title: Tyson Kidd

text: In January 2012, Kidd began a face turn for the first time since 2010. After defeating Trent Barreta twice on "NXT", Kidd proposed that they tag team together. In late February 2012, Kidd began a feud with Michael McGillicutty after McGillicutty mocked his lack of wrestling heritage. Kidd then lost to McGillicutty on the February 29 "NXT". After McGillicutty insulted Kidd by claiming that Kidd would never be a true 'Hart', Kidd received a rematch on the March 21 "NXT", where he defeated McGillicutty to even up the score at one win each. Kidd and McGillicutty faced off in a third match on the April 11 "NXT", resulting in Kidd triumphant over McGillicutty. Kidd reinforced his singles dominance in "NXT" by first defeating Johnny Curtis on April 25, and next defeating McGillicutty and Derrick Bateman in a triple threat match on May 16.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: On the March 29 "Superstars", Kidd faced Justin Gabriel but lost the match, after which the duo showed mutual respect and agreed to form a tag team to challenge Primo & Epico for the WWE Tag Team Championship in a dark Triple Threat tag team match for WrestleMania XXVIII, also involving The Usos. However they were unsuccessful as Primo & Epico managed to win the match and retain their title. During the match, Gabriel hyperextended and twisted his elbow, rendering him out of action for several weeks. At Over the Limit pay-per-view, Kidd participated in a 20-man battle royal with the winner getting a choice of a United States or Intercontinental Championship match but was eliminated by David Otunga. Kidd reunited with Gabriel on the June 6 "NXT Redemption", where they defeated the duo of Johnny Curtis and Heath Slater. Tyson also defeated PAC at the Palace at Las Vegas. At the No Way Out pay-per-view, Kidd and Gabriel were defeated by The Prime Time Players (Titus O'Neil and Darren Young) in a number one contender Fatal Four-Way tag team match, also involving Primo & Epico and The Usos.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: On the June 29 "SmackDown", Kidd defeated Jack Swagger to qualify for the World Heavyweight Championship Money in the Bank ladder match. Fellow qualifier Tensai then started a feud with Kidd after Kidd pinned him in 19 seconds on the July 2 "Raw", leading Tensai to assault Kidd in post-match attacks. At Money in the Bank, Kidd's ladder match was won by Dolph Ziggler. On the July 30 "Raw", Kidd lost to Tensai, but after Tensai continued to attack Kidd after the match, the referee reversed his decision and awarded Kidd the win.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: On the Night of Champions pre-show on September 16, Kidd was in a #1 Contender Battle Royal for a shot at the United States Championship where he was eliminated by Tensai. Kidd and Gabriel then competed in a series of tag team matches on "Superstars" against Curt Hawkins and Tyler Reks, winning every match. On the debut episode of "Main Event" on October 3, Kidd and Gabriel, now unofficially called International Airstrike, lost to Santino Marella and Zack Ryder in the quarter-finals of a tournament to decide the number one contenders to the tag team championship. On October 31 "NXT", Kidd unsuccessfully challenged Antonio Cesaro for the WWE United States Championship. At the Survivor Series pay-per-view, Kidd was victorious in a 10 man elimination tag team match alongside Justin Gabriel, Rey Mysterio, Sin Cara, and Brodus Clay against Titus O' Neil, Darren Young, Primo, Epico, and Tensai; with Kidd pinning O'Neil and Epico. In January 2013, Kidd tore his knee meniscus and was estimated to require a 6–12 month hiatus to recover. Despite his injury, Kidd appeared on the May 27 "Bret Hart Appreciation Night" ceremony.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: Under a mask to hide his identity, he returned to television on the October 11 "SmackDown" as one of the Los Locales tag team with El Local (Ricardo Rodriguez) with a loss to Los Matadores. An unmasked Kidd returned to "Raw" on November 4, teaming with his wife Natalya with a win over Fandango and Summer Rae. However, Kidd soon resumed losing matches to Fandango, Jack Swagger and former partner Justin Gabriel on "Main Event" and "Superstars" for the rest of 2013. At Wrestlemania XXX, Kidd was in the André the Giant Memorial Battle Royal which was won by Cesaro.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: Following his return from injury, Kidd began regularly appearing on NXT, which was now WWE's developmental branch. He began a winning streak within NXT in December 2013 including victories over Leo Kruger and Mason Ryan. On the May 1 episode of NXT, Kidd defeated Bo Dallas. On the May 8, 2014 episode of "NXT", Kidd participated in a 20-man battle royal for an NXT Championship shot, with him being involved in a three-way tie. As a result, Kidd faced the other two winners, Tyler Breeze and Sami Zayn in a triple-threat match on the next episode of "NXT", where Kidd won to become #1 contender for a match at NXT TakeOver. At TakeOver, Kidd failed to win the title against Adrian Neville. On the June 12 episode of "NXT", Kidd faced Adrian Neville in a rematch for the NXT Title but failed to win the title after an accidental distraction from Natalya. On the June 19 episode of "NXT", Kidd teamed with Sami Zayn to challenge The Ascension for the NXT Tag Team Championship, they lost the match when Kidd walked out on Zayn in the middle of the match, turning heel in the process for the first time since 2012. At , Kidd competed in a Fatal 4-Way match for the NXT Championship, which was successfully retained by Adrian Neville.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: From late September 2014, Kidd started to win more main roster matches, while being flanked by Natalya, scoring wins on "Main Event" and "Superstars" over the likes of Kofi Kingston, Jack Swagger, R-Truth, and Sin Cara. There was storyline tension between Kidd and Natalya, due to Kidd at times neglecting his wife, and at other times using Natalya as a human shield or expecting her to illegally interfere in his matches. On the November 3 episode of "Raw", Kidd again used Natalya to score another win, this time via countout in a non-title match against United States Champion Sheamus. On the November 14 episode of "SmackDown", Kidd received a title opportunity for the WWE Intercontinental Championship in an elimination match with Cesaro and defending champion Dolph Ziggler, however he was unsuccessful.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: Kidd began a tag team with Cesaro on the December 1 episode of "Raw" and were eliminated from a gauntlet match for a tag title shot by The Usos. They gained victories over Los Matadores, and proceeded to ally with Adam Rose in a feud against The New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods) in January. On the Royal Rumble pre-show, Kidd and Cesaro defeated The New Day. Later that night, Kidd entered the Rumble match at number 12, however he was eliminated by Daniel Bryan. At Fastlane on February 22, Kidd and Cesaro defeated The Usos to capture the WWE Tag Team Championship, a title he had not held for nearly 5 years. They retained their title in a rematch the following night on "Raw" after Natalya caused a disqualification. Kidd and Cesaro managed to retain their titles on the WrestleMania 31 pre-show in a match that included three other teams. Kidd also competed in the André the Giant memorial battle royal, but was eliminated by Mark Henry. In April, Kidd and Cesaro reignited their feud against The New Day, where a double turn took place; Kidd and Cesaro turned into babyfaces by displaying a fighting spirit, while The New Day turned heel by using underhanded tactics during their matches. At Extreme Rules, Kidd and Cesaro lost the WWE Tag Team Championship to The New Day (Big E and Kofi Kingston), ending their reign at nine weeks. They failed to regain the championships on the April 30 episode of "SmackDown", and at Payback in a 2-out-of-3 falls match, with Xavier Woods interfering in both matches. At Elimination Chamber, Kidd and Cesaro competed in the first tag team Elimination Chamber match but they failed to win the titles. This turned out to be his final WWE televised match.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: On June 1, 2015, Kidd suffered a spinal cord injury from Samoa Joe's "Muscle Buster" finishing maneuver during a dark match on "Raw". Several weeks later, WWE stated that he would be out of action for over a year. Kidd tweeted that only 5% of people survive his injury and that he had 16 staples, four screws, and a rod inserted in his neck. Discussing the injury, journalist Dave Meltzer said "It is unbelievable that Tyson Kidd came through as well as he did", and noted that most people who survive the injury end up quadriplegic, comparing it to Christopher Reeve's injury.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: On June 29, 2017, Kidd was hired as a full-time employee for WWE as a producer, thus ending his in-ring career. WWE moved Kidd to the alumni section of their website.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: Wilson befriended Teddy Hart and Harry Smith at the age of ten; through them, he became close to the rest of the Hart wrestling family, with whom he lived for several years.


title: Tyson Kidd

text: In June 2013, Wilson married Hart family member and fellow professional wrestler Natalya, whom he had been dating and living with since November 2001. Their relationship and wedding were featured on WWE's reality television series "Total Divas".


