intriguing research by Laurie Santos and Keith Chen of Yale University to see if they can teach monkeys to spend money:

A video of one of these early experiments shows that when Felix, the group’s alpha male, entered, he received a “wallet” with 12 of those round aluminum tokens. Two student researchers, one wearing a pink T-shirt, the other blue, stood on either side of that 3-foot cubic enclosure, each holding a different tray of food. The premise at this stage was pretty basic: Felix could swap his tokens for food with either of the two researchers. He didn’t seem to care much about the students. But he did care profoundly about what the researchers would sell him in exchange for that little metal token.

Felix and the others were cautious, observant shoppers. As the video shows, Felix would head first to the researcher holding out pieces of orange, examining them carefully; before leaving, he stopped to smell them. He went to the other researcher and did exactly the same thing—looking, sniffing, shopping. He then headed back to the first researcher and handed over a token to complete the transaction. Oranges, please.

“When you watch it, it looks like they’re contemplating, thinking about what they’re going to buy,” says Santos. What separates these capuchins from the scores of animals who have been trained to perform complex behaviors in exchange for food is the option presented by that second researcher.

“The critical aspect of money is that it’s fungible. It represents a choice,” explains Chen. “A coin is fundamentally different than, say, pressing a lever.” Santos and Chen had not only achieved their preliminary goal, they had made history: The monkeys were using cash. The capuchins were now operating in a sphere where humans had been dwelling alone.

Link

If there’s one thing ridiculously rich people are good at, it’s wasting money. And this list of potential gifts for the world’s most spoiled children is equal parts depressing and hilarious. Just check out this $10,000 teddy bear made with black Tahitian pearl eyes, white alpaca fur and a 10k diamond necklace on a gold chain.

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We’ve all seen the occasional origami made from dollar bills, but those have nothing on these 32 amazing artworks made from currencies around the world. Personally, I like the carved sculptures like the one in the top center of the photo montage above.

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HARRY TRUMAN -THE BUCK STOPPED THERE

Prior to becoming president, Harry Truman’s ventures in private business earned him more trouble than profit. He lost several thousand dollars investing in a fruitless zinc mine, and even more money funding a short-lived haberdashery in Kansas City. Eventually he began to view politics as a more stable career than business. Even as a senator, Truman was forced to borrow money and live more modestly, as he sent much of his income home to support his farm in Missouri.

Upon leaving the White House in 1953, Truman refused to exploit his former office as a stepping stone into the business world. This left him with just a small plot of land off which to live. He hoped that his memoirs would bring in extra cash, but between paying the ghostwriters and the taxes, Truman netted just $37,000 from the book. His insolvency grew so pathetic that President Eisenhower passed the Former Presidents Act in 1958, which created a pension for Truman. The former president made use of every last bit of it, leading an active life until his death at the age of 88.

THOMAS JEFFERSON -LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF  MONEYLENDERS

During the 1700s, tobacco rarely turned a consistent profit. So Thomas Jefferson, like many plantation owners of his time, lived in perpetual debt. Eager to look the part of a Virginia gentleman, Jefferson borrowed money for expensive clothes, furniture, and wine. He continued to indulge in this lifestyle through his presidency and into retirement. Jefferson’s beloved country estate of Monticello was especially draining on his finances. Its high ceilings and large windows led to excessive heating costs, and its flat roof and cavernous skylights leaked with every rainfall. by the time Jefferson was in his late seventies, the neglected bills had piled up and doubled with interest.

To lessen his financial woes, Jefferson started selling off the things he loved. He sold his entire collection of books to a Congressional library and even hatched a plot to give away a large parcel of land in a statewide lottery. When news of the lottery (and its purpose) reached his former colleagues, generous donations poured in. Despite these efforts, Jefferson died in debt. Two decades later, his grandson finally paid off the founding father’s tab.

ULYSSES S. GRANT -THE BOOK DEAL OF THE CENTURY

In 1881, former president Ulysses S. Grant settled into his retirement with what seemed like a prudent investment in his son’s Wall Street firm, Grant & Ward. But when the younger Grant’s partner, Ferdinand Ward, absconded to Canada with all the money, Grant found himself short $150,000.

