I was thinking about currency, overnight. I had just watched QI, where Rich Hall had talked about the currency used on the island of Gap. He was saying that it was eight foot diameter stones with a hole cut in the middle. You had to park the ‘coin’ on your lawn and therefore everybody knew exactly how much money you had. It takes 20 islanders to move one coin. The coke machines are 80 foot high.
Sure, that sound like fun, but consider this: In WWII, both sides used to do air drops of counterfeit currency into enemy territory, to destabilise the economy. Imagine how dangerous that would be on Gap Island.
And then thinking about these counterfeits, I was half remembering a story of how the Nazis used skilled Jewish counterfeiters in the concentration camps to get the best possible quality fake notes for their air-drops. The prisoners would quietly rebel by building in subtle flaws that were easily picked by the British, but would pass the inspection of the Nazi captors.
They couldn’t have been that smart, though, those Nazis. I mean, even I know that Queen Victoria didn’t have a Zapata moustache.
No comments:
Post a Comment