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The following were suggested for the £20 (honest!); who would you have picked?
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 Jade Goody
 Stephen Hawking
 Victoria Beckham
 Spike Milligan
 Keeley Hazell
 Pete Doherty
 Margaret Thatcher
 Winston Churchill
 Other...
The new £20 note has been revealed and the face on the back is Adam Smith. Adam who? Well, if you don't play Civilisation you might never have heard of him so here are ten interesting facts about him...

1) Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, where Gordon Brown is currently the MP.

2) As a baby, Adam Smith was briefly kidnapped  before being rescued by his uncle.

3) While some people have complained about a Scot being on an English banknote, the Bank of England was founded by a Scot, Sir William Paterson, in 1694.

4) Adam Smith was widely believed to have abandoned Christianity in favour of deism, a religious philosophy that rejects miracles and other supernatural events.

5) Adam Smith came up with the widely-used term "the invisible hand of the market".

6) Adam Smith was an abolitionist and questioned the long-term economic benefits of slavery.

7) Adam Smith never married and lived with his mother until she died, only six years before he passed away in 1790.

8) The Wealth of Nations has been cited by many people as their favourite book. Journalist Andrew Neil and businessman Sir Stanley Kalms are among those to have chosen to take it with them to a desert island.

9) The poet Robert Burns was a huge admirer of Adam Smith, writing of The Wealth of Nations that "I could not have given any mere man credit for half the intelligence Mr Smith discovers in his book".

10) Although The Wealth of Nations is by far the best-known of Adam Smith's works today, it was an earlier work - The Theory of Moral Sentiments - which made his name during his lifetime. A treatise which argued that people were born with a sense of right and wrong, and of how to behave towards others, it sold out in weeks.

Comments below please.


The changes to the front were even more controversial.



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garethwi (18-03-2007 19:34:04)

It's uncanny. Perhaps I'll ask him.

revrobuk (16-03-2007 09:09:39)

That wouldn't be Father Abraham on today's article would it?

garethwi (16-03-2007 08:25:09)

Well Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbe are also famous-ish, and Famke Janssen too, so it's not all bad.

And don't forget Father Abraham, who is still going strong over here, but using his real name, and not his Smurf moniker.

Devil's Advocaat (14-03-2007 19:14:46)

I was going to come back with a 'pish tosh there are many famous Dutch people' argument until I checked on a Dutch cultural site which listed...five! They are Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Erazm of Rotterdam, Mata Hari, and the Flying Dutchman. Two painters, a 13th century reformer, a whore and a mythical boat. Come on you people of Dutchland, show me I'm wrong!

garethwi (14-03-2007 14:09:52)

Sounds a bit of a funky dude.

It's still better than the Dutch, who are so strapped for famous people they have 2-Unlimited on their notes.
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