title: Tyson Kidd

text: Wilson and his then tag team partner Claudio Castagnoli (then known as Cesaro) revealed that although they were originally teamed by WWE without their input, they clicked personally and subsequently became very close real life friends.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Montpelier () is the capital city of the U.S. state of Vermont and the seat of Washington County. The site of Vermont's state government, it is the least populous state capital in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 8,074. However, the daytime population grows to about 21,000, due to the large number of jobs within city limits. The Vermont College of Fine Arts is located in the municipality. It was named after Montpellier, a city in the south of France.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The meadows and flats of the Winooski River were well known among natives for their corn-raising capacities. The natural site of Montpelier made it a favorite residence for the natives who first inhabited the land. The level plain of nearly two hundred acres of the rich farmland, sheltered from winds by the surrounding valley made the area comparatively warm and comfortable. Its position near the confluence of many streams allowed for favorable hunting, fishing, and trading. Native mounds, tombstones, and other memorials of aboriginal life and death were found in Montpelier, or in the vicinity, by the first settlers, and traces of some of them still remain.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Between 1600 and 1800, European settlers began to arrive in the region. Soon after, war, disease, and dispersal virtually destroyed the Native American settlements. However, evidence suggests some Native Americans remained in the area as late as the mid-1800s.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Originally charted on August 14, 1781, the Town of Montpelier was granted municipal powers by the "Governor, Council and General Assembly of the Freemen of the State of Vermont". The first permanent settlement began in May 1787, when Colonel Jacob Davis and General Parley Davis arrived from Charlton, Massachusetts. General Davis surveyed the land, while Colonel Davis cleared forest and erected a large log house on the west side of the North Branch of the Winooski River. His family moved in the following winter.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Colonel Davis selected the name "Montpelier" after the French city of Montpellier, capital of the department of Hérault. There was a general enthusiasm for things French as a result of the country's aid to the American colonies during the Revolutionary War. The settlement grew quickly, and by 1791 the population reached 117.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The configuration of the early village was strongly influenced by geography. As early as 1799 a bridge was constructed across the Winooski River to Berlin.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The Town's Charter was reissued on February 6, 1804, to include a boundary description of the lands granted to the Town's inhabitants and proprietors. The confluence of the Winooski, North Branch and Dog Rivers provided a central point for the local population and commerce.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: By 1805, the town had a population of 1,200. In that year, the state legislature sought a permanent home. Montpelier was selected because of its central location and accessibility, and because local residents provided land and money. A humble State House was soon constructed on State Street.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: In 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette visited Montpelier on a triumphal tour of the United States, 50 years after the Revolutionary War.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The town developed into a center for manufacturing, especially after the Central Vermont Railway opened in Montpelier on June 20, 1849. In response to Montpelier's growth and changing demographics, on November 9, 1848, the General Assembly divided the original Town into two district municipal corporations. The towns of East Montpelier and Montpelier were created. Later, in an attempt to modernize its form of government, the town was reconstituted as the Village of Montpelier.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: By 1858, the layout of the main streets paralleling the rivers was in place. The downtown street pattern has changed little since that time.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Ten thousand people turned out to greet Major General Philip Sheridan when he visited to address the fourth annual meeting of Vermont former Union officers. He particularly thanked Vermont veterans of the Civil War for their performance at the Battle of Cedar Creek.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The village had the first municipal water driven hydro system in Vermont in 1884. Water pressure generated sufficient electricity for streetlights.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The first charter of Montpelier was granted in 1894 and was amended shortly thereafter in 1898, and again in 1900 and 1912. The first amendment permitted the city to annex a part of the Town of Berlin; the latter enactments amended the 1898 charter to deal with such matters as water works, the relationship between the city and the Washington County Grammar School, and composition of the City Council.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The state proclaimed October 12, 1899, as "Dewey Day" to honor native son George Dewey, the hero of Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish–American War. Thousands turned out from the state to his hometown of Montpelier for the celebration. In 1899, Hubbard Park was established with a donation of land, known as "Hubbard Hill", bequeathed to the City of Montpelier by John Erastus Hubbard (1847–1899) with the intent to "preserve wilderness" for future generations. In 1911, additional land was donated and from 1915 to 1930 an observation tower was constructed on this donated land.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: In 1927, after a particularly wet summer and fall, heavy rains began on the evening of November 2 that continued until the morning of November 4. The heaviest rain fell on November 3, when more than seven inches fell in a six-hour period. The prolonged heavy rains on top of the already saturated soil from the summer and fall proved to be more than the watercourses could handle. Brooks and rivers overflowed, carrying trees and logs in their wake. Dams, bridges and embankments were destroyed. Buildings were submerged, farm animals drowned, and homes and barns were swept away. Rivers reached 13 feet or more above their normal depths. Flood waters gradually receded, leaving behind silt, gravel and debris. At least a foot of mud was left on the floors of downtown stores.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: At the time, only two stores in Montpelier carried flood insurance. The staggering loss represented an average of $400 for every man, woman, and child in town—equivalent to roughly $5,760 in 2018 dollars. In the days following the flood, Vermont was widely praised for its recovery efforts. President Calvin Coolidge, in particular, hailed the “indomitable spirit” of Vermonters, of whom he was one.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: In response to the damage suffered by Montpelier and surrounding communities in the Great Flood of 1927, the Civilian Conservation Corps built the Wrightsville Dam during a period from 1933 to 1935. The resulting reservoir, Wrightsville Reservoir, required the disbandment and flooding of the village of Wrightsville, which contained at least 30 built structures at the time.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The City of Montpelier grew slowly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries during the period of intensive out-migration from the state to new lands in the West, or to industrial centers elsewhere in New England. Montpelier was already established as a government, market, service and industrial center in the region. When the automobile arrived, new state highways were routed to the city limits, and traffic then circulated through the original streets of the city. In 1954, a new bridge was constructed at Bailey Avenue which linked to an extension of Winooski Avenue, now Memorial Drive, and diverted some of the traffic from the downtown area.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: An early spring thaw in March 1992 caused an ice jam to form in the Winooski River downstream of the Bailey Avenue bridge in Montpelier. In less than an hour, water levels in the Winooski and North Branch rivers rose upstream of the ice jam and flooded downtown Montpelier. The damage shut down 120 businesses, left 50 residents without homes, disrupted the operations of state government, and caused upwards of $5 million in damage.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Montpelier is located in the north-central area of Vermont. The city center is a flat clay zone (elevation 520 ft/158 m), surrounded by hills and granite ledges. Towne Hill runs in a ridge (~900 ft/275 m) along the northern edge of the city.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and 0.10% is water. The Winooski River flows west along the south edge of downtown village and is fed by several smaller tributaries that cut through residential districts. Montpelier has been subject to periodic flooding in the flat city center, with two major floods occurring in 1927 and in 1992.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: On its borders are the towns of Middlesex to the west, Berlin to the south, and East Montpelier to the north and east. Montpelier lies near the geographic center of the state. Though it does not share a border, Montpelier is frequently associated with the nearby city of Barre, and the two are often referred to together as "Barre-Montpelier".


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Montpelier features a humid continental climate (Köppen "Dfb"), with long, cold, and snowy winters, short springs and autumns, and warm, humid summers. From January to July, daily means range from . In winter, lows fall below on 24 mornings and daytime highs stay below freezing for the majority of afternoons from December to February. Snow is also frequent and remains on the ground for long stretches throughout the winter, though thaws are by no means infrequent. Average annual snowfall is . Summers are warm and often humid, with 2 or 3 days above , but rarely reaching .


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Along with Barre, the city forms a small micropolitan area in the center of the state; together they are known as "the twin cities".


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: At the 2019 American Community Survey, an estimated 7,852 people lived in the city. At the census of 2010, there were 7,855 people, 3,739 households, and 1,940 families residing in the city. The population density was 784.0 people per square mile (302.7/km). There were 3,899 housing units at an average density of 380.4 per square mile (146.9/km).


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: At the 2010 census, there were 3,739 households, out of which 26.0% had children under the age of 18 years living with them, 38.5% were married couples living together, 10.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 48.1% were non-families. 39.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.09 and the average family size was 2.84.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: In the city, the population was spread out, with 21.3% under the age of 18, 8.6% from 18 to 24, 28.2% from 25 to 44, 27.1% from 45 to 64, and 14.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females, there were 84.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 82.0 males.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The median income for a household in the city was $37,513, and the median income for a family was $51,818. Males had a median income of $35,957 versus $29,442 for females. The per capita income for the city was $22,599. About 7.2% of families and 9.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 12.9% of those under age 18 and 5.7% of those age 65 or over.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: In 2019, there were 3,668 households with an average of 2.03 persons per household. The city had an owner-occupied housing rate of 55.6% and median value of owner-occupied housing rate of $252,600. The median monthly cost of an owner-occupied housing unit was $1,827 and without a mortgage $822. The city had a median gross rent of $1,022.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: In 2019, the racial and ethnic makeup of Montpelier was 92.2% non-Hispanic white, 1.6% Black or African American, 1.5% Asian, 2.4% two or more races, and 2.3% Hispanic or Latin American of any race. Among the population in 2019, 4.1% were foreign-born persons. In 2010, the racial makeup of the city was 93.7% White, 1.0% African American, 0.3% Native American, 2.2% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.39% from other races, and 2.2% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.1% of the population.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Since the city's establishment as capital in 1805, the primary business in Montpelier has been government, and by the mid-19th century government and life and fire insurance. Companies based in Montpelier include the National Life Group.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Located in Montpelier are the New England Culinary Institute, the annual Green Mountain Film Festival and the headquarters of several insurance companies. The majority of businesses in the downtown area, mostly retail, are locally owned.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Montpelier is the only state capital in the United States of America that does not have a McDonald's. However, there is a McDonald's location in nearby Berlin, Vermont.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The Vermont History Museum, operated in The Pavilion by the Vermont Historical Society, is an attraction.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The Vermont Mountaineers of the New England Collegiate Baseball League play at the Montpelier Recreation Field.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The Grand Depart of the Vermont Super 8 bikepacking route takes place on the steps of the capitol each fall.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The city has three city nature centers. Hubbard Park rises behind the state capitol building and extends along the ridge line towards the north past the pool to the stump dump. Accessible from Cummings Street off State Route 12, the North Branch River Park is the second-largest park in the city. The Mill Pond Park is located along State Route 12 approximately from the cemetery and features boat access to the North Branch river, as well as benches and short-term parking. The North Branch Nature Center is located at the northern end of town and includes of protected land as well as a community nature center. A bridge from the North Branch Nature Center connects the land to the North Branch River Park on the opposite side of the North Branch River. In recent years, North Branch River Park has significantly expanding its mountain biking trails, making it a hub for area mountain bikers of all ages. The first mountain bike trail in North Branch River Park was constructed and opened in 2005 as part of a partnership between the Montpelier Area Mountain Bike Association and the Montpelier Parks Department. Since that time, 4 additional miles of trails have been added. A pump track is also currently under construction.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Montpelier's government maintains a city council, city manager, and mayor. The city council consists of a mayor and six members. Council members are elected on a nonpartisan ballot from three districts, with councilors serving staggered two-year terms. The mayor is elected to a two-year term in each even-numbered year on a nonpartisan ballot in a citywide voter. The council appoints the city manager who is the chief administrative officer of the city.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The city provides municipal services for its residents and businesses. These include local law enforcement, firefighting, planning and zoning regulation, and provision for potable drinking water and wastewater.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Politically, Montpelier is a Democratic stronghold. In the 2020 United States presidential election, Joe Biden received 88 percent of the vote to Donald Trump's 9 percent.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Individuals who have served as mayor since Montpelier's incorporation as a city and their years of election include:


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The "Barre Montpelier Times Argus i"s a daily newspaper that serves Montpelier and Washington County. The broadcast television station WNNE (CW/NBC) is licensed to the city. ORCA Media is a non-profit community media center that serves Montpelier and surrounding communities, including Randolph and Waterbury.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Montpelier has become one of Vermont's most readily accessible cities and towns, as Vermont's founders deliberately placed the capital near the geographic center of the state.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: The city is located along Interstate 89. East–west U.S. Route 2 and north–south Vermont Route 12 are two other principal routes that intersect in Montpelier. Both I-89 and U.S. 2 provide a direct link to Burlington and the populous Lake Champlain Valley in the northwestern corner of the state. U.S. Route 302 has its western terminus in Montpelier, connecting it with the nearby city of Barre and points east.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Amtrak, the national passenger rail system, provides daily service from its station at Montpelier Junction in the neighboring town of Berlin, on the route known as the "Vermonter", operating between St. Albans, Vermont and Washington, D.C.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Greyhound and Megabus operate buses that serve Montpelier. The Green Mountain Transit Authority (GMTA) operates a local bus network throughout the micropolitan area, with stops in Montpelier and Barre, including nearby Waterbury, the Vermont State House, the Ben & Jerry's factory, and the local Berlin Mall. GMTA and its sister bus company in Burlington, the Chittenden County Transportation Authority (CCTA), operate a series of LINK commuter buses with stops in Montpelier, Burlington, Richmond, and Waterbury.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Air travelers in private planes can use the Edward F. Knapp State Airport in Berlin to access Montpelier. The Burlington International Airport in Chittenden County is the closest commercial air service, located northwest of Montpelier.


title: Montpelier, Vermont

text: Two shared-use paths for walking and bicycling connect to Montpelier: the Cross Vermont Trail and the Central Vermont Regional Path. Montpelier's downtown is relatively compact and pedestrian-friendly, with sidewalks and crosswalks throughout the downtown area.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach is a neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, within the greater Coney Island area along the Atlantic Ocean coastline. Brighton Beach is bounded by Coney Island proper at Ocean Parkway to the west, Manhattan Beach at Corbin Place to the east, Sheepshead Bay at the Belt Parkway to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south along the beach and boardwalk.


title: Brighton Beach

text: It is known for its high population of Russian-speaking immigrants, and as a summer destination for New York City residents due to its beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and its proximity to the amusement parks in Coney Island.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach is part of Brooklyn Community District 13, and its primary ZIP Code is 11235. It is patrolled by the 60th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Politically, Brighton Beach is represented by the New York City Council's 48th District.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach is included in an area from Sheepshead Bay to Sea Gate that was purchased from the Native Americans in 1645 for a gun, a blanket and a kettle.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach was located on sandy terrain, and before development in the 1860s, had mostly farms. The area was part of the "Middle Division" of the town of Gravesend, which was the sole English settlement out of the original six towns in Kings County. By the mid-18th century, thirty-nine lots in the division had been distributed to the descendants of English colonists.


title: Brighton Beach

text: In 1868, William A. Engeman built a resort in the area. The resort was given the name "Brighton Beach" in 1878 by Henry C. Murphy and a group of businessmen, who chose the name as an allusion to the English resort city of Brighton. With the help of Gravesend's surveyor William Stillwell, Engeman acquired all 39 lots for the relatively low cost of $20,000. This hotel, with rooms for up to 5,000 people nightly and meals for up to 20,000 people daily, was close to the then-rundown western Coney Island, so it was mostly the upper middle class that went to this hotel. The , double-decker Brighton Beach Bathing Pavilion was also built nearby and opened in 1878, with the capacity for 1,200 bathers. "Hotel Brighton", also known as the "Brighton Beach Hotel", was situated on the beach at what is now the foot of Coney Island Avenue. The Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railway, the predecessor to the New York City Subway's present-day Brighton Line, opened on July 2, 1878, and provided access to the hotel.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Adjacent to the hotel, Engeman built the Brighton Beach Race Course for thoroughbred horse racing. In December 1887, an extremely high tide washed over the area, creating a new, temporary connection between Sheepshead Bay and the ocean. Wrote the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle": "Unless [Engeman] is very lucky the next races on the Brighton Beach track will be conducted by the white crested horses of Neptune."


title: Brighton Beach

text: After that extremely high tide, and a decade of beach erosion, the Brighton Beach Hotel, by then owned by the Railway, faced the possibility of being "undermined and carried away." A plan termed "highly ingenious and novel" was initiated by the superintendent of the Railway, J.L. Morrow, and its secretary, E.L. Langford, to elevate and move the building as a whole, 495 feet further inland. This was accomplished by lifting the estimated 5000 ton, building, using 13 hydraulic jacks, after which 24 lines of railroad track – a mile and a half length in total – were laid under it, and 112 railroad "platform cars" (flat cars) pulled by six steam locomotives were used to pull the hotel away from the sea. This careful engineering (by B.C. Miller) made the move successful; it began on April 2, 1888, and continued for the next nine days, and was the largest building move of the 19th century.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Anton Seidl and the Metropolitan Opera brought their popular interpretations of Wagner to the Brighton Beach Music Hall, where John Philip Sousa was in residence, and the New Brighton Theater was a hotspot for vaudeville. Visitors for tea at Reisenweber's Brighton Beach Casino would be served by Japanese waitresses in full costume. At an enormous private club, the Brighton Beach Baths, members could swim, access a private beach, and play handball, mah-jongg, and cards.


title: Brighton Beach

text: The village, along with the rest of Gravesend, was annexed into the 31st Ward of the City of Brooklyn in 1894.


title: Brighton Beach

text: In 1905, Brighton Beach Park opened its own area of amusements, calling it Brighton Pike. Brighton Pike offered a boardwalk, games, live entertainment (including the Miller Brothers' wild-west show: "101 Ranch"), and a huge steel roller coaster. The park was shut down in 1919 after it burned down. The actual beach remained popular, though.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach was re-developed as a fairly dense residential community with the final rebuilding of the Brighton Beach railway to rapid transit standards, becoming the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT)'s Brighton Line, which opened (the line is now served by the New York City Subway's ). The subway line within the neighborhood is above ground on an elevated structure. The opening of the BMT Brighton Line had conflicting consequences: although it made Brighton Beach viable as a year-round community, it was now much more feasible for visitors to return home in the evening rather than spend the night. This led to the closure of the Brighton Beach Hotel in 1924.


title: Brighton Beach

text: The years just before and following the Great Depression brought with them a neighborhood consisting mostly of first- and second-generation Jewish-Americans and, later, Holocaust concentration camp survivors. Of the estimated 55,000 Holocaust survivors living in New York City as of 2011, most live in Brighton Beach. To meet the bursting cultural demands, the New Brighton Theater converted itself to the States' first Yiddish theater in 1919.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Today, Brighton Beach is home to many synagogues and Jewish institutions, including a Chabad center a Mikvah and a Jewish day school called Mazel


title: Brighton Beach

text: After World War II, the quality of life in Brighton Beach decreased significantly as the poverty rate and the ratio of older residents to younger residents increased. Due to the 1970s fiscal crisis, government workers and the middle class had moved to suburban areas, while people subdivided houses into single room occupancy residences for the poor, the elderly, and the mentally ill. Brighton Beach suffered from arson as much as it did from constant drug trades. During the summer, however, people from all around the city went to Brighton Beach's beach next to the Atlantic Ocean.


title: Brighton Beach

text: In the mid-1970s, Brighton Beach became a popular place to settle for Soviet immigrants, mostly Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Ukraine. So many Soviet Jews immigrated to Brighton Beach that the area became known as "Little Odessa" (after the Ukrainian city on the Black Sea).


title: Brighton Beach

text: The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent significant changes in the social and economic circumstances of post-Soviet states led thousands of former Soviet citizens to immigrate to the United States. Many more immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who primarily spoke Russian, chose Brighton Beach as a place to settle. This included an influx of immigrants from the Caucasus, mostly from countries such as Georgia and Azerbaijan.


