William Wells Brown, who escaped slavery in 1834, later wrote that he ran a barbershop in Monroe, Michigan, in 1835 and issued his own shinplasters, small promissory notes that acted as small change. In the Western states of the 1830s almost anyone could start a bank and issue notes far beyond their reserves, and these 'wildcat banks' flooded the country with worthless paper. Shinplasters filled the shortage of coins, but people had to judge each note's value by trust in the issuer. Newspapers printed lists of reliable notes, and notes lost value with distance from their issuer. Brown's account is hard to verify, and historians have treated the banking story as an anecdote he may have embellished. Brown later became the first published African American playwright and the author of the first published novel by an African American, Clotel.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.