50 Fun Facts About US Currency

Which US agency was founded in 1865 solely to catch counterfeiters of American paper money?

The Secret Service spent its first decades chasing forgers for the Treasury, and took on full-time protection of presidents only after William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.

Which president on a US bill fiercely opposed paper money and the national bank while in office?

Andrew Jackson came to distrust banknotes after land deals on credit nearly bankrupted him, yet his portrait has fronted the $20 since 1928.

Which metal were 1943 US pennies made of so that copper could be saved for wartime ammunition?

Steel cents rusted at the edges and stuck to the magnets that vending machines used to catch slugs, so the Mint went back to a copper alloy for 1944.

Which blend of fibres, rather than wood pulp, makes up the paper used for US banknotes?

Cotton and linen, in a 75-to-25 mix, make up every Federal Reserve note, and all of that paper comes from a single firm in Dalton, Massachusetts.

In 1942, US bills were stamped with which territory's name so they could be voided if Japan invaded?

Hawaii was stamped across the notes after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and islanders were ordered to hand in their ordinary dollars for the marked ones.

During a Civil War coin shortage, Americans began making small change with which everyday item?

Postage stamps stood in for hoarded gold and silver coins, and from August 1862 the Treasury issued tiny notes with stamp designs, worth 5 to 50 cents, to replace them.

Which Alabama-born author, the girl in The Miracle Worker, appears on the state's 2003 quarter?

Helen Keller's name appears on the coin in both print and Braille, a first for American money in circulation.

Which US coin first carried FDR in 1946, a nod to his polio charity's famous fundraising drive?

The dime was the obvious choice because Roosevelt helped found the March of Dimes, and the Mint hurried the coin out for the charity's January 1946 campaign.

Which Founding Father, never a president, has appeared on the US $100 bill since 1914?

Benjamin Franklin lends the note its nickname, the Benjamin, and as a young printer he produced New Jersey's paper money using anti-forgery tricks of his own.

What sits inside a triangle above the unfinished pyramid on the back of the US $1 bill?

An eye, known as the Eye of Providence, looks out from the reverse of the Great Seal, which has filled the left side of the bill's back since 1935.

Which US bill in circulation has Alexander Hamilton, first Treasury Secretary, in the only portrait facing left?

The $10 also carries the only person on circulating American paper money who was born outside the mainland: Hamilton came from the Caribbean.

Which Union general of the Civil War, later president, appears on the US $50 bill?

Ulysses S. Grant also shaped the money itself: as president he signed the Coinage Act of 1873, which critics of its treatment of silver damned as the Crime of '73.

Which president appears on the US nickel with his Virginia home, Monticello, on the other side?

Thomas Jefferson's portrait was chosen in a 1938 contest won by Felix Schlag, a German-born sculptor who received $1,000 for the design.

Which president's half dollar was approved by Congress barely a month after his death in 1963?

John F. Kennedy's coin was hoarded as a keepsake from the day it appeared in March 1964, so few of the early silver pieces were ever spent.

Which Shoshone woman, a guide to the Lewis and Clark expedition, is on the golden dollar of 2000?

Sacagawea is shown carrying her infant son, and because no portrait of her from life exists, the sculptor worked from a model, Randy'L He-dow Teton.

Which suffragist is on the small 1979 dollar coin that Congress insisted should show a real woman?

Susan B. Anthony's coin flopped because it was close to a quarter in size and colour, and shoppers kept handing it over by mistake.

Which city, the national capital at the time, became home to the first US Mint in 1792?

Philadelphia's Mint was the first building the federal government raised under the Constitution, and its first director, David Rittenhouse, was a scientist.

Which Kentucky Army post gives its name to the vault next door that holds much of America's gold?

Fort Knox is strictly the Army base; the Mint's vault was built beside it in the 1930s to move gold away from coastal cities that were open to attack.

The 50 State Quarters came out in the order states joined the Union, so which state led off in 1999?

Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, and its quarter shows Caesar Rodney on the stormy overnight ride he made in July 1776 to break a deadlock among its delegates.

Which poet was the first Black woman on a US quarter when the American Women Quarters began in 2022?

Maya Angelou stands with arms outstretched before a bird in flight, a nod to her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Since 1982 the US penny has been mostly which metal, hidden under a thin plating of copper?

Zinc makes up 97.5% of every penny struck since late 1982, and the Mint stopped producing the coin for circulation altogether in November 2025.

Which motto first reached US paper money in 1957, a year after Congress made it the national motto?

In God We Trust reached coins far earlier, on the two-cent piece of 1864, after a Pennsylvania pastor petitioned the Treasury during the Civil War.

What does 'E pluribus unum', the Latin motto on the Great Seal and US coins, mean in English?

Out of many, one was the country's unofficial motto, borrowed from the Great Seal, until Congress adopted a different official one in 1956.

Which animal on the 1913 US nickel did the sculptor say was based on a zoo resident, Black Diamond?

Bison is the proper name for the animal on the so-called Buffalo nickel, and the real Black Diamond lived in New York's Central Park Zoo until 1915.

Which crop gave its name to the Lincoln pennies of 1909 to 1958, whose backs show two ears of it?

Wheat ears framed the words ONE CENT until 1959, when the Lincoln Memorial replaced them to mark 150 years since the president's birth.

