Getting your player ready...
Washington – Honest Abe will become Colorful Abe with splashes of purple and gray enlivening the $5 bill.
The government showed off the new bill Thursday in an Internet news conference – a high-tech unveiling that officials say is entirely appropriate for a 21st-century redesign of the bill featuring the Civil War president, Abraham Lincoln.
The changes are similar to those already made, starting in 2003, to the $10, $20 and $50 bills.
Originally, the $5 bill wasn’t going to be redesigned. But that decision was reversed once counterfeiters began bleaching $5 notes and printing fake $100 bills with the bleached paper to take advantage of the fact that some of the security features were in the same locations on both notes.