Grant considered it a matter of personal honor to pay back the debt in full and rejected any financial assistance. He sold off much of his land, but it wasn’t enough to cover his losses. To generate more income, the former general wrote a series of articles about his Civil War exploits, which the ever-humble Grant doubted anyone would read. Surprisingly, the articles were a huge success, and Grant’s longtime friend Mark Twain convinced him to pen his personal memoirs. Completed just before his death in 1885, Grant’s autobiography became one of the best-selling books of its time -earning more than half a million dollars.

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The article above, written by Brian McMahon, is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the May-June 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

Frugality is an important lesson to learn, but there is certainly a point where it becomes ridiculous. Over at Consumerist, there is a great roundup of the 16 most over-the-top tales of frugal fathers. To be fair, some aren’t nearly as bad as others, but when your dad is the type to have “hooked up the tv to an exercise bike so that we kids had to peddle to watch our cartoons. TV lost its charm quickly and we went outside to play,” you know your pop may have crossed the line -of course, that is a great way to get your kids to exercise.

Link Image Via Gliko [Flickr]

In 2005, Congress decided that a new series of dollar coins should be minted to engage the public. These coins would bear the likeness of every former president, starting with George Washington. There would be a new one every quarter. So, far, the Mint has produced coins through the 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant.

Members of Congress reasoned that a coin series that changed frequently and had educational appeal would make dollar coins more popular. The idea came from the successful program that put each of the 50 states on the backs of quarters.

The reserve also has plenty of Susan B Anthony and Sacagawea dollar coins. If the public does not want to use dollar coins, why are they being made? The answer is a bit complicated, and is explained in this article at NPR. Link -via Breakfast Links

Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Money Bank – $39.95

Attention Ghostbusters fans! Behold the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Money Bank from the NeatoShop.  Who needs a piggy bank when the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Money Bank can protect your precious change!

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Home & Garden fun!

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]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2011/06/10/stay-puft-marshmallow-man-money-bank/feed/ 0 http://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/28/the-100000-room/ http://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/28/the-100000-room/#comments Sat, 28 May 2011 18:40:50 +0000 Alex http://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/28/the-100000-room/

When German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann won $100,000 from the Biennial Hugo Boss Prize, which awards achievement in contemporary art, he decided to give back in this peculiarly fascinating art:

Feldmann decided to give back to the museum in a unique way. He used the money to create an installation that involved tacking one-hundred thousand dollar bills to the large gallery off the Frank Lloyd Wright ramp!

“I’m 70 years old, and I began making art in the ’50s,” Mr. Feldmann shares. “At that time there was no money in the art world. Money and art didn’t exist. So for me, $100,000 is very special. It’s incredible really. And I would like to show the quantity of it.”

It took about thirteen days to complete the installation with out-of-circulation bills.

More at My Modern Met: Link

If you are like me you hate the sound of your alarm clock in the morning. The makers of this clock have found a unique way to get you out of bed in the morning. See gallery of clock at the link.

You know what they say, “time is money”. The “Shredder Clock” wants to ensure that none of your time is wasted, as it will begin shredding whatever currency you put in, if the alarm does not get manually shut off immediately — you won’t find a snooze button on this thing.

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She walked up and down Wall Street in rags -but in her day she was the richest woman in America. Meet Hetty Green, financial genius and obsessive skinflint.

The employees at Manhattan’s Chemical and National Bank were too intimidated to laugh at the strange woman who visited their vaults on a daily basis, even though she had a laundry list of eccentricities as long as your arm. She wore clothes so worn out they were falling apart on her body, she never washed her underwear because it was “too expensive,” and she spent almost every day locked in the bank’s vaults eating raw onions and counting her riches. Had Hetty Green been a different kind of woman, those who saw her marching down Wall Street might have snickered. But Hetty’s reputation  was every bit as formidable as her scowling, forbidding face.

