The word "dollar"

has its origins in the Roman Empire...

A mining hole in the mountains of Bohemia produced so much silver it became the official source of coinage for the entire Holy Roman Empire. The mine was in a valley called Joachimsthal, and the coins came to have the same name: "Joachimstalers." Over time this became shortened to "Talers" and over more time, the American pronunciation of the word became the name for the currency that you would like to have in your pocket.

The $ sign was designed in 1788 by Oliver Pollock, a New Orleans businessman, using a combination of Spanish money symbols.

The $ sign is used in many countries other than the United States, including the use for the Argentine peso, Brazilian real, Cape Verde escudo, Chilean peso, Colombian peso, Cuban peso, Dominican peso, Mexican peso, Tongan pa'anga and Uruguayan peso. Other countries that trade in their currency as dollars are Australia, Bahamas, Canada, Liberia and others...

If you stack one million US$1 bills, it would be 110m (361 ft) high and weight exactly 1 ton. A million dollars' worth of $100 bills weighs only 10 kg (22 lb). One million dollars' worth of once-cent coins (100 million coins) weigh 246 tons.

Talers
(front and flipside)

This is the silver coin first struck as a "Guldiner" in 1486 in Tyrol. The name "Taler" was first given to the silver coin of the same size struck in Joachimstal in Bohemia.