United States ten-dollar bill
current denomination of United States currency
The United States ten-dollar bill (US$10) is a denomination of U.S. currency. The obverse of the bill features the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, who served as the first U.S. secretary of the treasury, two renditions of the torch of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), and the words "We the People" from the original engrossed preamble of the United States Constitution. The reverse features the U.S. Treasury Building. All $10 bills issued today are Federal Reserve Notes.
As of December 2018, the average life of a $10 bill in circulation is 5.3 years before it is replaced due to wear. Ten-dollar bills are delivered by Federal Reserve Banks bound with yellow straps.
The source of Hamilton's portrait on the $10 bill is John Trumbull's 1805 painting that belongs to the portrait collection of New York City Hall. The $10 bill is unique in that it is the only denomination in circulation in which the portrait faces to the left. It also features one of two non-presidents on currently issued U.S. bills, the other being Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill. Hamilton is also the only person not born in the continental United States or British America (he was from the West Indies) currently depicted on U.S. paper currency; three others have been depicted in the past: Albert Gallatin, Switzerland ($500 1862/63 Legal Tender), George Meade, Spain ($1,000 1890/91 Treasury Note), and Robert Morris, England ($1,000 1862/63 Legal Tender; $10 1878/80 Silver Certificate).
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This entry incorporates text from “United States ten-dollar bill” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.