BORN CHEAP

Stinginess came naturally to Hetty’s family. Born in 1835 to a family of wealthy blue bloods, including a father who wanted his daughter to manage her fortune well, Hetty could read the daily financial papers to her dad at age six and opened her own savings account at age eight. By 21, she was so miserly she didn’t even want to light the birthday candles on her own cake because it would waste them. Eventually, the party guests convinced her to light them, but she blew them out immediately so she could return them to the grocery store for a refund.

SHE’S A RICH GIRL

This was the same birthday at which Hetty came into a multimillion-dollar trust. Almost a decade later, her father died and left her his vast estate. Hetty cleverly invested her money, increasing its value enormously. But she still wore secondhand clothes, took her meals in workingmen’s dives, saw doctors at free charity clinics, and lived in cheap boardinghouses to avoid paying property taxes.

ON THE DOTTED LINE

She was suspicious of the many suitors who courted her, believing they were all after her money. But at age 33, she agreed to marry businessman Edward Henry Green -after he agreed to sign a prenuptial agreement renouncing all rights to her money. Two children and a lot of angst later, Edward Green divorced her. When he died in 1902, Hetty Green moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, with her children and commuted daily to her bank in New York City.

POOR LITTLE RICH KIDS

Vowing to make her son Ned the richest man in the world, Hetty saved every cent she could. She gave up washing her clothes, never changed or washed her sheets, tried to evade paying bills, and went to bed at sundown to avoid burning candles. She never turned on the heat or used hot water.

But she refused to spend any money on her kids, either. When Ned broke his leg, she wouldn’t take him to a doctor, saying it was too pricey. His gangrenous leg later had to be amputated. She forced her daughter Sylvia to wear old clothes, too, and she wouldn’t let her date the “fortune hunters” Hetty believed were everywhere. When she finally let Sylvia marry, she forced the new husband to give up all rights to his wife’s fortune.

SHE’S A RICHER GIRL

Through it all, Hetty made one shrewd financial decision after another. She made terrific investments, owned thousands of plots of land, and had enough cash to make loans to major businesses -even New York City itself- extracting heavy interest on each loan.

But Hetty’s penny-pinching ways continued. She spent hours each day counting her money. Her habit of walking down to her bank each day in a ragged, black dress with a scowl on her face earned her the nickname “the Witch of Wall Street.”

THE DECLINE OF HETTY

Eventually, Hetty’s health failed. She suffered from a painful hernia but refused to have an operation because it cost $150 (123 euros). She became even more paranoid and suspicious, believing kidnappers and murderers were after her and her fortune.

Eventually, her bad temper was the end of her. She reportedly died of apoplexy, in 1916, after an argument with a servant (not one of her own, of course).

GIVING AWAY THE GREEN STUFF

Hetty Green left $100 million to her children, who, ironically, became some of the most generous philanthropists of their time, donating money to numerous museums, libraries, and civic institutions. Hetty Green would have been horrified to hear it.

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

This specimen comes from the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.

When the Depression and resulting banking crisis hit their community, the residents of the coastal town of Pismo Beach, California picked an unusual but logical medium of exchange… The Chamber of Commerce and no fewer than eleven merchants issued clamshell scrip.

Each piece was numbered, and each piece was signed on the front and on the back. As with the stamp notes of the Midwest, it was necessary to sign each clamshell on the back in order to keep it in circulation. No formal requirements may have existed, but informal pressure certainly would have endorsed the practice.

Restwell Cabins issued “notes” in three denominations: twenty-five cents, fifty cents, and one dollar. The larger the amount, the larger the shell. The issue may have been partly intended as a spoof, or for sale to tourists, in the manner of German notgeld around 1920. Redemption would never be a problem because collectors would want to keep these pieces in their cabinets or trade them with their friends.

Link.

Here’s the perfume that will make you smell like a million bucks (literally):

"I really feel that people who wear this will feel more confident," McCarthy told AOL News. "I got the idea after reading a story about a Japanese study that showed a significant increase in worker productivity when the smell of money was pumped through vents into factories."

And when McCarthy went to his ATM and noticed how much he enjoyed the scent of fresh, crisp bills, he really smelled the potential for making a mint.