title: Brighton Beach

text: A large number of Russian immigrant firms, shops, restaurants, clubs, offices, banks, schools, and children's play centers opened in the area. The value of real estate in Brighton Beach started to rise again, even though drugs remained a social issue in the area through the early 1990s.


title: Brighton Beach

text: In the early 2000s, a high-income ocean-front condominium complex, the "Oceana", was constructed. This address has become the destination of wealthy businessmen, entertainers, and senior officials from the former Soviet Union, and with their purchase of units at the Oceana, area housing prices have risen.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Since the early 2010s, a significant number of Central Asian immigrants have also chosen Brighton Beach as a place to settle.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach Avenue runs parallel to the Coney Island beach and boardwalk. The proximity of Brighton Beach to the city's beaches and the fact that the neighborhood is directly served by a subway station make it a popular summer weekend destination for New York City residents.


title: Brighton Beach

text: As apartment buildings started to be built in large numbers in the 1930s, many of those who moved into the neighborhood were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, often by way of the Lower East Side. They came from many countries, but also set the stage for a later wave of Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union that started in the 1970s, when Brighton Beach became known as "Little Odessa," and "Little Russia". An annual festival, the Brighton Jubilee, celebrates the area's Russian-speaking heritage. The area has also been called "the land of pelmeni, matryoshkas, tracksuits, and...vodka" due to its large population of Soviet immigrants.


title: Brighton Beach

text: In 2006, Alec Brook-Krasny was elected for the 46th District of the New York State Assembly, which includes Brighton Beach, becoming the country's first elected Soviet-born politician.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Brighton Beach was 35,547, an increase of 303 (0.9%) from the 35,244 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of . The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 69.7% (24,774) White, 1.0% (352) African American, 0.2% (61) Native American, 12.9% (4,580) Asian, 0.0% (10) Pacific Islander, 0.4% (139) from other races, and 1.2% (442) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 14.6% (5,189) of the population.


title: Brighton Beach

text: , Brighton Beach had a middle-class, mostly Jewish, older population. 27% of Brighton Beach was of age 62 or older, while the national average of persons aged 62 or older was 13.9%. Since the 1990s, however, the neighborhood's ethnic demographics have been changing, with a large influx of mainly Muslim immigrants from Central Asia, such as Uzbeks. In subsequent years, the proportion of whites leveled out, the proportion of the black population decreased significantly, and the proportion of the Asian population increased to 14% as of 2014. , increasing numbers of Muslim Central Asians were moving into Brighton Beach, and based on the historic Soviet influence over these areas, these immigrants also speak Russian.


title: Brighton Beach

text: According to the United States Census report of 2010, Brighton Beach and Coney Island, combined, had 111,063 residents as of 2009. In that year, the median age of residents of Brooklyn was 34.2 and in New York City as a whole, it was 36.0 years, while in the combined Brighton Beach and Coney Island area it was 47.9 years. hence, the area is distinguished by a higher median age of its population. As DiNapoli and Bleiwas note in a city report, "the number of residents aged 65 years and older in [this area] rose by 4.1 percent, so that senior citizens accounted for more than one-quarter of the area's population" at that date. According to the census, the population density in Brighton Beach, per se (52,109 people per square mile), was almost twice the average population density of New York City (27,012 people per square mile), though the average household size was 2.1 people, lower than the city average of 2.6 people. The average income of households in the area was $36,574, while the average income in the whole city was $55,217, according to the 2010 census. In Brighton Beach, 21% of the population lives below the poverty line, compared to only 15.4% citywide.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Most of the population of Brighton Beach are immigrants. Less than a quarter (23.3%) of Brighton Beach residents were born in the United States, and nearly three-quarters were born abroad (72.9%). Because of this, English language proficiency in Brighton Beach is lower than the city average. More than a third (36.1%) of the population of Brighton Beach does not speak or understand English, while citywide, only one in fourteen people (7.2%) cannot speak or understand English.


title: Brighton Beach

text: New York City Department of City Planning showed that in the 2020 census data that there were between 20,000 and 29,000 White residents and between 5,000 and 9,999 Asian residents, meanwhile each the Hispanic and Black populations were each less than 5000 residents.


title: Brighton Beach

text: The Brighton Ballet Theater, established in 1987, is one of the most famous Russian ballet schools in the United States. More than 3,000 children have trained in ballet, modern and character dances, and folk dances here.


title: Brighton Beach

text: A Russian-speaking theater near the waterfront, , formally the Millennium Theater built in 1934 as the Oceana movie theater, features performances by actors from the U.S., Russia, and other countries.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach is patrolled by the NYPD's 60th Precinct, located at 2950 West Eighth Street. The 60th Precinct ranked 34th safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010. Between 1993 and 2010, major crimes decreased by 72%, including a 76% decrease in robberies, 71% decrease in felony assaults, and 67% decrease in shootings.


title: Brighton Beach

text: The 60th Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 84.6% between 1990 and 2017. The precinct reported 0 murders, 20 rapes, 1138 robberies, 232 felony assaults, 89 burglaries, 422 grand larcenies, and 46 grand larcenies auto in 2017.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach is considered a hot spot for the Russian Bratva, though public perception has been that organized crime "has largely gone away." In the 1970s, the most notorious leg of the mafia was the Potato Bag Gang, which served as a robbery gang for larger Russian crime syndicates in New York City. Marat Balagula was a crime boss from Brighton Beach who denies having any connection to the American Mafia or the Russian-speaking Mafia. The major Russian criminal element in Brighton Beach was the international Russian mafia group, known as vor v zakone or "vory," and the first vory crime boss in Brighton Beach was Evsei Agron, who controlled the area's crime during the 1970s and 1980s until his death in 1985. After the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, many ethnic Russian criminals illegally entered the United States, coming especially to Brighton Beach. The infamous vor Vyacheslav Ivankov, who dominated the Brighton Beach underworld until his arrest in 1995, arrived during this wave.


title: Brighton Beach

text: The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) operates the Engine Co. 246/Ladder Co. 169 firehouse at 2732 East 11th Street.


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach's ZIP Code is 11235. The United States Postal Service operates the Brighton Station post office at 3157 Coney Island Avenue.


title: Brighton Beach

text: There are several public parks in Brighton Beach, operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation:


title: Brighton Beach

text: The New York City Subway serves the neighborhood at the Brighton Beach () and Ocean Parkway () stations. Both are located on the elevated Brighton Line structure over Brighton Beach Avenue. Buses serving Brighton Beach include the .


title: Brighton Beach

text: Brighton Beach is served by the New York City Department of Education. Primary and middle schools within Brighton Beach include P.S. 225 The Eileen E. Zaglin School for grades K–8, and P.S. 253 the Ezra Jack Keats International School. In 1983, the Community School District 21 operated PS 225, PS 253, and Junior High School 302. During that year, over 62% of its students read at or above their grade level, far above the national average. PS 100, The Coney Island School for grades K–5 and 303 Herbert S. Eisenberg are both located nearby in Coney Island.


title: Brighton Beach

text: William E. Grady CTE High School, a vocational school, is located in Brighton Beach. Abraham Lincoln High School, an academic high school, is in Coney Island. In 1983 Lincoln was the zoned academic high school of Brighton Beach. Other nearby high schools include the Rachel Carson High School for Coastal Studies and The Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences.


title: Brighton Beach

text: The Brooklyn Public Library's Brighton Beach branch is located at 16 Brighton First Road, near Brighton Beach Avenue. The branch contains a large collection of media in Russian. The branch opened in December 1949, but due to high patronage, moved to its current location in 1964. The branch was renovated in the early 1990s.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: Saint Catherine's Monastery (; ), officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Katherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, is an Eastern Orthodox monastery located on the Sinai Peninsula. It lies at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai, near the town of Saint Catherine, in Egypt. The monastery is named after Catherine of Alexandria.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: Controlled by the autonomous Church of Sinai, which is part of the wider Greek Orthodox Church, the monastery became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002 for its unique importance in the traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Saint Catherine's has as its backdrop the three mountains it lies near: Ras Sufsafeh (possibly the Biblical Mount Horeb, peak c. west); Jebel Arrenziyeb, peak c.1km south; and Mount Sinai (locally, , by tradition identified with the biblical Mount Sinai; peak south).


