Money was historically an emergent market phenomenon that possessed intrinsic value as a commodity; nearly all contemporary money systems are based on unbacked fiat money without use value. Its value is consequently derived by social convention, having been declared by a government or regulatory entity to be legal tender; that is, it must be accepted as a form of payment within the boundaries of the country, for "all debts, public and private", in the case of the United States dollar.
Title page of the 1735 Works. The author is in the Dean's chair receiving the thanks of Ireland. The motto reads, "I have made a monument more lasting than bronze." (The phrase comes from the Odes of Horace.) The word "Ære" means "bronze" or "metal" or "honor" or "air" in Latin, and may be a pun on the Irish word for Ireland, Éire, so that a parallel meaning could be: "I have made a monument to Ireland forever." Swift was familiar with the Irish language, and translated at least one poem by Carolan, "O'Rorke's Feast".
Drapier's Letters is the collective name for a series of seven pamphlets written between 1724 and 1725 by the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Jonathan Swift, to arouse public opinion in Ireland against the imposition of a privately minted copper coinage that Swift believed to be of inferior quality. William Wood was granted letters patent to mint the coin, and Swift saw the licensing of the patent as corrupt. In response, Swift represented Ireland as constitutionally and financially independent of Britain in the Drapier's Letters. Since the subject was politically sensitive, Swift wrote under the pseudonym M. B., Drapier, to hide from retaliation.
Although the letters were condemned by the Parliament of Ireland, with prompting from the Parliament of Great Britain, they were still able to inspire popular sentiment against Wood and his patent. The popular sentiment turned into a nationwide boycott, which forced the patent to be withdrawn; Swift was later honoured for this service to the people of Ireland. Many Irish people viewed Swift as a hero for his defiance of British authority. Beyond being a hero, many critics have seen Swift, through the persona of the Drapier, as the first to organise a "more universal Irish community", although it is disputed as to who constitutes that community. Regardless of to whom Swift is actually appealing what he may or may not have done, the nickname provided by Archbishop King, "Our Irish Copper-Farthen Dean", and his connection to ending the controversy stuck. (Full article...)
The Britishflorin, or two-shilling piece (2/– or 2s.), was a coin worth 1⁄10 of one pound, or 24 pence. It was issued from 1849 until 1967, with a final issue for collectors dated 1970. It was the last coin circulating immediately prior to decimalisation to be demonetised, in 1993, having for a quarter of a century circulated alongside the ten-pence piece, identical in specifications and value.
The florin was introduced as part of an experiment in decimalisation that went no further at the time. The original florins, dated 1849, attracted controversy for omitting a reference to God from Queen Victoria's titles; that type is accordingly known as the "Godless florin", and was in 1851 succeeded by the "Gothic florin", for its design and style of lettering. Throughout most of its existence, the florin bore some variation of either the shields of the United Kingdom, or the emblems of its constituent nations on the reverse, a tradition broken between 1902 and 1910, when the coin featured a windswept figure of a standing Britannia. (Full article...)
... that the manager of WVSS at the University of Wisconsin–Stout spent about $6,000 of his own money to buy more than 500 classical music CDs to program the station?
... that medievalist Edward Rand rang the doorbell of Harvard president Charles William Eliot and asked him: "I would like to go to Harvard; do you have any money?"
Image 17Athens coin (c. 500/490-485 BC) discovered in Pushkalavati. This coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far east. (from Punch-marked coins)
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