"[The odor of money] is a unique fragrance," he said.

David Moye of AOL Weird News has more: Link

The newly redesigned US $100 bill is more colorful than any US currency you’ve seen. There a lot of new security features to impede counterfeiting, including a blue ribbon embedded in the front with a watermark, a color-shifting bell, raised printing, tiny printed words in tiny spots, and more. Note: actual bills will not have a “specimen” watermark as this picture has. Take a tour of the differences at NewMoney, a government website devoted to US currency. Link -via J-Walk Blog

It’s always good to save some money, even though the things you want to buy with it are um, shall we say, a bit dubious. Here are some funny tin banks from the Neatoshop that will help you save some serious coins: Link

In the study, researchers tried to evaluate the effect of money in two ways: One was on how people think about their lives and the other was on the feelings they have as they experience life. Responses from more than 450,000 Americans, gathered in 2008 and 2009, were evaluated.

The study found that people’s evaluations of their lives improved steadily with annual income. But the quality of their everyday experiences — their feelings — did not improve above an income of $75,000 a year. As income decreased from $75,000, people reported decreasing happiness and increasing sadness, as well as stress. The study found that being divorced, being sick and other painful experiences have worse effects on a poor person than on a wealthier one.

"More money does not necessarily buy more happiness, but less money is associated with emotional pain," the authors wrote. "Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals’ ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure."

Link

Tired of the drab ol' greenback? I mean what self-respecting artist would limit him or herself to just hues of green? Why not re-design the banknotes and drag them kicking and screaming to the 21st century?

Richard Smith noted that when corporations get in trouble, they rebrand their image. So, the solution to America's economic doldroms is obviously to rebrand the buck:

WHY TAKE PART?

The American Dollar has not truly been redesigned since about the 1930s. The Dollar ReDe$ign Project is your opportunity to theoretically 'change' that. Yes, technically there are many limitations and complications when it comes to bank note design, but if the Swiss can do it on a regular basis, why can't we North Americans too. Besides our great 'rival', the Euro, looks so spanky in comparison it seems the only clear way to revive this global recession is to rebrand and redesign. Why not ? It seems to work for everyone else ...

Here are a few examples:

iMoney by Raffael Hannemann

“My intention? There has to be a full-colored US flag on every bank note, and there have to be faces of some of the latest idols on them. Let's stop looking backwards and focus on the future. This is the time where we live. I've chosen Steve Jobs, but why not Zuckerberg, Larry Page or Michael Jackson?

The main aspect to me is the following: yes, we could choose a very stylish, fresh looking Dollar note draft, just because it's a pleasure to our eyes at the moment we see the bank note draft for the first time. But often the print designs are far away from being timeless. I've created a long-lasting composition of colors and shapes that avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated by focusing on the value of the note itself and the colors of the US flag. Because this is what the Dollar note all is about.”

Relative Value by Dowling Duncan

Why the size? – We have kept the width the same as the existing dollars. However we have changed the size of the note so that the one dollar is shorter and the 100 dollar is the longest. When stacked on top of each other it is easy to see how much money you have. It also makes it easier for the visually impaired to distinguish between notes.

Why a vertical format? – When we researched how notes are used we realized people tend to handle and deal with money vertically rather than horizontally. You tend to hold a wallet or purse vertically when searching for notes. The majority of people hand over notes vertically when making purchases. All machines accept notes vertically. Therefore a vertical note makes more sense.

Girl Power by Magen Farrar

"Despite representing half the human population, women have been struggling with discrimination and suppression for far too long. I wanted to take this opportunity to commemorate some of the most influential American women of the 20th century – Amelia Earhart, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marilyn Monroe and Maya Angelou – and attempt to bridge the gap between gender inequality. What better way to do so than with one of the most identifiable currencies in the world?"

