This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Guess what, Mango?

What's that, Will?

So you may have heard this before, but did you know there's actually a law that states that only dead people can appear on U.S. currency?

You know, I had heard that before, but what's funny is, like, why did that become a law?

Like, why was that important enough to put into writing?

It really is. It's weird. And I was wondering the same thing, so I decided to look back at this.

And I'm glad that I did because it's kind of a weird and fun story.

But it goes back to this superintendent of the National Currency Bureau. And it was a guy

named Spencer Clark. And this was back in 1866, a long time ago. And he oversaw the creation of what

were called fractional bills. And I didn't remember a whole lot about these, but these were bills

that were not as big as regular ones. They were five cent, 10 cent, 25 cent, and these other denominations.

But they were actually made because the nation was dealing with a coin shortage.

This was just after the Civil War.

And so Congress had asked the Bureau to make a new fractional bill in honor of William Clark.

Now, this is the Clark from Lewis and Clark fame.

But the document that was passed along to Spencer Clark only said Clark.

Now, you may notice that he had the same last name.

So as a joke, Spencer Clark decided to interpret that as being about himself.

And so he actually had the five-cent bill made with his own mug on it. This is not a joke.

He really did this. Wow. Spency. That's pretty gutsy. How did this joke go over?

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