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Informationen zum Autor Matthew Santoro Klappentext YouTube sensation Matthew Santoro amazes with eye-opening facts that are sure to blow your mind. Matthew Santoro's originality and humor has attracted millions of fans, making him a beloved YouTube star. His weekly videos on amazing and little-known facts are eagerly anticipated by his many subscribers and followers around the world. In his first-ever book, Matthew's love of weird and wacky knowledge explodes with new facts and stories from around the planet, and beyond. Surprising, and always entertaining, Mind = Blown offers even more of Matthew's unique take on this hilarious, crazy world: The most ridiculous laws from past and present Crazy doppelgangers of people, places, and unexpected things Historical wizards who actually lived Real-life animal avengers And a special section: Japan Blows My Mind! From shin-kicking competitions and beer pong-playing robots, to enormous fire-balls shooting through space, you won't believe what you'll discover in Mind = Blown . But beware: there is too much astounding trivia for any one mind to contain! Part 1 Rules of Amazement Quadrillion-Dollar Cows (And Other Crazy Facts About Money) People do crazy things for money, and throughout history, they have also used crazy things as money. Cows, stones, and gold coins that weigh a hundred kilograms have all served as currency. Naturally, as soon as a new form of money pops into circulation, a new form of criminal will begin trying to knock it off (with the exception of cows; I couldn’t find any historical references to criminals trying to pass fake cows as cash). Bottom line: for thousands of years, money has made the world go round and made people go nuts. Cows are the oldest currency in the world.1 Cows were domesticated in roughly 9000 BC and people began using them as currency almost immediately. In fact, in parts of Africa, cows are still used as money. A couple of years ago, a South African software developer created a firestorm when he developed an app to assess a woman’s lobola, or “bride price,” as a combination of cash and cattle. According to that app, a twenty-five-year-old woman with a job who considers herself to be “very beautiful” and has both children and a high school certificate would command a price of “$500 and no cows” on the marital market. After being (appropriately) perceived as offensive, sexist, and degrading to women, the app was updated to include a groom price as well. Classy move. The oldest bank still in operation today isn’t exactly a “mountain of piety.”2 The Monte di Pietà was founded in 1472 in what was then the Republic of Siena. In 1624 when the bank was incorporated into Tuscany, it was given its current name, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. The bank’s beautiful headquarters in Siena look like the perfect setting for a Hollywood heist movie; in fact, the building has seen its fair share of high-level drama and scandal over the years. In 2013, it was revealed that mismanagement, fraud, poor investments, and misinformation had left the bank in financial ruin and in need of a bailout. As I write this, the Monte dei Paschi di Siena’s future is still up in the air. The U.S. Secret Service protects more money than Presidents.3 According to secretservice.gov, the U.S. Secret Service, the organization we most often associate with protecting the personal safety of the President of the United States, “was created on July 5, 1865 in Washington, D.C., to suppress counterfeit currency.” At the time, it was estimated that at least a third of the currency in circulation in the country was fake. The Secret Service didn’t begin to take on presidential protection until 1902, which is too bad because, ironically, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth the day Lincoln established t...