Link: Dollar ReDe$ign - via kottke

You’d be forgiven if you think that’s a stack of cash. Actually it’s a realistic wooden sculpture called "Lunch Money" by Randall Rosenthal. His art exhibition seems like a lot of fun:

Carving a piece of wood into a bunch of newspapers, or books is hard enough, but using trompe l’oeil painting techniques, Randall Rosenthal manages to make his works look just like the real thing. Trying to keep his audience guessing, he normally just allows just one of his sculptures to be touched, while leaving them to discover if the rest are also made of wood.

His “Lunch Money” sculpture, representing stacks of hundred dollar bills in a corrugated cardboard box took six weeks to carve and another six to finish painting. To get their hands on that kind of wooden cash, art lovers had to pay $25,000, the real kind.

Oddity Central has more: Link | Randall’s official website

Silvia Saavedra of Arkaitse Freak Place altered the Chilean pesos and photoshopped them into portraits of Star Wars and other geeky characters (she called them her Geeky money) I particular like this one above, where Chilean founding father Manuel Rodriguez (noticed the Jolly Rogers in his lapel) is modded into a Rebel Pilot.

More Star Wars and other geeky money:

There’s life outside of Star Wars, here’s one from Halo:

… and of course, the geek idols Daft Punk:

See larger versions at her Flickr page: Link

Once we escape the trap of poverty, levels of wealth have an extremely modest impact on levels of happiness, especially in developed countries. Even worse, it appears that the richest nation in history – 21st century America – is slowly getting less pleased with life. (Or as the economists behind this recent analysis concluded: “In the United States, the [psychological] well-being of successive birth-cohorts has gradually fallen through time.”)

Needless to say, this data contradicts one of the central assumptions of modern society, which is that more money equals more pleasure. That’s why we work hard, fret about the stock market and save up for that expensive dinner/watch/phone/car/condo. We’ve been led to believe that dollars are delight in a fungible form.

But the statistical disconnect between money and happiness raises a fascinating question: Why doesn’t money make us happy? One intriguing answer comes from a new study by psychologists at the University of Liege, published in Psychological Science. [...]

The Liege psychologists propose that, because money allows us to enjoy the best things in life – we can stay at expensive hotels and eat exquisite sushi and buy the nicest gadgets – we actually decrease our ability to enjoy the mundane joys of everyday life. (Their list of such pleasures includes ”sunny days, cold beers, and chocolate bars”.) And since most of our joys are mundane – we can’t sleep at the Ritz every night – our ability to splurge actually backfires. We try to treat ourselves, but we end up spoiling ourselves.

Link – via Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish

The solution, of course, is simple: get rid of your money by shopping in the NeatoShop

Photo: RaboDirect Australia [Flickr]

Money doesn't grow on trees. Or does it? As a publicity stunt, RaboDirect of Australia sponsored a stunt where a tree in a park in Sydney is festooned with real $5 bills:

An Overview of Responses:

Lost Opportunity
In the early stages, almost 100 people passed the tree without noticing that anything was different. Even when a group of joggers noticed, they were too busy to stop. The first groups who eventually stopped to interact couldn’t believe it. They inspected the notes and took pictures, but left empty handed.

Follow the Crowd
Only once one brave participant started taking the money, did momentum gather. Legitimised by the crowd, a wide spectrum of behaviour ensued.

Frugality
Some took just one or two notes, satisfied by their modest and unexpected gains.

Opportunist
Consumed by the fantasy, a group of braver participants made the most of the opportunity by filling their pockets.

Employing Tools and Working Together
When the low hanging $5 notes were depleted, participants employed tools such as swinging coats and umbrellas, to help them reach higher branches. Teamwork also came into play as spectators formed human pyramids to reach the notes seemingly out of reach.

Altruism
Perhaps the most comforting observation from the participants was that of altruism. Taller participants shared their earnings with shorter spectators, while one gentleman on identifying the undercover observation team, requested his money be donated to charity.

Link [with video clip] - via Marketing Alternatif

Handmade by Xavi García

There’s more to the painting above than meets the eye. The unassuming painting by art student Xavi García is drawn entirely by hand and employs security measures commonly found in banknotes such as watermarks, see-through elements, and even UV-responsive ink.

