The unicorn is a legendary creature, described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. The unicorn was depicted in ancient seals of the Indus Valley Civilization and was mentioned by the ancient Greeks in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Pliny the Younger and Cosmas Indicopleustes; the Bible describes an animal, the re'em, which some versions translate as unicorn. In European folklore, the unicorn is depicted as a white horse-like or goat-like animal with a long horn and cloven hooves. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was described as an wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could be captured only by a virgin. In the encyclopedias, its horn was said to have the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as unicorn horn; the unicorn continues to hold a place in popular culture. It is used as a symbol of fantasy or rarity.

A number of seals depicting unicorns have been found from the Indus Valley Civilisation. Seals with such a design are thought to be a mark of high social rank; these have been interpreted as representations of aurochs—a type of large wild cattle that inhabited Europe and North Africa—or derivatives of aurochs, because the animal is always shown in profile, indicating there may have supposed to have been another horn, not seen. Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology, but rather in the accounts of natural history, for Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of unicorns, which they believed lived in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them; the earliest description is from Ctesias, who in his book Indika described them as wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn a cubit and a half in length, colored white and black. Ctesias got his information while living in Persia. Unicorns on a relief sculpture have been found at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in Iran.

Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx and the so-called "Indian ass". Strabo says. Pliny the Elder mentions the oryx and an Indian ox as one-horned beasts, as well as "a fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse. In On the Nature of Animals, quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces a one-horned horse, says that the monoceros was sometimes called cartazonos, which may be a form of the Arabic karkadann, meaning "rhinoceros". Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant of Alexandria who lived in the 6th century, made a voyage to India and subsequently wrote works on cosmography, he gives a description of a unicorn based on four brass figures in the palace of the King of Ethiopia. He states, from report; when it finds itself pursued and in danger of capture, it throws itself from a precipice, turns so aptly in falling, that it receives all the shock upon the horn, so escapes safe and sound".

Medieval knowledge of the fabulous beast stemmed from biblical and ancient sources, the creature was variously represented as a kind of wild ass, goat, or horse. The predecessor of the medieval bestiary, compiled in Late Antiquity and known as Physiologus, popularized an elaborate allegory in which a unicorn, trapped by a maiden, stood for the Incarnation; as soon as the unicorn sees her, it falls asleep. This became a basic emblematic tag that underlies medieval notions of the unicorn, justifying its appearance in every form of religious art. Interpretations of the unicorn myth focus on the medieval lore of beguiled lovers, whereas some religious writers interpret the unicorn and its death as the Passion of Christ; the myths refer to a beast with one horn. The unicorn figured in courtly terms: for some 13th-century French authors such as Thibaut of Champagne and Richard de Fournival, the lover is attracted to his lady as the unicorn is to the virgin. With the rise of humanism, the unicorn acquired more orthodox secular meanings, emblematic of chaste love and faithful marriage.

It plays this role in Petrarch's Triumph of Chastity, on the reverse of Piero della Francesca's portrait of Battista Strozzi, paired with that of her husband Federico da Montefeltro, Bianca's triumphal car is drawn by a pair of unicorns. The Throne Chair of Denmark is made of "unicorn horns" – certainly narwhal tusks; the same material was used for ceremonial cups because the unicorn's horn continued to be believed to neutralize poison, following classical authors. The unicorn, tamable only by a virgin woman, was well established in medieval lore by the time Marco Polo described them as "scarcely smaller than elephants, they have the hair of feet like an elephant's. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead... They have a head like a wild boar's… They spend their time by preference wa

Tipitina's is a music venue located at the corner of Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas Street in Uptown New Orleans, United States. Local music enthusiasts opened the venue on January 14, 1977; the name was inspired by a well-known song, "Tipitina", by Professor Longhair who performed there until his death in 1980. Before adopting use of "Tipitina's" as its name, the facility was known as "The 501 Club," in reference to its street address. Tipitina's stands as one of the best-known clubs in New Orleans; the building itself was constructed in 1912, prior to becoming Tipitina's, it served as a gambling house and brothel. In the early years, it had a juice bar, a bar; the only remnant of the juice bar is the banana in Tipitina's logo. In the early 1980s, the studios of radio station WWOZ were located in one of the apartments upstairs from the club. During that time, WWOZ would carry a Tipitina's show live by lowering a microphone into the club through a hole in the floor. Tipitina's closed for a time during the 1984 World's Fair, when much of the local music scene was drawn to venues in and around the Fair.

