Facts About Cheques:

Texas billionaire and former Presidential candidate Ross Perot wrote a blank cheque to fund and save the 500-year old Treaty Oak in Austin Texas which was poisoned by a vandal.

Hugh Hefner’s father, a public accountant, turned him down when he needed money to start Playboy as he did not think the magazine was a good business investment. However, as he was about to leave, his mother took him aside and gave him a $1000 cheque from her savings to help his venture.

A man tried to cash a cheque he got in some junk mail for $95,000 and the bank did it.

Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule and Nobel Prize laureate, sent a letter accompanied by a cheque for 10 guineas to Winston Churchill, saying that the money should be used for the establishment of a brothel at the Cambridge University, instead of a chapel. 

When Jim Carrey was broke he wrote himself a cheque for $10 million and gave himself 5 years, in those 5 years he went over the $10 million mark because of Dumb & Dumber and The Mask.

An oversized cheque (i.e. Publishers Clearing House sized) can be redeemed for their cash value, but a bank may charge you extra for clearing it.

The band Oasis promised a full refund for a show, but after immediately regretting the offer, issued autographed cheques with the band’s logo on it, in the hopes that people would frame them instead of cashing them. 

Atari’s first world tournament in 1981 didn’t go so well with initial winning cheques bouncing, low participation and contestants having to use their own quarters for games.

The signature line on cheques is not a line at all. It’s actually the word ‘signature’ written over and over again.

Nobel Prize laureate receives a diploma, a gold medal and a cheque worth 10 million Swedish kronor. 

The Knights Templars established an early yet advanced banking system involving safety deposit boxes, cheques, and loans. 

Todd Salimuchai, a man with no citizenship, tried hijacking a plane after being tortured in China for illegally immigrating to cash an $800k drug money cheque. 

Bill Murray wrote Wes Anderson a blank cheque so that he wouldn’t have to cut a scene from Rushmore.

There’s such a thing as a left-handed cheque book. 

In Canada, a common way to pay your monthly rent is to give your new landlord 12 cheques, dated for the first day of the next 12 months.

All Palestinian families who had a member killed by Israeli troops after the outbreak of the Second Intifada received a $10,000 cheque from Iraq’s then-president Saddam Hussein.

Canadian cheques can legally be written in English, French or Inuit.

The US government sends a cheque to Cuba every year for USD$4000 to lease Guantanamo Bay and the Cuban government ignores them as they don’t consider the deal legitimate.

The cheque is spelled check in American English.

In 1980, a bet was made on rising commodities prices between Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich and growth economist Julian Simon. Erlich lost in 1990 and mailed a cheque to Simon for $576.07 without even including a note, still less admit he was wrong.

Before Jerry Springer was on TV he was a politician in Cincinnati, who was forced to resign after paying for a prostitute with a cheque. 

Since 2003, you can cash a cheque by sending a picture of it to your bank.