The United States ten-dollar bill ($10) is a denomination of United States currency. The first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, is currently featured on the obverse of the bill, while the U.S. Treasury is featured on the reverse. (Hamilton is one of two non-presidents featured on currently issued U.S. bills. The other is Benjamin Franklin, on the $100 bill. In addition to this, Hamilton is one of only two persons featured on U.S. currency who was not born in the continental United States, as he was from the West Indies. The other, Kamehameha I, appears on the 2008 Hawaii state quarter.) All $10 bills issued today are Federal Reserve Notes.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing says the average life of a $10 bill in circulation is 18 months before it is replaced due to wear. Approximately 6% of all US banknotes printed in 2009 were $10 bills. Ten dollar bills are delivered by Federal Reserve Banks in yellow straps.
The source of the face on the $10 bill is John Trumbull’s 1805 portrait of Hamilton that belongs to the portrait collection of New York City Hall. The $10 bill is the only U.S. paper currency in circulation in which the portrait faces to the left (the $100,000 bill featured a portrait of Woodrow Wilson facing to the left, but was used only for intra-government transactions).
Read more about United States Ten-dollar Bill: Large Size Note History, Small Size Note History, Nicknames
Famous quotes containing the words ten-dollar bill, united states, united, states, ten-dollar and/or bill:
“You must think I am a high-priced man.... Fifteen dollars is enough for the job. I send you a receipt for fifteen dollars, and return to you a ten-dollar bill.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children’s children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Madam, I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damn business.”
—Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)
“If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing, yet let memory
From false to false among false maids in love
Upbraid my falsehood.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.”
—Lillian Hellman (1907–1984)