Countries have lots of different ways of celebrating their national heroes. Some of them build great statues, others give them their own national holidays, and many a street has been named after those who left an indelible mark on their country’s collective consciousness.
Alternatively, they can put their names and faces on something that everybody, everywhere, uses every day – money!
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The Different Types Of People Countries Put On Their Money
What faces nations decide to put on their legal tender can be extremely revealing - and sometimes even a little worrying. Former US presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (whose faces are on US paper currency) both owned slaves.
But it can also show us how attitudes have changed for the better.
Florence Nightingale was the first woman to feature on money notes printed by the Bank of England. She appeared on the £10 note between 1975 and 1992. And the current £10 note features the author Jane Austen.
So given what we can learn from the faces on banknotes, finance provider NetCredit decided to do some investigating. Its research and design team used data from Wikipedia to create several charts showing what types of people countries put on their money.
NetCredit's researchers found a definite link between money and power. More than half of the world's coins and money notes are decorated with a picture of a monarch or head of state. In England, Queen Elizabeth II features on one side of every piece of physical currency in circulation.
Things are slightly different in Bosnia & Herzegovina, where poets appear on almost 90% of all the nation's coins and notes. The remaining 'currency characters' are either novelists or philosophers, thanks to a law that states only writers' faces can feature on the country's currency.
Check out the infographics below to see what other famous faces adorn every currency in the world.
