DID YOU KNOW: Canada Once Printed 25-Cent Bills Called "Shinplasters"?

If you dig through an old desk drawer or inherit a family keepsake tin here in Canada, you usually expect to find worn copper pennies, old silver voyageur dollars, or maybe a crisp terracotta two-dollar bill or two. But finding a tiny slip of paper that reads "Dominion of Canada Will Pay on Demand: 25 Cents" definitely makes you do a double take...

Yes, Canada actually printed paper quarters. They were official legal tender, circulated nationwide for over five decades, and carry one of the most delightfully sarcastic nicknames in Canadian history. I recently pulled this exact bill out of my mother's old stash, and having it sit right here on my desk got me digging into its backstory—especially when I noticed an odd printing quirk that proved it wasn't quite cut the way it was supposed to...

From my mother's collection: an authentic July 2, 1923 Dominion of Canada 25-cent fractional note.
Look closely at the very top edge—the mechanical blade cut sliced off the printer line from the bill above it!

The American Silver "Invasion" That Forced Canada's Hand

You might think Canada printed paper quarters simply because pocket coins were heavy, but they were actually born out of a cross-border currency headache. During and right after the American Civil War in the 1860s, boatloads of United States silver coins poured northward across our border.

DID YOU KNOW... A BLIZZARD Isn't Called A Blizzard Until It Has Met The 4-4-4 Rule?

“Holy smokes! It’s a blizzard out there!” And most times our meanings are sincere, but our misuse of the word ‘blizzard’ are probably more often than not. Here in Canada, in order for a blizzard to be truly called a blizzard, certain criteria must be met:

Winds must be sustained at 40 km/h or more for at least 4 hours combining with falling or blowing snow to cause visibilities to be reduced to 400 m or less. Hence the 4-4-4 rule. However, there is an exception: areas north of the treeline line in Canada have to have the same conditions but it must last at least six hours to be deemed a blizzard.

Source: theweathernetwork

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Our definition of a blizzard differs from that of our neighbours to the South.
In the U.S., to be a blizzard, a snow storm must have sustained winds or frequent gusts that are greater than or equal to 56 km/h (35 mph) with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 m or 0.25 mile or less and must last for a prolonged period of time—typically three hours or more.

Source

The deadliest blizzard in recorded history?

It was the 1972 Iran Blizzard, which caused approximately 4,000 deaths. It dropped as much as 26 feet (7.9 m) of snow – that’s like a two and half story building worth of snowfall, and completely covered 200 villages. After a snowfall lasting nearly a week, an area the size of Wisconsin was entirely buried in snow.

According to Associated Press reports, some rescue workers who’d been dropped on a snow drift burying a village called Sheklab dug for two days straight, burrowing through 8 feet of snow, only to find 18 frozen bodies and no one—not one single person in a population of 100—still alive.

The second deadliest blizzard on record tore through Afghanistan in 2008, bringing -30 degree temperatures and killing an estimated 926 people.





Source(s): theweathernetwork | wikipedia | weirdfm

DID YOU KNOW: There Are Canadian Two-dollar Bills Worth 20 Grand?

** Update**

Rare $2 bill may NOT be worth $20,000

Well, this is awkward.

Last night we told you about a rare $2 bill that was expected to sell for $20,000 at an auction. But we now offer a mea culpa. We were mistaken.

The first problem? The story was from 2012 – a speculative piece about a bill potentially worth $20,000 because the wrong officials signed it. The second issue? A noteworthy serial number. The 1986 bills with the serial numbers prefixes AUG, AUH and AUJ should have contained the signatures of Bank of Canada governor Gerald Bouey and deputy governor John Crow, but a few of them are signed by deputy governor Gordon Thiessen instead. We only told you about AUH.

Finally, we speculated the bill could be worth $20,000. As it happens, the bill did actually sell at auction – but for only $10,000.