You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

My name is Greg Jackson.

I'm a PhD holding historian, a professor and the creator of history that doesn't suck.

A podcast that makes legit seriously researched

American history come to life through entertaining stories. Join me for a

chronological telling of the United States story. From the revolution to

fractious civil war, tenacious inventors, brave reformers, and more.

With more than 100 episodes, you can already binge a listen to your way from 1776 to the early 20th century.

Listen to history that doesn't suck on Spotify. The Hello and welcome to the Pirate History Podcast. My name is Matt. Thank you for

listening. Before we get started this week I'd like to address something that I

said last week. It's in regards to when I was talking about

the origin of the dollar sign. What I said at the time was that the dollar sign originated

from a symbol on the piece of eight, which represented the pillars of Hercules, being the two dashes, and

the hemispheres of the globe, represented by an S.

Now this is a theory that has been postulated by many historians, and really the symbolism is just too good.

Unfortunately, it's too good to be true.

A listener who goes by the name of Funkman pointed out that this isn't necessarily the

general consensus among scholars on the subject.

There are a few other theories on where the dollar sign originated.

Another one that I like is that it was a simple symbol 8 with a line drawn through it to symbolize a piece of 8.

And that goes to explain the single slash dollar sign.

However, the consensus among historians seems to be that it was a much more simple and less symbolic answer than that.

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