Did You
Know?
The word
millionaire was first used by Benjamin Disraeli in his 1826 novel Vivian Grey.
If you stack
one million US$1 bills, it would be 110m (361 ft) high and weight exactly 1
ton.
A million
dollars''
worth of $100 bills weighs only 10 kg (22 lb).
One million
dollars'' worth of once-cent coins (100 million coins) weigh 246 tons.
TIP is the
acronym for "To Insure Promptness."
The term
"Blue Chip" comes from the colour of the poker chip with the highest
value, blue.
Nessie, the Loch Ness
monster is protected by the 1912 Protection of Animals Acts of Scotland. With
good reason - Nessie is worth $40 million annually to Scottish tourism.
Of the more
than $50 billion worth of diet products sold every year, almost $20 billion are
spent on imitation fats and sugar substitutes.
Annual
global spending on education is $80 billion.
US and
European expenditure on pet food is $17 billion per year.
The global
expenditure on healthcare and nutrition is $13 billion.
Money notes
are not made from paper, it is made mostly from a special blend of cotton and
linen.
In 1932,
when a shortage of cash occurred in Tenino, Washington, USA, notes were made
out of wood for a brief period. The wood notes came in $1, $5 and $10 values.
The world''s
largest coins, in size and standard value, were copper plates used in Alaska
around 1850. They were about a metre (3 ft) long, half-a-metre (about 2 ft)
wide, weighed 40 kg (90 lb), and were worth $2,500.
The first credit card was
issued by American Express in 1951.
About 30% of
consumers use their credit card as their main means of buying Christmas
goodies, 70% do not save to buy Christmas gifts and 86% of consumers do their
Christmas shopping during December.
Excessive use
of credit is cited as a major cause of non-business bankruptcy, second only to
unemployment.
Statistics
show that people with high, medium and low
income groups spend about the same
amount on Christmas
gifts.
In the
1400s, global income rose only 0,1% per year; today it often tops 5%.
The
average age of Forbes''s 400 wealthiest individuals is 63.
In 1955 the
richest woman in the world was Mrs Hetty Green Wilks, who left an estate of $95
million in a will that was found in a tin box with four pieces of soap.
In 2001 the
richest woman was Liliane Bettencourt, the daughter of L''Oreal''s founder. She
has a net worth of $14 billion (depending on how the stock market did today).
In 2000,
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands is the second wealthiest woman, with $5,2
billion.
Queen
Elizabeth II is one of the 10th wealthiest women in the world.
The $ sign was designed in 1788 by
Oliver Pollock.
The term
"smart money" refers to gamblers who have inside
information or have
arranged a fix, the gambling term for insuring the outcome of an event by
illegal methods.
Small-time
gamblers who place small bet in order to prolong the excitement of a game are
called "dead fish" by game operators because the longer the playing
time, the greater the chances of losing.
In gambling
language, for a gambling house a "sure-thing" is a wager that a
player has little chance of winning; "easy money" is their profit
from an inexperienced bettor, an unlucky player is called a "stiff."
Australians
are the heaviest gamblers in the world; an estimated 82% of Australians bet.
That is twice as much per capita as Europeans or Americans. Yet, Australia,
with less than 1% of the world population, has 20% of the world''s poker
machines.
There are
more than 7 million millionaires in the world.
80% of
millionaires drive second-hand cars.
In 1900, the
price of gold was less than $40 per ounce. It reached $600 in 1930, now
struggling to reach $400 per ounce.
If Los
Angeles County was a country, it would be the 19th largest economy in the
world.
If
California was a country, it would be the 5th largest the world.
Tobacco is a
$200 billion industry, producing six trillion cigarettes a year - about 1,000
cigarettes for each person on earth.
In 1965,
CEOs earned on average 44 times more than factory workers. In 1998, CEOs earned
on average 326 times more than factory workers and in 1999, they earned 419
times more than factory workers.
The income
gap between the richest fifth of the world''s people and the poorest measured by
average national income per head increased from 30 to one in 1960, to 74 to one
in 1998.
A third of
the world''s people live on less than $2 a day, with 1,2 billion people living
on less than $1 a day.
In the 17th
century, wool fabrics accounted for about two-thirds of England''s foreign
trade. Today, the leading wool producers are Australia, New Zealand, Argentina
and China.
The NASDAQ
stock exchange was totally disabled in on day in December 1987 when a squirrel
burrowed through a telephone line.
In 1990, the
word "recession" appeared in 1,583 articles in The Wall Street
Journal.
Global sales
of pre-recorded music
total more than $40 billion.
Tourism is
the world''s biggest industry, affecting 240 million jobs.
In 1865,
Frederik Idestam founded a wood-pulp mill in southern Finland, naming it Nokia.
It rapidly gained worldwide recognition, attracting a large number of workforce
and the town Nokia was born. In 1898, the Finnish Rubber Works company opened
in Nokia, taking on the town name in the 1920s. After WWII, the rubber company
took a majority shareholding in the Finnish Cable Work. In 1967, the companies
consolidated to become the Nokia Group. The recession of the 1990s led the
group to focus on the mobile phone market.
I found these
facts fun information at http://www.didyouknow.cd/fastfacts/money.htm
but it did not give me any reference source, so the
question should not be “Did You Know?” but “Do You Believe These Fast Facts?”
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