Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Grover Cleveland

No news! That's good news. All still great here. I feel like a HUNDRED BUCKS. No, make that a thousand. I literally feel like one thousand dollars. I feel like legal tender, all papery and crisp. Somebody billfold me--quick.

Since I have no bad news to share, I guess I will have to start writing about happy, pithy, or trivial things. Seems more fun to me, anyway.

So today's topic will be: discontinued US currency.

After referring to myself as a $1,000 bill, above, I wondered if such a bill really existed. (You'd think I'd know, but really, I tend to deal with 20s, mainly.)

Sure enough, it did.

From Wikipedia:

"The base currency of the United States is the U.S. dollar, and is printed on bills in denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. At one time, however, it also included five larger denominations.... $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000 and $100,000...The designs were as follows:
$500: William McKinley
$1,000: Grover Cleveland
$5,000: James Madison
$10,000: Salmon P. Chase
$100,000: Woodrow Wilson"

Cutting to the chase, these big bills were discontinued in 1969. Alas. Now we know.

Poor Salmon Chase. If you ask me, that was kind of his only shot at becoming a household name.

Over and out.