Which Moon mission's own patch was copied for the back of the Eisenhower dollar coin of 1971?

Apollo 11's patch was drawn by Michael Collins, the astronaut who stayed in lunar orbit while his two crewmates walked on the Moon.

The small letter D stamped on many modern US coins shows they were struck in which city?

Denver inherited the letter from Dahlonega, Georgia, where a gold-rush mint had used the same mark until it closed in 1861.

The W mint mark on some US collector coins stands for which Mint branch in New York State?

West Point's mint stands beside the US Military Academy, and it began in the 1930s as a vault for silver bullion before winning full branch status in 1988.

What nickname did the Union's Civil War paper money earn from the colour of ink on its reverse side?

Greenbacks carried only a promise of eventual payment in coin, with no gold or silver reserve behind them, and the name later passed to American bills in general.

What name was given to the paper money Congress printed to fund the Revolutionary War?

Continentals sank so fast that 'not worth a continental' became a byword, and the fiasco pushed the new nation toward coins of gold and silver.

Which president got two Presidential $1 coins in 2012, one for each of his non-consecutive terms?

Grover Cleveland counts as both the 22nd and 24th president, and the law behind the series ordered a coin for every separate stint in office.

Why did the Presidential $1 coin series pass over Jimmy Carter when it reached his turn in 2016?

He was alive at the time, and the law demanded that a president be dead for two years, so the Mint went straight from Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan.

Which landmark fills the back of every Presidential $1 coin, whichever president is on the front?

The Statue of Liberty was judged enough to stand for freedom by itself, so the word LIBERTY, a fixture of American coins, was left off these dollars entirely.

The slang 'buck' for a US dollar is thought to recall frontier trade in which animal's hide?

Deer hides, or buckskins, were a unit of trade between Native Americans and Europeans on the frontier, which is probably where the dollar's nickname began.

Which US bill, wrongly thought discontinued, shows the 1776 Declaration being presented on its back?

The $2 took a ten-year break from 1966 and returned in 1976 with John Trumbull's painting on the back, but the belief that it is no longer printed never went away.

Which building, where the Declaration was signed in 1776, is on the back of the US $100 bill?

Independence Hall has held the spot since 1928, and words from the Declaration, a quill pen and an inkwell were added to the front of the note in 2013.

Which president is on the $100,000 gold certificate of 1934, a US note that never circulated?

Woodrow Wilson's note existed only to shift gold balances between Federal Reserve Banks, and it is illegal for a private collector to own one.

Silver 'pieces of eight' from which country's empire were legal tender in the US until 1857?

Spain's dollar was the model for the first American one, whose silver weight was fixed after Alexander Hamilton had a batch of worn examples weighed at the Treasury.

What name did the US give the $20 gold coin it created in 1849 as California's Gold Rush took off?

Double eagle simply meant twice an eagle, the older gold coin worth half as much, and both names were written into the laws that created the coins.

The word 'dollar' comes from which silver coin first minted in a Bohemian mining town in the 1500s?

Thaler was short for Joachimsthaler, and its Low German form 'daler' had turned into the English word 'dollar' by about 1600.

Which unit, set down in the Coinage Act of 1792, is worth one-thousandth of a US dollar?

A mill has never been a federal coin, but it lives on in property tax rates and in fuel prices that end in nine-tenths of a cent.

Which blunt motto is on the 1787 Fugio cent, the first coin authorised by the United States?

Mind Your Business sat below a sundial and the Latin word 'fugio', meaning 'I fly', a reminder that time is short and work is waiting.

Detector pens mark fake US bills dark because their iodine ink reacts with what in ordinary paper?

Starch is missing from genuine US notes, which are made of cloth fibres and not wood pulp, so the pen's mark stays pale on the real thing.

The woven 3-D ribbon on the US $100 bill shows the number 100 alternating with which tiny objects?

Bells and the number 100 trade places as the note is tilted, and a second bell hidden in the inkwell on the front shifts from copper to green.

Military payment certificates, paid to US troops abroad from 1946 to 1973, were meant to foil whom?

Black marketeers were caught out on unannounced conversion days, when troops swapped old certificates for a new design and everyone else's turned worthless.

Besides Washington, D.C., which Texas city has printed US paper money since a plant opened in 1990?

Fort Worth's notes can be told apart by a tiny 'FW' printed beside the plate number on the face of the bill.

Which Treasury Secretary put his own portrait on the first US $1 bill, issued under Lincoln in 1862?

Salmon P. Chase may have hoped the exposure would help his political career; he was later honoured on the ten-thousand-dollar note, and Chase Bank was named after him.

Which Revolutionary War figure is on the back of US quarters dated 1776–1976 for the Bicentennial?

A colonial drummer won a national design contest for Jack Ahr, who said that his own son had posed for the figure.

Which California city got a US Mint branch in 1854 to turn Gold Rush nuggets into coins?

San Francisco's second mint building came through the fires that followed the 1906 earthquake, though the heat melted its windows and burst the stone on its walls.

The ridged edges of US quarters and half dollars were meant to stop people doing what to coins?

Shaving them down paid when coins were silver or gold, because the scrapings could be sold while the lightened coin was spent at full value.