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: Built between 548 and 565, it is the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. The site also holds the world's oldest continually operating library, with unique or extremely rare works, such as the Codex Sinaiticus and the Syriac Sinaiticus, as well as possibly the largest collection of early Christian icons, including the earliest known depiction of Jesus as Christ Pantocrator.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: During Catherine's imprisonment more than 200 people came to see her, including Maxentius' wife, Valeria Maximilla; all converted to Christianity and were subsequently martyred. The furious emperor condemned Catherine to death on a spiked breaking wheel, but, at her touch, it shattered. Maxentius ordered her to be beheaded. Catherine herself ordered the execution to commence. And also according to legend, a milk-like substance rather than blood flowed from her neck.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: The monastery was built around the location of what is traditionally considered to be the place of the burning bush seen by Moses. Although it is commonly known as Saint Catherine's, the monastery's official name is the "Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Katherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai". The patronal feast of the monastery is the Feast of the Transfiguration. It has become a favorite site of pilgrimage.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: The oldest record of monastic life at Mount Sinai comes from the travel journal written in Latin by a pilgrim woman named Egeria (Etheria; St Sylvia of Aquitaine) about 381/2–386.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: The monastery was built by order of Emperor Justinian I (reigned 527–565), enclosing the Chapel of the Burning Bush (also known as "Saint Helen's Chapel") ordered to be built by Empress Consort Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, at the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush. The living bush on the grounds is purportedly the one seen by Moses. Structurally the monastery's king post truss is the oldest known surviving roof truss in the world. The site is sacred to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: A mosque was created by converting an existing chapel during the Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171), which was in regular use until the era of the Mamluk Sultanate in the 13th century and is still in use today on special occasions. During the Ottoman Empire, the mosque was in desolate condition; it was restored in the early 20th century.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: During the seventh century, the isolated Christian anchorites of the Sinai were eliminated: only the fortified monastery remained. The monastery is still surrounded by the massive fortifications that have preserved it. Until the twentieth century, access was through a door high in the outer walls. From the time of the First Crusade, the presence of Crusaders in the Sinai until 1270 spurred the interest of European Christians and increased the number of intrepid pilgrims who visited the monastery. The monastery was supported by its dependencies in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Crete, Cyprus and Constantinople.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: The monastery, along with several dependencies in the area, constitute the entire Church of Sinai, which is headed by an archbishop, who is also the abbot of the monastery. The exact administrative status of the church within the Eastern Orthodox Church is ambiguous: by some, including the church itself, it is considered autocephalous, by others an autonomous church under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem. The archbishop is traditionally consecrated by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem; in recent centuries he has usually resided in Cairo. During the period of the Crusades which was marked by bitterness between the Orthodox and Catholic churches, the monastery was patronized by both the Byzantine emperors and the rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and their respective courts.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: On April 18, 2017, an attack by the Islamic State group at a checkpoint near the Monastery killed one policeman and injured three police officers.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: The library, founded sometime between 548 and 565, is the oldest continuously operating library in the world. The monastery library preserves the second largest collection of early codices and manuscripts in the world, outnumbered only by the Vatican Library. It contains Greek, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Syriac, Georgian, Arabic, Ethiopic/Ge‘ez, Latin, Armenian, Church Slavonic, and Caucasian Albanian manuscripts and books, and very rare Hebrew Language, some Coptic books.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: In May 1844 and February 1859, Constantin von Tischendorf visited the monastery for research and discovered the Codex Sinaiticus, dating from the 4th century, at the time the oldest almost completely preserved manuscript of the Bible. The finding from 1859 left the monastery for Russia, in circumstances that had been long disputed. But in 2003 Russian scholars discovered the donation act for the manuscript signed by the Council of Cairo Metochion and Archbishop Callistratus on 13 November 1869. The monastery received 9000 rubles as a gift from Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The Codex was sold by Stalin in 1933 to the British Museum and is now in the British Library, London, where it is on public display. Prior to September 1, 2009, a previously unseen fragment of Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in the monastery's library, as well as among the New Finds of 1975. On other visits (1855, 1857) Constantin von Tischendorf also amassed there more valuable manuscripts (Greek, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Georgian, Syriac) and took them with him to St Petersburg and Leipzig, where they are stored today.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: In February 1892, Agnes S. Lewis discovered an early palimpsest manuscript of the Gospel in St Catherine Monastery's library that became known as the Syriac Sinaiticus and is still in the monastery's possession. Agnes and her sister Margaret D. Gibson returned in 1893 with the Cambridge team of the two scholars that included their wives, and also J. Rendel Harris to photograph and transcribe the manuscript in its entirety, as well as to prepare the first catalogues of the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts. Only among the New Finds two additional palimpsest manuscripts came to light containing additional passages of the Old Syriac Gosples.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: The Monastery also has a copy of the Ashtiname of Muhammad, in which the Islamic prophet Muhammad is claimed to have bestowed his protection upon the monastery.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: Additionally, the monastery houses a copy of Mok'c'evay K'art'lisay, a collection of supplementary books of the Kartlis Cxovreba, dating from the 9th century.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: The most important manuscripts have since been filmed or digitized, and so are accessible to scholars. With planning assistance from Ligatus, a research center of the University of the Arts London, the library was extensively renovated, reopening at the end of 2017.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: Since 2011, a team of imaging scientists and experienced scholars in the decipherment of palimpsest manuscripts from the U.S. and Europe have photographed, digitized, and studied the library's collection of palimpsests during the international Sinai palimpsests project.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: Palimpsests are notable for having been reused one or more times over the centuries. Since parchment was expensive and time-consuming to produce, monks would erase certain texts with orange juice or scrape them off and write over them. Though the original texts were once assumed to be lost, the imaging scientists used narrowband multispectral imaging techniques and technologies to reveal features that were difficult to see with the human eye, including ink residues and small grooves in the parchment. Each page took approximately eight minutes to scan completely. These images have subsequently been digitized and are now freely available for research at the UCLA Online Library for scholarly use.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: As of June 2018, at least more than 160 palimpsests were identified, with over 6,800 pages of texts recovered. The newer finds were discovered in a secluded storage area of the St George Tower in 1975. Highlights include "108 pages of previously unknown Greek poems and the oldest-known recipe attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates;" additional folios for the transmission of the Old Syriac Gospels; two unattested witnesses of an early Christian apocryphal text the Dormition of Mary (Transitus Mariae) of which most of the Greek text is lost; a previously unknown martyrdom of Patriklos of Caesarea Maritima (Palestine), one of the eleven followers of Pamphilus of Caesarea; as well as insight into dead languages such as the previously hardly attested Caucasian Albanian and Christian Palestinian Aramaic, the local dialect of the early Byzantine period, with many unparalleled text witnesses.


title: Saint Catherine's Monastery

text: The complex houses irreplaceable works of art: mosaics, the best collection of early icons in the world, many in encaustic, as well as liturgical objects, chalices and reliquaries, and church buildings. The large icon collection begins with a few dating to the 5th (possibly) and 6th centuries, which are unique survivals; the monastery having been untouched by Byzantine iconoclasm, and never sacked. The oldest icon on an Old Testament theme is also preserved there. A project to catalogue the collections has been ongoing since the 1960s. The monastery was an important centre for the development of the hybrid style of Crusader art, and still retains over 120 icons created in the style, by far the largest collection in existence. Many were evidently created by Latins, probably monks, based in or around the monastery in the 13th century.


title: History of money

text: The history of money concerns the development throughout time of systems that provide the functions of money. Such systems can be understood as means of trading wealth indirectly; not directly as with bartering. Money is a mechanism that facilitates this process.


title: History of money

text: Money may take a physical form as in coins and notes, or may exist as a written or electronic account. It may have intrinsic value (commodity money), be legally exchangeable for something with intrinsic value (representative money), or only have nominal value (fiat money).


title: History of money

text: The invention of money took place before the beginning of written history. Consequently, any story of how money first developed is mostly based on conjecture and logical inference.


title: History of money

text: The significant evidence establishes many things were traded in ancient markets that could be described as a medium of exchange. These included livestock and grain–things directly useful in themselves – but also merely attractive items such as cowrie shells or beads were exchanged for more useful commodities. However, such exchanges would be better described as barter, and the common bartering of a particular commodity (especially when the commodity items are not fungible) does not technically make that commodity "money" or a "commodity money" like the shekel – which was both a coin representing a specific weight of barley, and the weight of that sack of barley.


title: History of money

text: Due to the complexities of ancient history (ancient civilizations developing at different paces and not keeping accurate records or having their records destroyed), and because the ancient origins of economic systems precede written history, it is impossible to trace the true origin of the invention of money. Further, evidence in the histories supports the idea that money has taken two main forms divided into the broad categories of "money of account" (debits and credits on ledgers) and "money of exchange" (tangible media of exchange made from clay, leather, paper, bamboo, metal, etc.).


title: History of money

text: As "money of account" depends on the ability to record a count, the tally stick was a significant development. The oldest of these dates from the Aurignacian, about 30,000 years ago. The 20,000-year-old Ishango Bone – found near one of the sources of the Nile in the Democratic Republic of Congo – seems to use matched tally marks on the thigh bone of a baboon for correspondence counting. Accounting records – in the monetary system sense of the term accounting – dating back more than 7,000 years have been found in Mesopotamia, and documents from ancient Mesopotamia show lists of expenditures, and goods received and traded and the history of accounting evidences that money of account pre-dates the use of coinage by several thousand years. David Graeber proposes that money as a unit of account was invented when the unquantifiable obligation "I owe you one" transformed into the quantifiable notion of "I owe you one unit of something". In this view, money emerged first as money of account and only later took the form of money of exchange.


title: History of money

text: Regarding money of exchange, the use of representative money historically pre-dates the invention of coinage as well. In the ancient empires of Egypt, Babylon, India and China, the temples and palaces often had commodity warehouses which made use of clay tokens and other materials which served as evidence of a claim upon a portion of the goods stored in the warehouses. There isn't any concrete evidence these kinds of tokens were used for trade, however, only for administration and accounting.


