What is that squiggly thing?  

the "little squiggly thing that looks like a capitol L in cursive with a line through the middle" is in fact the symbol for a pound. Ther is also a symbol for a Euro that looks like a rounded capitol E. The "squiggly thing" is called a pound because that is the name of the currency.
As for your questions about the origins of currency and symbols I have no idea. I am sorry that I am unable to help.

Well if you want your head to spin with symbols...hehe..I found this website that has all the symbols used for monetary denominations world wide

http://www.xe.com/symbols.php


Yes that funny L symbol is the British pound...as for Lira which is Italy, it might be called Lira but don't know if they still actually use it..most European countries now use the "euro" which symbol is like an "e"

As for how money symbols began or the history...yeesh...no idea

Pye has been a huge help here and I must say I have nothing more to add here but thanks for the discussion....I've learned a lot already that I did not already know!

~Heavens~

The stylized L with the line through it is the symbol for the Pound Sterling currency.
They use the L because it is the first letter of the abreviated pound that we use in common today which is of course lb. Something weighs 7 lbs. We know from that lbs that this in fact means that item weighs 7 pounds. Hence L with the squiggly line through it.
Lira is Itallian. In the days when I was a kid growing up, a simple hambergure required about 15,000 lira. I have no idea what their symbol was.
Today, Italy and most other continental countries including Ireland use the Euro. It's symbol is a C with and = sign through the center of the C making a stylized E.
In America, you have coins. 1 cent is called a penny. 5 cents is called a nickel because of what it's made out of. I'm not sure why 10 cents is called a dime. But the quarter is called that because 25 cents is 1/4 of one dollar. It's also called two bits because of the old pirate day when coins were apparently routinely broken in to 8. Pieces of eight? So in order to have a quarter, you literally needed "two bits".
In Canada we do not have penny, nickel, dime and quarter coins. We have 1,5,10,25 cent coins. The named coins is an Americanism we use though.
As for the $, I haven't a blessed clue as to how that originated.

Well, I got thinking after you asked the question and did some research.
I can see you got some help on the pounds and dollars part.
Our currency (India) is the Rupee....and it originated from the word 'rupyakam' which means silver in the Sanskrit language. Earlier silver coins were used as currency and so Rupee came into origin. It is usually denoted as Re (Rupee - singular) and Rs (Rupees - plural). That's pretty straightforward and easy to understand why.

Yes that would be the pound sign, £. and this one is the euro sign €. Hope that has been of help. Lira, punt, franc and a lot of other denominations of European currency where all combined into the one currency called the Euro in 2002. :-)

According to another Wikipedia article I read, the $ symbol supposedly originated with the former Spanish dollar. The article says the symbol comes from the Spanish coat of arms, which features the two pillars of Hercules and an S-shaped ribbon with the motto "Non Plus Ultra."

The # symbol is also used to mean pound, although on British telephones it is referred to as the "hash" key.

Hi Honey

You can find alot of info

about different money conversions

at

http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic

oxoxxoxoxoxoxo

I heard somewhere that the word "dollar" came from some German word for money, though why it would be used here then I don't know, except that a lot of countries have used the word "dollar" for money. If I go to the wire transfer screen at work (since I work at bank) I see a lot of different "dollars". Our money is abbreviated, USD but there's also the Canadian dollar, the Australian dollar, and others.

I don't really know a lot about the signs, since most o of the stuff we used at the bank has the abbreviations for the currency on it instead, but I know there are a lot of them!

Hey oreo,yes it is a pound £ ,of course you know that now,but i am replying because you say you do not have that on your keyboard,but i have the dollar sign $,funny that eh.