Bohemian Dollars

The dollar is a Bohemian. It's true. The United States adopted a currency based on the Spanish milled dollar, popularly known as "Pieces of Eight".
OK, so the Spanish currency was called a "dollar". Where does this word come from? It's actually derived from the German "Thaler", which itself comes from "Thal" meaning "valley". The word is etymologically related to our "dale".
It turns out that there were rich silver mines in what is now the Czech Republic, in the Sudetenland, to be precise. This was the German-speaking rim of Bohemia that Hitler coveted so much in 1938 and that Chamberlain sold out on. Anyway, the location of these mines was known as "Joachimsthal", and the products of these mines as "Joachimsthalers", or "thalers" for short.
By the way, did you ever try to cut a pie into five equal slices? It's hard to estimate accurately. How about four? That's easier. You just slice twice along a diameter, which is easier to see. If you want eight pieces, you slice two more times. That's why the Spanish dollar was "milled" into eight pieces that could be broken off. Each piece was a "bit", worth 12.5 pennies. Two bits therefore is a quarter. This is also why until quite recently, financial instruments were quoted in eighths and sixteenths or other powers of two. Wall Street originally based its quotation system on the Spanish milled dollars still circulating when the Exchange was founded.