Spider Money!
Yes, it’s Thursday.
Yes, that means it’s time…once again…for…
And, today’s Amasnic Fact Off is:
The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing ships over 15 million spiders a day.
Yes, it’s true. Let me explain…
All paper money in the United States is printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) at its facilities in Washington, DC, and Fort Worth, Texas. The BEP produces 35 million notes a day with a face value of approximately $635 million. Forty-five percent of the notes are $1 bills. They print a lot of them, because a $1 bill on average only lasts 22 months before being removed from circulation by the treasury and being replaced with a new note, mostly because you keep washing them in your jeans.
Anyway, if you take out a dollar bill, you’ll see that the border is covered with fine lines resembling a spider web — actually, it is a spider web. And if you look in the top right-hand corner, just to the left of the numeral one, you’ll see the spider that has done all that work:
Other Fact Offs:
The largest note ever printed by the BEP was the $100,000 bill in1934, featuring President Woodrow Wilson on the front.
The first $1 notes were issued in 1862.
The first $1 bills with George Washington were issued in 1869. (The earlier bills had Salmon P. Chase on the front. Who was Salmon P. Chase? Look it up yourself! I will say this: he had little to do with the fishing industry, despite that awful first name his momma gave him…)
The Deity Motto
“In God We Trust” was not adopted for use on U.S. paper currency until 1957. And then, the motto didn’t appear on U.S. Federal Reserve Notes until 1963.
The Deity motto first appeared on coins, largely because of increased religious sentiment during the Civil War. The first letter requesting a Deity motto was written to the treasury on November 13, 1861. The letter was written by Rev. M. R. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, Pennsylvania, and you can read it here: Motto Request.
Related Articles
This is quite fascinating. I actually have a dollar bill sitting on my desk and was able to see the spider. Not to change the subject but I did hear one time that there are traces of cocaine on every $100 bill. Do you know anything about this?
Hmmm…. And I was told it was an eagle! Spider, eagle, what’s the difference. ;)
There’s a pretty even split for those who think it’s a spider, and those who think it’s an owl. The reasoning for it being an owl is because so many statesmen have been involved with secret societies that use the owl as a symbol (just search on “Bohemian Grove”) But, it makes more sense to me that it’s a spider, given the webbing around the border, and it looks more like a spider to me, too, if you’ve got a good magnifying glass.
About the cocaine, that’s true. For that explanation, I’ll defer to snopes.com:
But only a small fraction of the bills have come into direct contact with the real drug stash…it’s the bank counting machines that are the real reason as many as four out of five bills in your wallet have traces of coke…
[...] In addition to shipping over 15 million spiders per day, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is also in the business of printing millions of constellations. [...]