MORE ON THE ART OF BANKNOTE FOLDING

Legend: A properly folded U.S. $20 bill reveals images of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Origins: Folding common paper images such as currency and familiar product packaging to produce amusing (and often risqué) new images is a pastime with a long history. After all, several generations of kids have now learned that if you cut a few holes in a package of "Land O Lakes" butter and fold the portion with the pictured Native American girl's knees up just right, you can make it look like she's holding her breasts.

So, in that fine tradition, someone has recently discovered that folding a U.S. $20 bill a couple of different ways produces images that, with a little power of suggestion behind them, are reminiscent of pictures of the burning World Trade Center and Pentagon buildings after the September 11 terrorist attacks, a discovery now touted on some tongue-in-cheek web sites with the suggestion that the results are something more than a coincidence.

To those (few, we hope) who might be tempted to take something like this seriously, we'd simply point out that:

• The current U.S. $20 bill was the product of a redesign introduced by the U.S. Treasury back in September 1998, a full three years before the terrorist attacks.
• Since all denominations of U.S. currency higher than the $2 bill feature an engraving of a building surrounded by trees and/or shrubbery on their reverse sides, it isn't difficult to find a bill that can be folded to create an image similar to that of a burning building (with the leaves or shrubbery functioning as the "smoke").
• The truly dedicated can even find a way to combine the letters in the printing to form the name of the perpetrator:

To read the complete article, see: Post No Bills (www.snopes.com/rumors/20bill.asp)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: EVERYDAY ART: THE BANKNOTE (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n18a28.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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