title: History of money

text: While not the oldest form of money of exchange, various metals (both common and precious metals) were also used in both barter systems and monetary systems and the historical use of metals provides some of the clearest illustration of how the barter systems gave birth to monetary systems. The Romans' use of bronze, while not among the more ancient examples, is well-documented, and it illustrates this transition clearly. First, the "aes rude" (rough bronze) was used. This was a heavy weight of unmeasured bronze used in what was probably a barter system—the barter-ability of the bronze was related exclusively to its usefulness in metalsmithing and it was bartered with the intent of being turned into tools. The next historical step was bronze in bars that had a 5-pound pre-measured weight (presumably to make barter easier and more fair), called "aes signatum" (signed bronze), which is where debate arises between if this is still the barter system or now a monetary system. Finally, there is a clear break from the use of bronze in barter into its undebatable use as money because of lighter measures of bronze not intended to be used as anything other than coinage for transactions. The aes grave (heavy bronze) (or "As") is the start of the use of coins in Rome, but not the oldest known example of metal coinage.


title: History of money

text: Gold and silver have been the most common forms of money throughout history. In many languages, such as Spanish, French, Hebrew and Italian, the word for silver is still directly related to the word for money. Sometimes other metals were used. For instance, Ancient Sparta minted coins from iron to discourage its citizens from engaging in foreign trade. In the early 17th century Sweden lacked precious metals, and so produced "plate money": large slabs of copper 50 cm or more in length and width, stamped with indications of their value.


title: History of money

text: Gold coins began to be minted again in Europe in the 13th century. Frederick II is credited with having reintroduced gold coins during the Crusades. During the 14th century Europe changed from use of silver in currency to minting of gold. Vienna made this change in 1328.


title: History of money

text: Metal-based coins had the advantage of carrying their value within the coins themselves – on the other hand, they induced manipulations, such as the clipping of coins to remove some of the precious metal. A greater problem was the simultaneous co-existence of gold, silver and copper coins in Europe. The exchange rates between the metals varied with supply and demand. For instance the gold guinea coin began to rise against the silver crown in England in the 1670s and 1680s. Consequently, silver was exported from England in exchange for gold imports. The effect was worsened with Asian traders not sharing the European appreciation of gold altogether – gold left Asia and silver left Europe in quantities European observers like Isaac Newton, Master of the Royal Mint observed with unease.


title: History of money

text: Stability came when national banks guaranteed to change silver money into gold at a fixed rate; it did, however, not come easily. The Bank of England risked a national financial catastrophe in the 1730s when customers demanded their money be changed into gold in a moment of crisis. Eventually London's merchants saved the bank and the nation with financial guarantees.


title: History of money

text: Another step in the evolution of money was the change from a coin being a unit of weight to being a unit of value. A distinction could be made between its commodity value and its "specie" value. The difference in these values is seigniorage.


title: History of money

text: The earliest ideas included Aristotle's "metallist" and Plato's "chartalist" concepts, which Joseph Schumpeter integrated into his own theory of money as forms of classification. Especially, the Austrian economist attempted to develop a catallactic theory of money out of Claim Theory. Schumpeter's theory had several themes but the most important of these involve the notions that money can be analyzed from the viewpoint of social accounting and that it is also firmly connected to the theory of value and price.


title: History of money

text: There are at least two theories of what money is, and these can influence the interpretation of historical and archeological evidence of early monetary systems. The commodity theory of money (money of exchange) is preferred by those who wish to view money as a natural outgrowth of market activity. Others view the credit theory of money (money of account) as more plausible and may posit a key role for the state in establishing money. The Commodity theory is more widely held and much of this article is written from that point of view. Overall, the different theories of money developed by economists largely focus on functions, use, and management of money.


title: History of money

text: Other theorists also note that the status of a particular form of money always depends on the status ascribed to it by humans and by society. For instance, gold may be seen as valuable in one society but not in another or that a bank note is merely a piece of paper until it is agreed that it has monetary value.


title: History of money

text: In modern times economists have sought to classify the different types of money supply. The different measures of the money supply have been classified by various central banks, using the prefix "M". The supply classifications often depend on how narrowly a supply is specified, for example the "M"s may range from M0 (narrowest) to M3 (broadest). The classifications depend on the particular policy formulation used:


title: History of money

text: Assaying is analysis of the chemical composition of metals. The discovery of the touchstone for assaying helped the popularisation of metal-based commodity money and coinage. Any soft metal, such as gold, can be tested for purity on a touchstone. As a result, the use of gold for as commodity money spread from Asia Minor, where it first gained wide usage.


title: History of money

text: A touchstone allows the amount of gold in a sample of an alloy to been estimated. In turn this allows the alloy's purity to be estimated. This allows coins with a uniform amount of gold to be created. Coins were typically minted by governments and then stamped with an emblem that guaranteed the weight and value of the metal. However, as well as intrinsic value coins had a face value. Sometimes governments would reduce the amount of precious metal in a coin (reducing the intrinsic value) and assert the same face value, this practice is known as debasement.


title: History of money

text: There is no evidence, historical or contemporary, of a society in which barter is the main mode of exchange;


title: History of money

text: instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economy and debt. When barter did in fact occur, it was usually between either complete strangers or potential enemies.


title: History of money

text: With barter, an individual possessing any surplus of value, such as a measure of grain or a quantity of livestock, could directly exchange it for something perceived to have similar or greater value or utility, such as a clay pot or a tool, however, the capacity to carry out barter transactions is limited in that it depends on a coincidence of wants. For example, a farmer has to find someone who not only wants the grain he produced but who could also offer something in return that the farmer wants.


title: History of money

text: In "Politics" Book 1:9 () the Greek philosopher Aristotle contemplated the nature of money. He considered that every object has two uses: the original purpose for which the object was designed, and as an item to sell or barter. The assignment of monetary value to an otherwise insignificant object such as a coin or promissory note arises as people acquired a psychological capacity to place trust in each other and in external authority within barter exchange. Finding people to barter with is a time-consuming process; Austrian economist Carl Menger hypothesised that this reason was a driving force in the creation of monetary systems – people seeking a way to stop wasting their time looking for someone to barter with.


title: History of money

text: In his book "", anthropologist David Graeber argues against the suggestion that money was invented to replace barter. The problem with this version of history, he suggests, is the lack of any supporting evidence. His research indicates that gift economies were common, at least at the beginnings of the first agrarian societies, when humans used elaborate credit systems. Graeber proposes that money as a unit of account was invented the moment when the unquantifiable obligation "I owe you one" transformed into the quantifiable notion of "I owe you one unit of something". In this view, money emerged first as credit and only later acquired the functions of a medium of exchange and a store of value. Graeber's criticism partly relies on and follows that made by A. Mitchell Innes in his 1913 article "What is money?". Innes refutes the barter theory of money, by examining historic evidence and showing that early coins never were of consistent value nor of more or less consistent metal content. Therefore, he concludes that sales is not exchange of goods for some universal commodity, but an exchange for credit. He argues that "credit and credit alone is money". Anthropologist Caroline Humphrey examines the available ethnographic data and concludes that "No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing".


title: History of money

text: Economists Robert P. Murphy and George Selgin replied to Graeber saying that the barter hypothesis is consistent with economic principles, and a barter system would be too brief to leave a permanent record. John Alexander Smith from Bella Caledonia said that in this exchange Graeber is the one acting as a scientist by trying to falsify the barter hypotheses, while Selgin is taking a theological stance by taking the hypothesis as truth revealed from authority.


title: History of money

text: In a gift economy, valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards (i.e. there is no formal "quid pro quo"). Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community.


title: History of money

text: There are various social theories concerning gift economies. Some consider the gifts to be a form of reciprocal altruism, where relationships are created through this type of exchange. Another interpretation is that implicit "I owe you" debt and social status are awarded in return for the "gifts". Consider for example, the sharing of food in some hunter-gatherer societies, where food-sharing is a safeguard against the failure of any individual's daily foraging. This custom may reflect altruism, it may be a form of informal insurance, or may bring with it social status or other benefits.


title: History of money

text: Anthropologists have noted many cases of 'primitive' societies using what looks to us very like money but for non-commercial purposes, indeed commercial use may have been prohibited:


title: History of money

text: This suggests that the basic idea of money may have long preceded its application to commercial trade.


title: History of money

text: After the domestication of cattle and the start of cultivation of crops in 9000–6000 BC, livestock and plant products were used as money. However, it is in the nature of agricultural production that things take time to reach fruition. The farmer may need to buy things that he cannot pay for immediately. Thus the idea of debt and credit was introduced, and a need to record and track it arose.


title: History of money

text: The establishment of the first cities in Mesopotamia (c. 3000 BCE) provided the infrastructure for the next simplest form of money of account—asset-backed credit or Representative money. Farmers would deposit their grain in the temple which recorded the deposit on clay tablets and gave the farmer a receipt in the form of a clay token which they could then use to pay fees or other debts to the temple. Since the bulk of the deposits in the temple were of the main staple, barley, a fixed quantity of barley came to be used as a unit of account.


title: History of money

text: Trading with foreigners required a form of money which was not tied to the local temple or economy, money that carried its value with it. A third, proxy, commodity that would mediate exchanges which could not be settled with direct barter was the solution. Which commodity would be used was a matter of agreement between the two parties, but as trade links expanded and the number of parties involved increased the number of acceptable proxies would have decreased. Ultimately, one or two commodities were converged on in each trading zone, the most common being gold and silver.


title: History of money

text: This process was independent of the local monetary system so in some cases societies may have used money of exchange before developing a local money of account. In societies where foreign trade was rare money of exchange may have appeared much later than money of account.


title: History of money

text: In early Mesopotamia copper was used in trade for a while but was soon superseded by silver. The temple (which financed and controlled most foreign trade) fixed exchange rates between barley and silver, and other important commodities, which enabled payment using any of them. It also enabled the extensive use of accounting in managing the whole economy, which led to the development of writing and thus the beginning of history.


