Gold was usually used for a few thousand years only to make things like jewelry and idols for worship. This was until around 1500 BC, when the ancient empire of Egypt, which had a lot of gold because of its gold-producing region, Nubia, made gold the first official medium of international trade.
The euro was released on 1 January 1999, following a decade of preparations: for the first three years, it was an 'invisible' currency, used exclusively for accounting purposes and electronic payments. Coins and banknotes were introduced on 1 January 2002, and the largest currency changeover in history occurred in 12 EU countries.