Link – via Ministry of Type

Low-denomination U.S bank notes change hands until they fall apart here in Africa, and the bills are routinely carried in underwear and shoes through crime-ridden slums.

Some have become almost too smelly to handle, so Zimbabweans have taken to putting their $1 bills through the spin cycle and hanging them up to dry with clothes pins alongside sheets and items of clothing.

It’s the best solution—apart from rubber gloves or disinfectant wipes—in a continent where the U.S. dollar has long been the currency of choice and where the lifespan of a dollar far exceeds what the U.S. Federal Reserve intends.

The recommended method is hand washing, but washing machines are also used. Those who know say chemical dry cleaning will cause the ink to fade. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: AP/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

Yummy Pockets - Money $4.95

What beter way to store all of your Benjamins in this Money Yummy Pocket, shaped just like one? Well, if you're not filthy rich, the zippered pocket purse screenprinted with the likeness of the $100 bill can still store things like coins, pencils and so on.

Best of all, at just $4.95, it doesn't cost a lot of moolah! Link

More Yummy Pockets and other neat Wallet & Coin Purses from the NeatoShop:

Yummy Pocket Hot Dog

Yummy Pocket Pizza

Yummy Pocket Taco

Google’s celebration of Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary was fun, enabling people to play Pac-Man on their main search page, either as a one- or two-player game. And people certainly took advantage of the opportunity, spending approximately 4,819,352 hours on the game alone. The result is approximately $120 million in productivity lost, in one day.

Thankfully, Google tossed out the logo with pretty low “perceived affordance” – they put an “insert coin” button next to the search button, but I imagine most users missed that. In fact, I’d wager that 75% of the people who saw the logo had no idea that you could actually play it. Which the world should be thankful for.

Link – via gizmodo

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

We analyzed presidential finances based on historical sources. Most media evaluations of the net worth of presidents have come up with a very wide range, a spread in which the highest figure was often several times the lowest estimate. Most sources provided no hard figures at all. Most of these efforts have focused largely on the analysis of recent chief executives. That is because it is much easier to calculate figures in a world where assets and incomes are a matter of public record.

One of the most important conclusions of this analysis is that the presidency has little to do with wealth. Several brought huge net worths to the job. Many lost most of their fortunes after leaving office. Some never had any money at all.

Link -via TYWKIWDBI

In a series of experiments, people who counted money felt less pain when their hands were dipped into scalding water. The soothing power of cash also helped them shrug off the emotional pain of social exclusion.

The findings might offer an easy way to ease life’s stings and hurts, from painful medical treatments to social ostracism: Simply flip through a bulging wallet before enduring a painful experience.

"When people are reminded of money in a subtle manner by counting out hard currency, they experience painful situations as being not very painful," said lead author Kathleen Vohs, a consumer psychologist at the University of Minnesota’s Carleton School of Management in the Twin Cities.

Link

The familiar pictures of Founding Father Ben Franklin is still there, but there are a lot of new high-tech features being put in the new $100 bill, including a moving microprint that "looks like something straight out of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry":

The blue 3-D Security Ribbon on the front of the new $100 note contains images of bells and 100s that move and change from one to the other as you tilt the note. The Bell in the Inkwell on the front of the note is another new security feature. The bell changes color from copper to green when the note is tilted, an effect that makes it seem to appear and disappear within the copper inkwell.

“The new security features announced today come after more than a decade of research and development to protect our currency from counterfeiting. To ensure a seamless introduction of the new $100 note into the financial system, we will continue global public education of retailers, financial institutions and industry organizations to ensure that consumers and merchants are aware of the new security features,” said Treasurer of the United States Rosie Rios. (Source)

Why the redesign? While security and protection against forgery is always a concern for any currency, the failure of the US Government to stem the rise of the Superdollar – a counterfeit so well done that it’s almost impossible to detect – is to blame.

Making a lot of money doesn’t mean it will last. I guess some people just can’t handle the big bucks when they are famous. Boxer Mike Tyson is one of the many.