title: History of money

text: Many cultures around the world developed the use of commodity money, that is, objects that have value in themselves as well as value in their use as money. Ancient China, Africa, and India used cowry shells.


title: History of money

text: The Mesopotamian civilization developed a large-scale economy based on commodity money. The shekel was the unit of weight and currency, first recorded c. 3000 BC, which was nominally equivalent to a specific weight of barley that was the preexisting and parallel form of currency. The Babylonians and their neighboring city states later developed the earliest system of economics as we think of it today, in terms of rules on debt, legal contracts and law codes relating to business practices and private property. Money emerged when the increasing complexity of transactions made it useful.


title: History of money

text: The Code of Hammurabi, the best-preserved ancient law code, was created c. 1760 BC (middle chronology) in ancient Babylon. It was enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi. Earlier collections of laws include the code of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (c. 2050 BC), the Code of Eshnunna (c. 1930 BC) and the code of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (c. 1870 BC). These law codes formalized the role of money in civil society. They set amounts of interest on debt, fines for "wrongdoing", and compensation in money for various infractions of formalized law.


title: History of money

text: It has long been assumed that metals, where available, were favored for use as proto-money over such commodities as cattle, cowry shells, or salt, because metals are at once durable, portable, and easily divisible. The use of gold as proto-money has been traced back to the fourth millennium BC when the Egyptians used gold bars of a set weight as a medium of exchange, as had been done earlier in Mesopotamia with silver bars.


title: History of money

text: The first mention in the Bible of the use of money is in the Book of Genesis in reference to criteria for the circumcision of a bought slave. Later, the Cave of Machpelah is purchased (with silver) by Abraham, some time after 1985 BC, although scholars believe the book was edited in the 6th or 5th centuries BC.


title: History of money

text: From about 1000 BC, money in the form of small knives and spades made of bronze was in use in China during the Zhou dynasty, with cast bronze replicas of cowrie shells in use before this. The first manufactured actual coins seem to have appeared separately in India, China, and the cities around the Aegean Sea 7th century BC. While these Aegean coins were stamped (heated and hammered with insignia), the Indian coins (from the Ganges river valley) were punched metal disks, and Chinese coins (first developed in the Great Plain) were cast bronze with holes in the center to be strung together. The different forms and metallurgical processes imply a separate development.


title: History of money

text: All modern coins, in turn, are descended from the coins that appear to have been invented in the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor somewhere around 7th century BC and that spread throughout Greece in the following centuries: disk-shaped, made of gold, silver, bronze or imitations thereof, with both sides bearing an image produced by stamping; one side is often a human head.


title: History of money

text: Maybe the first ruler in the Mediterranean known to have officially set standards of weight and money was Pheidon. Minting occurred in the late 7th century BC amongst the Greek cities of Asia Minor, spreading to the Greek islands of the Aegean and to the south of Italy by 500 BC. The first stamped money (having the mark of some authority in the form of a picture or words) can be seen in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It is an electrum stater, coined at Aegina island. This coin dates to about 7th century BC.


title: History of money

text: Other coins made of electrum (a naturally occurring alloy of silver and gold) were manufactured on a larger scale about 7th century BC in Lydia (on the coast of what is now Turkey). Similar coinage was adopted and manufactured to their own standards in nearby cities of Ionia, including Mytilene and Phokaia (using coins of electrum) and Aegina (using silver) during the 7th century BC, and soon became adopted in mainland Greece, and the Persian Empire (after it incorporated Lydia in 547 BC).


title: History of money

text: The use and export of silver coinage, along with soldiers paid in coins, contributed to the Athenian Empire's dominance of the region in the 5th century BC. The silver used was mined in southern Attica at Laurium and Thorikos by a huge workforce of slave labour. A major silver vein discovery at Laurium in 483 BC led to the huge expansion of the Athenian military fleet.


title: History of money

text: The worship of Moneta is recorded by Livy with the temple built in the time of Rome 413 (123); a temple consecrated to the same goddess was built in the earlier part of the 4th century (perhaps the same temple). For four centuries the temple contained the mint of Rome. The name of the goddess thus became the source of numerous words in English and the Romance languages, including the words "money" and "mint"


title: History of money

text: Charlemagne, in 800 AD, implemented a series of reforms upon becoming "Holy Roman Emperor", including the issuance of a standard coin, the silver penny. Between 794 and 1200 the penny was the only denomination of coin in Western Europe. Minted without oversight by bishops, cities, feudal lords and fiefdoms, by 1160, coins in Venice contained only 0.05g of silver, while England's coins were minted at 1.3g. Large coins were introduced in the mid-13th century. In England, a dozen pennies was called a "shilling" and twenty shillings a "pound".


title: History of money

text: Debasement of coin was widespread. Significant periods of debasement took place in 1340–60 and 1417–29, when no small coins were minted, and by the 15th century the issuance of small coin was further restricted by government restrictions and even prohibitions. With the exception of the Great Debasement, England's coins were consistently minted from sterling silver (silver content of 92.5%). A lower quality of silver with more copper mixed in, used in Barcelona, was called "billion".


title: History of money

text: Paper money was introduced in Song dynasty China during the 11th century. The development of the banknote began in the seventh century, with local issues of paper currency. Its roots were in merchant receipts of deposit during the Tang dynasty (618–907), as merchants and wholesalers desired to avoid the heavy bulk of copper coinage in large commercial transactions. The issue of credit notes is often for a limited duration, and at some discount to the promised amount later. The jiaozi nevertheless did not replace coins during the Song Dynasty; paper money was used alongside the coins. The central government soon observed the economic advantages of printing paper money, issuing a monopoly right of several of the deposit shops to the issuance of these certificates of deposit. By the early 12th century, the amount of banknotes issued in a single year amounted to an annual rate of 26 million strings of cash coins.


title: History of money

text: In the 13th century, paper money became known in Europe through the accounts of travelers, such as Marco Polo and William of Rubruck. Marco Polo's account of paper money during the Yuan dynasty is the subject of a chapter of his book, "The Travels of Marco Polo", titled "." In medieval Italy and Flanders, because of the insecurity and impracticality of transporting large sums of money over long distances, money traders started using promissory notes. In the beginning these were personally registered, but they soon became a written order to pay the amount to whomever had it in their possession. These notes can be seen as a predecessor to regular banknotes.


title: History of money

text: Bills of exchange became prevalent with the expansion of European trade toward the end of the Middle Ages. A flourishing Italian wholesale trade in cloth, woolen clothing, wine, tin and other commodities was heavily dependent on credit for its rapid expansion. Goods were supplied to a buyer against a bill of exchange, which constituted the buyer's promise to make payment at some specified future date. Provided that the buyer was reputable or the bill was endorsed by a credible guarantor, the seller could then present the bill to a merchant banker and redeem it in money at a discounted value before it actually became due. The main purpose of these bills nevertheless was, that traveling with cash was particularly dangerous at the time. A deposit could be made with a banker in one town, in turn a bill of exchange was handed out, that could be redeemed in another town.


title: History of money

text: These bills could also be used as a form of payment by the seller to make additional purchases from his own suppliers. Thus, the bills – an early form of credit – became both a medium of exchange and a medium for storage of value. Like the loans made by the Egyptian grain banks, this trade credit became a significant source for the creation of new money. In England, bills of exchange became an important form of credit and money during last quarter of the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th century before banknotes, checks and cash credit lines were widely available.


title: History of money

text: At around the same time in the medieval Islamic world, a vigorous monetary economy was created during the 7th–12th centuries on the basis of the expanding levels of circulation of a stable high-value currency (the dinar). Innovations introduced by Muslim economists, traders and merchants include the earliest uses of credit, cheques, promissory notes, savings accounts, transactional accounts, loaning, trusts, exchange rates, the transfer of credit and debt, and banking institutions for loans and deposits.


title: History of money

text: In the Indian subcontinent, Sher Shah Suri (1540–1545), introduced a silver coin called a "rupiya", weighing 178 grams. Its use was continued by the Mughal Empire. The history of the rupee traces back to Ancient India circa 3rd century BC. Ancient India was one of the earliest issuers of coins in the world, along with the Lydian staters, several other Middle Eastern coinages and the Chinese wen.


title: History of money

text: The imperial taka was officially introduced by the monetary reforms of Muhammad bin Tughluq, the emperor of the Delhi Sultanate, in 1329. It was modeled as representative money, a concept pioneered as paper money by the Mongols in China and Persia. The tanka was minted in copper and brass. Its value was exchanged with gold and silver reserves in the imperial treasury. The currency was introduced due to the shortage of metals.


title: History of money

text: The acceptance of symbolic forms of money meant that a symbol could be used to represent something of value that was available in physical storage somewhere else in space, such as grain in the warehouse; or something of value that would be available later, such as a promissory note or bill of exchange, a document ordering someone to pay a certain sum of money to another on a specific date or when certain conditions have been fulfilled.


title: History of money

text: In the 12th century, the English monarchy introduced an early version of the bill of exchange in the form of a notched piece of wood known as a tally stick. Tallies originally came into use at a time when paper was rare and costly, but their use persisted until the early 19th century, even after paper money had become prevalent. The notches denoted various amounts of taxes payable to the Crown. Initially tallies were simply a form of receipt to the taxpayer at the time of rendering his dues. As the revenue department became more efficient, they began issuing tallies to denote a promise of the tax assessee to make future tax payments at specified times during the year. Each tally consisted of a matching pair – one stick was given to the assessee at the time of assessment representing the amount of taxes to be paid later, and the other held by the Treasury representing the amount of taxes to be collected at a future date.


