10 unnecessary stupid facts about money

Ka-ching, today some things you probably didn't know about money. You know. Bills. Bucks. Euros. Dinero. Cents. Coins. Cash. PingPing. That's it. Money, it's a strange thing. Intangible yet so important. For everyone. Did you know this?

1. It almost happened that we would all be paying with the ecu now. The ecu was the ‘administrative’ predecessor of the euro, where ecu stands for European Currency Unit.

2. If you ever fear getting a counterfeit euro note in your hands: that chance is really really really small. According to the anti-counterfeiting department of Europol, about 50,000 counterfeit euro notes are found every month. This seems quite a lot, but out of a total of 13.8 billion (!) euro notes in circulation, it's peanuts. The statistical chance of you getting a fake note is once in 800 years.

3. In the category painful but true: gambling generates more finances/money than movies, cruise ships, theme parks, and music recordings...

4. Although the flu virus can live outside a human body for about 48 hours, it can survive on a banknote for more than 10 days. Yikes.

5. Did you know that rats have gnawed away billions from Pablo Escobar's drug fortune? The Colombian drug lord had stored so much cash in old farms that a large part of it fell prey to the rodents. Not that he lost sleep over it, by the way. It is said that Mr. earned up to 420 million dollars a week during his peak days from the cocaine trade.

6. A money cheque is actually just an instruction for a bank and can in principle be written on anything. In the past, cheques were also written on cows (yes really), tiles, and bananas (??).

7. Did you know that the euro has been used outside the EU since 2002? Andorra, for example, used the euro as its unofficial currency until its accession in 2013. That's actually quite strange, or is it just me?

8. In 1932, the German currency became so worthless that people gave it to their children to play with.

9. Only 8 percent of the money in the world consists of banknotes and coins. Almost all money is digital nowadays. In the Netherlands, cash is disappearing faster than in other European countries, by the way. This is because our banks, retailers, and the government have agreed to promote electronic payments.

10. Only 55 percent of the wealthy on our planet have achieved that themselves. All others are lucky with their family. Oh, and: only 12 percent of all billionaires are women. Phew.