In 17th-century Sweden a coin could weigh almost 20 kg. Copper plates were worth their weight in metal, so large payments went by cart.
No wonder Sweden issued Europe’s first banknotes.
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More amazing facts
- 1637 In 1637 a single tulip bulb could cost more than ten years of a skilled craftsman's wages.
- 1637 · 1718 The word "tulip" comes from "turban". The flower reached Europe from the Ottoman Empire, its name from a Persian word for turban — and the Ottomans had their own Tulip Period some 80 years after the Dutch mania.
- 1638 Russia’s first tea arrived in 1638 with the envoy Vasily Starkov, a gift to Tsar Michael from a Mongol khan.
- 1642 Abel Tasman sailed right around Australia without ever seeing it. In 1642–43 he passed far south and east of the mainland, finding Tasmania and New Zealand along the way.
- 1642 · 1737 Galileo's middle finger is on display in a Florence museum.
- 1648 In 1648, as Europe signed the Peace of Westphalia, the Cossack Semyon Dezhnev became the first European to sail the strait between Asia and America — 80 years before Bering.