The Reader's Digest book "Mysteries of the Unexplained" describes and pictures a piece of currency known as The Kennedy Assassination Bill, which has "secret meanings" relating to the killing printed on its face.
The so-called "assassination bill" is a U.S. dollar of the 1963 series, issued in Dallas two weeks before President Kennedy was assissinated. Mysteriously - or so people think - the bill has a large letter K printed on it, and its serial number begins with the letter K and ends with an A. Futhermore, the number 11 appears in each corner of the bill.All of this supposedly adds up to "Kennedy assassinated in the 11th month of 1963."
Some people also claim significance for the fact that K is the 11th letter of the alphabet, and note that two 11s add up to 22, the date of the killng.
Eerie as they seem at first, all these markings are easily explained. Dallas is the location of the 11th of 12 Federal Reserve Banks, and all bills printed there bear that number, plus the code letter K. The 11th letter stands for the 11th district, see?
Currency experts are sometimes asked how much these "rare" dollars are worth. Answer: one dollar. True, it's rare to find one circulating, but that's only because most bills printed in the era have been taken out of use.
And of course nobody ever considers the really obivious questions the "assissination bill" raises. For instance, how would Congress and the Treasury have known the crime was coming when they authorized printing of this series of bills i June 1963? And what would their motives have been in coding a reference to the president's assassination into our money?
While you're digging through your billfold or the kids' savings searching for a Kennedy Bill, take a look at the picture on the reverse side of any $5 bill.
In the bushes to the left of the Lincoln Memorial steps, you can make out waht appears to be a shadowy sequence of numbers, either 372 or 3719.
Remor has it that these numbers are significant, representative of something. Just what the numbers are supposed to mean its never explained, though.
At least two U.S. coins also have rumored markings. The Roosevelt dime ahs a tiny "JS" engraved on it. People say this stands for the "Josef Stalin," suggesting some nefarious link between the American and Soviet heads of state. In fact, J and S are just the initials of the coin's designer.
And what about the Kennedy half dollar said to show the Cold War president under the sway of communist influence? Well, the person who designed the coin simpley made his own initials ("GR," Gilroy Roberts) so fancy that some people see a hammer and sickle down by Kennedy's neck instead.
Rumors of sinister mystery markings on money are not unique to the United States. In 1954, JCanadian bills of all denominatios supposedly bore a picture of a tiny devil engraved in Queen Elizabeth II's hair.
Some people thought Irish nationalists were responsible for the secret image. Others thought the "deveil" looked like nothing but curls and shadows.
I've seen all the funny money mentioned above, or pictures of same. But I've never seen the Canadian $20 bill of the 1960s on which the queen's bra strap is showing. I hope that's just a rumor, like the rest of theses stories.