When I say the word ‘bookkeeper’, a lot of people immediately think of stuffy, dry or a bit dull. The greyscale people in dull suits who crunch numbers all day. Generally, the opposite of fun! But while this stereotype has been around for a long time, the reality is that bookkeepers are normal people just like you. We love going out and having fun, doing things – and we love numbers. Since I’ve been talking a lot recently about some heavier stuff, I thought I’d give you a bit of light relief and share some fun facts about bookkeeping with you.
Bookkeeping is a Unique Word
I know it doesn’t sound like much, but bookkeeping is a very unique word, because it’s the only word in the English language to contain 3 sets of double letters back-to-back. Double O, double K and double E. It’s only proper noun and non-hyphenated word to do this in our language, although if you allow for hyphens then words like ‘sweet-tooth’ come into play. If you look outside the UK then you might find a few place names that do the same, like Woolloomooloo in Australia. Try saying that 3 times faster!
Bookkeepers Brought Down Al Capone
This is one that a lot of people know, but just in case I thought I would slip it in here. Legendary crime boss Al Capone was guilty of many things, from smuggling alcohol during the prohibition to running brothels, criminal outfits and even murder. But the police couldn’t make any of it stick. So Al Capone got away with it for years without any repercussions. But eventually he was put behind bars, and who put him there? A team of bookkeepers and accountants. In 1931, federal authorities were able to prosecute Al Capone for tax evasion, and won a conviction that kept Capone off the streets for 11 years. By then he was too ill to be a threat, and he died shortly after he was released.
Bookkeepers Count the Oscars Ballots
Showbiz might seem like it’s all glitz and glam, but there’s a lot of real, everyday work that goes into it as well. One of those things is counting the ballots in big events. The biggest? The Oscars. At the Academy Awards Night every year, a team of CPA’s (Certified Public Accountants) and bookkeepers are holed up in a back room counting ballots. Oscars voting has been done like this since 1935, and so this crack team of bookkeepers and accountants are the only ones who know the results before the winners are announced.
Bookkeeping Keeps Latin Alive
Latin is generally considered a dead language – but did you know that many Latin words are still alive and in use today? They just look a bit different. The finance world is full of Latin words, especially when it comes to bookkeeping. Particularly, the words ‘debit’ and ‘credit’, which are nods to the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli, who’s known as the Father of Accounting, having collaborated with Leonardo da Vinci and been the first person to publish a work on the double-entry system of bookkeeping. The word ‘debit’ comes from ‘debitum’ in Latin, which means ‘what is due’, while the word ‘credit’ comes from ‘creditum’, meaning ‘something entrusted to another or a loan.’
The Guy Who Invented Bubble Gum was an Accountant
Yes, you read that right. His name was Walter Diemer, and he was originally an accountant for the Fleer Chewing Gum Company. At work one day he was messing around with some products, and he accidentally created a super stretch, pink chewing gum that blew surprisingly good bubbles. That was in 1928, and since then we’ve all enjoyed this accidental creation from an accountant.
So Was the Co-Founder of Nike
Have you spotted a theme yet? Co-founder of Nike Inc Phil Knight was a certified public accountant, and worked as an accountant in Portland, Oregon. Granted, this was something of a ‘stop gap’ job while he waited for samples of running shoes to be shipped to him from a brand he discovered in Japan, but that job lasted him 7 years! He had developed an interest in sports brands during his MBS at Standford, and once those samples had turned into a profitable business for him, he left his accounting job for full-time business ownership.
The First Name in History
Every record had to start somewhere, and that includes the history of recorded names. If you look back far enough, you can find the first ever recorded name in history nestled within the pages of ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’, written by Dr Yuval Noah Harari. In it, he states that the first ever recorded name belonged to an accountant called ‘Kushim’. Harari notes that as people started settling down into larger kingdoms, recording mathematical data became a necessity for these societies to function. Taxes, incomes, and possessions were all vital figures that needed to be recorded by bookkeepers, accountants and administrators. The first written text in history, made some 5,000 years ago, is believed to belong to this accountant, who was making records of supplies. It read something along these lines: “A total of 29,086 measures of barley were received over the course of 37 months. Signed, Kushim.”
So you see, bookkeeping and accounting have been around longer than the written word, and have been essential all that time! I hope you enjoyed these facts as much as I enjoyed researching them, and as always if you have any questions about bookkeeping, or just need some support, please feel free to get in touch.