Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 22:48:07 PDT
From: "neil barnes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: RE: H Re: Was Getting screened / Currency of the realm
and stolen from a usenet sig:
pieces of eight
pieces of eight
pieces of eight
pieces of nine - parroty error!
Neil
>From: "Mike Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: Libretto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Libretto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: RE: H Re: Was Getting screened / Currency of the realm
>Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 19:21:11 -0700
>
>Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 22:14:52 -0400
>From: "Mike Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: RE: H Re: Was Getting screened / Currency of the realm
>
>My wife will tell you: don't ask unless you want to know!
>
>According to what I remember from my teenage years as a numismatist:
>Several
>hundred years ago, Spain began minting a coin with a value of eight
>"reales." I'm not quite sure of what a reale is, but there you go. Such
>coins, whether silver or gold, came to be called "pieces of eight." I
>imagine you've probably heard of that in a pirate movie or similar. Since
>the reale was actually a standard of value itself, and the eight-reale coin
>was substantially more valuable than your average pirate/worker might carry
>around in his coin bag, the practice of cutting the coins up into
>equal-size
>pieces, each worth one reale, was born. Each eighth of a coin was referred
>to as a "bit." Three-fourths of a coin would then be called "six bits",
>one-half would be "four bits", and one-quarter would be "two bits." When
>the
>US began to mint its twenty-five cent coin, it was worth one quarter of an
>American dollar. Hence the term "two bits" began to be applied to the coin,
>simply as a common substitute for "one quarter."
>
>Interesting little piece of history, no?
>
>Mike
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