FRIDAY SURPRISE: "Somewhere, WIllard Whyte is playing Monopoly with real buildings."
Friday, March 28, 2008 Filed in:
Friday
Surprise!, Completely
irrelevant
When I was a teenager, I took a trip to British Columbia, Canada. Aside from the fact that they couldn't pronouce the "ou" combination correctly ("Grouse Mountain", one of our stops, was pronounced "Groose Moontain"), what struck me about the country was the currency. Where our was the time-honored and respectable green and black combination, theirs was colorful - garish, to my young eyes.
I gave my good-natured hosts no end of ribbing about their "play money", and by the end of my trip I was happy to be back in the U.S., with our familiar greenbacks. This happened well before the adoption of their famous bird-themed coin, but to this American kid Canadian money has always been "loonie."
Today, of course, even the staid U.S. dollar is becoming more colorful in an attempt to thwart counterfeiting. Most of the other countries in the world have long since adopted colorful bills, and some of them are gorgeous.
Check out The Color of Money from Around the World.
-=[ Grant ]=-
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