Tyson had earned over $300 million during his career as a boxer but jewelry, mansions, cars, limousines, cellphones, parties, clothing, motorcycles and Siberian tigers eventually caught up to him. In 2003 he had to file for bankruptcy, thanks to a colourful variety of debts including $13.4 million to the IRS and a $9 million divorce settlement to his ex-wife, Monica Turner. From 1995 to 1997, he spent $9 million in legal fees, $230,000 on pagers and cellphones, and $410,000 on a birthday party. In June 2002, he owed $8,100 to care for his tigers and $65,000 for limos.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Nightcrawlerx.

His mom, the daughter of a coal miner whom he remembers most for her kindness, always told him that when you’re going through tough times, that’s when you most need to give back.

So not long after he was laid off, on the third anniversary of his mom’s death, he started his “year of giving,” documenting each $10 gift in a small black notebook and then blogging about the people he meets. By Day 94, he had given away almost $1,000, handing out money in blizzards, in rainstorms, on the sunniest of days.

Sandridge is using his savings and his unemployment benefits for the giveaways. Some of the folks he gives money to use it to help others. He tells stories of the people he meets in his blog, which has led others to help them out as well. Link to story. Link to blog. -via Digg

(image credit: Katherine Frey/the Washington Post)

Does believing in God help make you wealthy? If so, can a particular religion make you wealthier than others? GOOD Magazine in collaboration with Column Five takes a look at America’s wealthiest religions:

It’s no secret that the distribution of wealth is inequitable in the United States across racial, regional, and socio-economic groups. But there is a distinct variance among and within America’s faiths as well. This transparency takes a look at the income levels of America’s major religious groups, as compared to the average U.S. income distribution.

Apparently, it’s good to be Hindu (43% earning more than $100,000) and Jewish (46%).

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by jadalan.

"My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness to come."

Instead, he will move out of his luxury Alpine retreat into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a simple bedsit in Innsbruck.

His entire proceeds are going to charities he set up in Central and Latin America, but he will not even take a salary from these.

"For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness," he said. "I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things, and I applied this for many years," said Mr Rabeder.

But over time, he had another, conflicting feeling.

"More and more I heard the words: ‘Stop what you are doing now – all this luxury and consumerism – and start your real life’," he said. "I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need. I have the feeling that there are lot of people doing the same thing."

Link

Dark Roasted Blend takes a look at artful and unusual bank notes from around the world, past and present. You thought Zimbabwe’s inflation was outrageous when they issued the 100 billion dollar notes? Now they have 100 trillion dollar notes! That kind of hyperinflation is not new, as you’ll see in this post. Link

A British farmer lost a hammer in one of his fields one day. Rather than going to spend a few bucks to just buy a new one, the man borrowed a metal detector and set out to find his hammer. Instead, he found something much more valuable. What he unearthed was a cache of Roman Empire era artifacts. To be exact, 15,000 coins of various metals, including gold, as well as jewelry and statues were all uncovered.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by sish2000.

Once, the United States issued $5,000, $10,000, and even $100,000 bills. Why on earth would someone carry bills that big, especially back when they were really worth something?

Believe it or not, it wasn’t just to save space in fatcats’ wallets. When the Treasury started printing these giant bills, their main purpose was making transfer payments between banks and other financial institutions. Before sophisticated wire transfer systems were fully developed, it was apparently easier and safer just to fork over a $5,000 bill to settle up with a fellow bank. Once transfer technology became safer and more secure, there really wasn’t much need for the big bills anymore.

Mental_floss has the story on when and why such large bills were issued, what they looked like, and why they aren’t in circulation anymore. Link

Misery loves company, so this should make you feel as if you aren’t alone. -via the Presurfer

9. Sophie Major Memorial Duck Calling Contest – If you love ducks season you may be eligible for $2,000 in scholarships. So get your favorite duck call and get prepared to win some money!

12. The Billy Barty Foundation – This scholarship is awarded to students who are short in stature – under 4’ 10” – and have proof of dwarfism.

33. Carnegie Mellon University Bagpipe Scholarship – This highly uncompetitive scholarship offers $7,000 yearly to bagpipe major students.

Link

(image credit: Flickr user heather)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ari.