Soft Gold

Tax was levied in the form of fur in Serbia!

Serbia is a country in eastern Europe. It has borders with the countries of Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Romania, Albania, Macedonia, and Montenegro. So, in the 1600s the Russians invaded Serbia. They saw that the Serbians had beautiful furs. Slowly more Russians arrived, and they started the fur trade. Soon, people from North America wanted the fur too. It was so expensive that the fur came to be called ‘soft gold’! By the late 1600s the fur trade was increasing a lot so the Russian government implied taxes that could be payed only with fur. This way the Serbians couldn’t give away all their fur and some of it always stayed in Serbia.

Monopoly board games helped soldiers escape in World War II!

Monopoly is a children’s and family game which involves paying rent, buying properties, sending people to jail etc. But did you know that it helped Allied forces soldiers escape from the prison camps?! In WWII, the Germans allowed the Red Cross to send care packages which included food, tobacco, and personal hygiene items. One of the things also allowed was ‘Monopoly’ board games that were specially invented to help the soldiers escape. The playing board had a metal file hidden in it to cut the bars open, the ‘Monopoly’ money had German, Italian and French currencies, a small compass was hidden in a playing piece and silk maps of the prison and its location were hidden in the hotel pieces.

 

 

Theodore Roosevelt continued to give his speech even after he was shot!

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was the 26^th president of the U.S.A. So, once on 14^th October 1912 when he was about to start giving a speech he was shot in the chest. He insisted that he wouldn’t go to the hospital till he had finished his speech. He then began his speech by saying “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot”. He then removed a paper from his chest pocket that he had written his speech on. It had a lot of blood on it and a large hole in it. The paper had slowed the bullet down which is why he hadn’t been killed by it!