title: History of money

text: The Treasury discovered that these tallies could also be used to create money. When the Crown had exhausted its current resources, it could use the tally receipts representing future tax payments due to the Crown as a form of payment to its own creditors, who in turn could either collect the tax revenue directly from those assessed or use the same tally to pay their own taxes to the government. The tallies could also be sold to other parties in exchange for gold or silver coin at a discount reflecting the length of time remaining until the tax was due for payment. Thus, the tallies became an accepted medium of exchange for some types of transactions and an accepted store of value. Like the girobanks before it, the Treasury soon realized that it could also issue tallies that were not backed by any specific assessment of taxes. By doing so, the Treasury created new money that was backed by public trust and confidence in the monarchy rather than by specific revenue receipts.


title: History of money

text: Goldsmiths in England had been craftsmen, bullion merchants, money changers, and money lenders since the 16th century. But they were not the first to act as financial intermediaries; in the early 17th century, the scriveners were the first to keep deposits for the express purpose of relending them. Merchants and traders had amassed huge hoards of gold and entrusted their wealth to the Royal Mint for storage. In 1640 King Charles I seized the private gold stored in the mint as a forced loan (which was to be paid back over time). Thereafter merchants preferred to store their gold with the goldsmiths of London, who possessed private vaults, and charged a fee for that service. In exchange for each deposit of precious metal, the goldsmiths issued receipts certifying the quantity and purity of the metal they held as a bailee (i.e., in trust). These receipts could not be assigned (only the original depositor could collect the stored goods). Gradually the goldsmiths took over the function of the scriveners of relending on behalf of a depositor and also developed modern banking practices; promissory notes were issued for money deposited which by custom and/or law was a loan to the goldsmith, i.e., the depositor expressly allowed the goldsmith to use the money for any purpose including advances to his customers. The goldsmith charged no fee, or even paid interest on these deposits. Since the promissory notes were payable on demand, and the advances (loans) to the goldsmith's customers were repayable over a longer time period, this was an early form of fractional reserve banking. The promissory notes developed into an assignable instrument, which could circulate as a safe and convenient form of money backed by the goldsmith's promise to pay. Hence goldsmiths could advance loans in the form of gold money, or in the form of promissory notes, or in the form of checking accounts. Gold deposits were relatively stable, often remaining with the goldsmith for years on end, so there was little risk of default so long as public trust in the goldsmith's integrity and financial soundness was maintained. Thus, the goldsmiths of London became the forerunners of British banking and prominent creators of new money based on credit.


title: History of money

text: The first European banknotes were issued by Stockholms Banco, a predecessor of Sweden's central bank Sveriges Riksbank, in 1661. These replaced the copper-plates being used instead as a means of payment, although in 1664 the bank ran out of coins to redeem notes and ceased operating in the same year.


title: History of money

text: Inspired by the success of the London goldsmiths, some of whom became the forerunners of great English banks, banks began issuing paper notes quite properly termed "banknotes", which circulated in the same way that government-issued currency circulates today. In England this practice continued up to 1694. Scottish banks continued issuing notes until 1850, and still do issue banknotes backed by Bank of England notes. In the United States, this practice continued through the 19th century; at one time there were more than 5,000 different types of banknotes issued by various commercial banks in America. Only the notes issued by the largest, most creditworthy banks were widely accepted. The scrip of smaller, lesser-known institutions circulated locally. Farther from home it was only accepted at a discounted rate, if at all. The proliferation of types of money went hand in hand with a multiplication in the number of financial institutions.


title: History of money

text: These banknotes were a form of representative money which could be converted into gold or silver by application at the bank. Since banks issued notes far in excess of the gold and silver they kept on deposit, sudden loss of public confidence in a bank could precipitate mass redemption of banknotes and result in bankruptcy.


title: History of money

text: In India the earliest paper money was issued by Bank of Hindostan (1770– 1832), General Bank of Bengal and Bihar (1773–75), and Bengal Bank (1784–91).


title: History of money

text: The use of banknotes issued by private commercial banks as legal tender has gradually been replaced by the issuance of bank notes authorized and controlled by national governments. The Bank of England was granted sole rights to issue banknotes in England after 1694. In the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank was granted similar rights after its establishment in 1913. Until recently, these government-authorized currencies were forms of representative money, since they were partially backed by gold or silver and were theoretically convertible into gold or silver.


title: History of money

text: In 1971, United States President Richard Nixon announced that the US dollar would not be directly convertible to Gold anymore. This measure effectively destroyed the Bretton Woods system by removing one of its key components, in what came to be known as the Nixon shock. Since then, the US dollar, and thus all national currencies, are free-floating currencies. Additionally, international, national and local money is now dominated by virtual credit rather than real bullion.


title: History of money

text: In the late 20th century, payment cards such as credit cards and debit cards became the dominant mode of consumer payment in the First World. The Bankamericard, launched in 1958, became the first third-party credit card to acquire widespread use and be accepted in shops and stores all over the United States, soon followed by the Mastercard and the American Express. Since 1980, Credit Card companies are exempt from state usury laws, and so can charge any interest rate they see fit. Outside America, other payment cards became more popular than credit cards, such as France's Carte Bleue.


title: History of money

text: The development of computer technology in the second part of the twentieth century allowed money to be represented digitally. By 1990, in the United States, all money transferred between its central bank and commercial banks was in electronic form. By the 2000s most money existed as digital currency in banks databases. In 2012, by number of transaction, 20 to 58 percent of transactions were electronic (dependent on country). The benefit of digital currency is that it allows for easier, faster, and more flexible payments.


title: History of money

text: In 2008, Bitcoin was proposed by an unknown author/s under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. It was implemented the same year. Its use of cryptography allowed the currency to have a trustless, non-fungible and tamper resistant distributed ledger called a blockchain. It became the first widely used decentralized, peer-to-peer, cryptocurrency. Other comparable systems had been proposed since the 1980s. The protocol proposed by Nakamoto solved what is known as the double-spending problem without the need of a trusted third-party.


title: Curse of the pharaohs

text: The curse of the pharaohs or the mummy's curse is a curse alleged to be cast upon anyone who disturbs the mummy of an ancient Egyptian, especially a pharaoh. This curse, which does not differentiate between thieves and archaeologists, is claimed to cause bad luck, illness, or death. Since the mid-20th century, many authors and documentaries have argued that the curse is 'real' in the sense of having scientifically explicable causes such as bacteria or radiation. However, the modern origins of Egyptian mummy curse tales, their development primarily in European cultures, the shift from magic to science to explain curses, and their changing uses—from condemning disturbance of the dead to entertaining horror film audiences—suggest that Egyptian curses are primarily a cultural, not scientific, phenomenon.


title: Curse of the pharaohs

text: There are occasional instances of genuine ancient curses appearing inside or on the façade of a tomb, as in the case of the mastaba of Khentika Ikhekhi of the 6th Dynasty at Saqqara. These appear to be directed towards the ka priests to protect the tomb carefully and preserve its ritual purity rather than as a warning for potential robbers. There had been stories of curses going back to the 19th century, but they multiplied after Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. Despite popular misconceptions, no curse was found inscribed in the Pharaoh's tomb. The evidence for curses relating to Tutankhamun is considered to be so meager that Donald B. Redford called it "unadulterated claptrap".


title: Curse of the pharaohs

text: Curses relating to tombs are extremely rare, possibly because the idea of such desecration was unthinkable and even dangerous to record. They most frequently occur in private tombs of the Old Kingdom era. The tomb of Ankhtifi (9–10th dynasty) contains the warning: "any ruler who... shall do evil or wickedness to this coffin... may Hemen ([a local deity]) not accept any goods he offers, and may his heir not inherit". The tomb of Khentika Ikhekhi (6th dynasty) contains an inscription: "As for all men who shall enter this my tomb... impure... there will be judgment... an end shall be made for him... I shall seize his neck like a bird... I shall cast the fear of myself into him".


title: Curse of the pharaohs

text: Curses after the Old Kingdom era are less common though more severe, sometimes invoking the ire of Thoth or the destruction of Sekhemet. Zahi Hawass quotes an example of a curse: "Cursed be those who disturb the rest of a Pharaoh. They that shall break the seal of this tomb shall meet death by a disease that no doctor can diagnose."


title: Curse of the pharaohs

text: Hieroglyphs were not deciphered until the early 19th century, so reports of curses before this are simply perceived bad luck associated with the handling of mummies and other artifacts from tombs. In 1699, Louis Penicher wrote an account in which he recorded how a Polish traveler bought two mummies in Alexandria and embarked on a sea journey with the mummies in the cargo hold. The traveler was alarmed by recurring visions of two specters, and the stormy seas did not abate until the mummies were thrown overboard.


title: Curse of the pharaohs

text: Zahi Hawass recalled that as a young archaeologist excavating at Kom Abu Billo he had to transport several artifacts from the Greco-Roman site. His cousin died on that day, his uncle died on its first anniversary, and on the third anniversary, his aunt died. Years later, when he excavated the tombs of the builders of the pyramids at Giza, he encountered the curse: "All people who enter this tomb who will make evil against this tomb and destroy it may the crocodile be against them in water, and snakes against them on land. May the hippopotamus be against them in water, the scorpion on land."