The United States and its currency seem inseparably linked, but for much of the country’s history, an official, standardized U.S. dollar didn’t exist. In its place was a Wild West of currencies from competing banks located across several states. In their zeal to earn goodwill and customers, a few of these institutions even minted some rather creative banknotes. Instead of the chiseled visage of General Washington or other real-life American leaders, these notes featured the pudgy, bearded face of St. Nick, among other figures.

Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared on the $10,000 bill, the largest U.S. note ever circulated.

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While Roosevelt’s face graces the dime, it’s Treasury Secretary and Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase whose visage adorns the $10,000 bill. However, in 1969, the U.S. Treasury purged the $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 bills from circulation. (They still remain legal tender.)

For the St. Nicholas Bank of New York City, featuring the bank’s namesake on its currency made some sort of sense. But other banks, seemingly unaffiliated with Father Christmas, also issued Santa money. For example, the Howard Banking Company issued its Sinter Klaas note in the 1850s, which depicted a St. Nick scene from Dutch legend. A total of 21 banks in eight states created notes featuring Santa Claus, with seven of them even printing an entire Santa Claus vignette on their currency. These fun funds came to an end in 1863, when the National Bank Act created a national currency in an effort to standardize banking throughout the U.S. While these Santa bills are now considered “obsolete,” the notes remain highly prized in certain collecting circles and are doing much more than just ho-ho-holding their value. 

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While postal employees pride themselves on delivering mail in rain, sleet, and snow, they can still be impeded by sloppy handwriting. That’s why the U.S. Postal Service has a team of keen-eyed employees whose job is to determine where to send letters and packages with illegible addresses. More than 730 people work at the USPS Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, which was the first facility of its kind and is now the last one standing.

Encoding centers peaked in 1997, when the USPS processed 19 billion pieces of difficult-to-read mail using 55 different facilities. But due to advances in computer analysis, as well as the fact that fewer people handwrite letters these days, just one facility dedicated to poor penmanship still operates today. The employees there play a pivotal role in analyzing the 3 million images of garbled addresses they receive each day.

The Hope diamond was shipped using U.S. mail.

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The Hope diamond was sent by U.S. mail from New York to Washington, D.C., on November 8, 1958. It was shipped by jeweler Harry Winston as a donation to the Smithsonian, where it remains on display today. Winston paid $2.44 ($27.35 today) for postage.

Here’s how it works: Before ever reaching the facility, mail is scanned by a computer to determine its destination. While this step is often successful on its own, sometimes the writing is so indecipherable that the address remains a mystery. When that’s the case, an image of the letter is scanned and sent to the encoding facility, where the average employee can rapidly decipher 900 pieces of mail every hour. In some cases, unintelligible letters are brought in for a last-ditch physical inspection, after which mail is either sent on its intended way, returned to sender, or (in rare cases) disposed of.

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Today, sharp-tongued verbal jousting primarily exists in the art form known as battle rap, in which two rappers take lyrical aim at each other with intricate (and often devastating) rhymes. During these battles, no insult — artistic or otherwise — is off-limits, and that’s a sentiment that 15th- and early 16th-century Scottish poets might have shared. Medieval Scottish men of words linguistically barbed each other in a practice known as “flyting” (based on the Old English word flītan, meaning “to quarrel”), often as entertainment for the Scottish king and his royal court. The most famous of these “battles” that still survives, known as “The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie,” featured Scottish poets William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy entertaining the court of James IV in the early 16th century. Among its many famous attributes, it’s the first recorded moment of scatalogical humor. (One of the more family-friendly examples of its insults, translated from Middle Scots, reads: “Grovel for grace, dog-face, or I shall chase you all winter; Howl and yowl, owl.”)

English is the only official language of Scotland.

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While English is the most widely spoken language in Scotland, a bill passed in 2025 gave both Scots and Gaelic official language status alongside English.

The biting lyricism of flyting wasn’t restricted to Scotland, of course. Ancient Irish professional poets, called filid, were also known for their insults, and a form of flyting can be found in Old English literature as well as the famous Norse text the Poetic Edda (in which the trickster god Loki goes on the verbal offensive against his fellow deities). Similar art forms can be found in Japan, Nigeria, parts of the Middle East, and elsewhere. Although flyting didn’t survive the Middle Ages, its influence can be seen in works ranging from Shakespeare to James Joyce. Thankfully, the birth of the rap battle in the 1980s once again provided a much-needed venue for settling serious artistic beef — and it’s been a fixture of hip-hop culture ever since.

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