Miscellaneous Facts

To save costs, the body of Shakespeare's friend and fellow dramatist, Ben Jonson, was buried standing up in Westminister Abbey, London in 1637.

When Jonathan Swift published 'Gulliver's Travels' in 1726, he intended it as a satire on the ferociousness of human nature. Today it is enjoyed as a children's story.

The first color photograph was made in 1861 by James Maxwell. He photographed a tartan ribbon.

The oldest surviving daily newspaper is the Wiener Zeitung of Austria. It was first printed in 1703.

The $ sign was designed in 1788 by Oliver Pollock, a New Orleans businessman, using a combination of Spanish money symbols.

The $ sign is used in many countries other than the United States, including the use for the Argentine peso, Brazilian real, Cape Verde escudo, Chilean peso, Colombian peso, Cuban peso, Dominican peso, Mexican peso, Tongan pa'anga and Uruguayan peso. Other countries that trade in their currency as dollars are Australia, Bahamas, Canada, Liberia and others

If you stack one million US$1 bills, it would be 110m (361 ft) high and weight exactly 1 ton. A million dollars' worth of $100 bills weighs only 10 kg (22 lb). One million dollars' worth of once-cent coins (100 million coins) weigh 246 tons.

Ernest Vincent Wright's 1939 novel Gadsby has 50,110 words, none of which contains the letter e.

Don't believe that a novel could be without any e's? Here's an excerpt from page one of Wright's Gadsby:

"If youth, throughout all history, had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn't constantly run across folks today who claim that "a child don't know anything." A child's brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adults act, and figuring out its purport."

- Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright. Published 1939

Tourism is a $4 trillion-a-year industry, affecting more than 200 million jobs, or 1 in 10 workers. But tourism actually is an old industry, dating back to the first Olympics in 776BC. Even in ancient Rome it was popular to travel up the Nile to Thebes to view the statues.

The first book on travel, aptly called "Travel" was published by Jehan de Mandeville (anglicized to Sir John Mandeville) in 1357. It became a best seller and was translated into 9 languages.

Trips used to be organized by individuals or small groups who accompanied their guests. In 1758, Cox & Kings became the world's first travel agency - not necessarily escorting the travelers to their destination. Thomas Cook (1808 - 1892) also took large groups on tour and then founded his company in the 1860s. The first travel agency in the United States was founded in 1887 by Walter T. Brownell.

Tourism is the biggest industry in most countries - except the United States, where entertainment is the biggest industry.

In 1758, Cox & Kings became the world's first travel agency.