The building was remodeled to remove the upstairs apartments in favor of a higher ceiling in the downstairs music venue and reopened. In 1998, Tipitina's opened a second location on North Peters Street in the French Quarter, which for a time was a regular live music venue as well as open for private events and parties but is closed. Apart from running these venues, Tipitina's has established the Tipitina's Foundation, a non-profit organization to support local music and musicians; the main focus of the Tipitina's Foundation is to provide musical instruments and uniforms to New Orleans public high school marching bands. The Foundation has been active in supporting the musicians victimized by Hurricane Katrina. During the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival period, Tipitina's hosts a concert series titled "Fess Jazztival", a play on "Jazz Festival" and Professor Longhair's nickname, "Fess". In December 2018, Tipitina's was purchased by the members of the New Orleans-based jam band Galactic from Mary and Ronald von Kurnatowski, who had owned the venue since 1997.

Numerous live albums have been recorded at Tipitina's, including: The Radiators / Work Done on Premises The Neville Brothers / Nevillization: Live at Tipitina's Jane's Addiction / Live - Tipitina's, New Orleans, LA, 16 Jan'89 Piano Night at Tipitina's Anders Osborne / Live at Tipitina's Galactic / We Love'Em Tonight: Live at Tipitina's Professor Longhair / Ball the Wall: Live at Tipitina's 1978 The Radiators / Earth vs. The Radiators: the First 25 Tuts Washington / Live at Tipitina's'78 Dr. John / Right Place, Right Time: Live at Tipitina's Bonerama / Bringing It Home The Blind Boys of Alabama / Live in New Orleans DVD Phish / New Orleans Relief Black Top Blues-a-rama Vol. 1 - 7 Tipitina's is featured prominently in Wilco's Ashes of American Flags documentary and the accompanying downloadable live album List of jazz clubs List of music venues Official site Tipitina's Foundation official site

Legal tender is a medium of payment recognized by a legal system to be valid for meeting a financial obligation. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but it is anything which when offered in payment of a debt extinguishes the debt. There is no obligation on the creditor to accept the tendered payment, but the debt is discharged; the creditor is not obligated to give change. Some jurisdictions allow contract law to overrule the status of legal tender, allowing for example merchants to specify that they will not accept cash payments. Coins and banknotes are defined as legal tender in many countries, but personal cheques, credit cards, similar non-cash methods of payment are not; some jurisdictions may include a specific foreign currency as legal tender, at times as its exclusive legal tender or concurrently with its domestic currency. Some jurisdictions may restrict payment made by other than legal tender. In some jurisdictions legal tender can be refused as payment if no debt exists prior to the time of payment.

For example, vending machines and transport staff do not have to accept the largest denomination of banknote. Shopkeepers may reject large banknotes: this is covered by the legal concept known as invitation to treat; the right, in many jurisdictions, of a trader to refuse to do business with any person means that a would-be purchaser may not force a purchase by presenting legal tender, as legal tender only must be accepted for debts incurred. Under U. S. federal law, cash in U. S. dollars is a legal offer of payment for antecedent debts when tendered to a creditor. By contrast, federal statutes do not require a seller to accept federal currency or coins as payment for goods or services exchanged. Therefore, private businesses may formulate their own policies on whether to accept cash unless state law requires otherwise; the term "legal tender" is from French tendre, meaning to offer. The Latin root is tendere, the sense of tender as an offer is related to the etymology of the English word "extend".

Demonetization is the act of stripping a currency unit of its status as legal tender. It occurs whenever there is a change of national currency: The current form or forms of money is pulled from circulation and retired to be replaced with new notes or coins. Sometimes, a country replaces the old currency with new currency; the opposite of demonetization is remonetization, in which a form of payment is restored as legal tender. Coins and banknotes may cease to be legal tender if new notes of the same currency replace them or if a new currency is introduced replacing the former one. Examples of this are: The United Kingdom, adopting decimal currency in place of pounds and pence in 1971, Banknotes remained unchanged. In 1968 and 1969 decimal coins which had precise equivalent values in the old currency were introduced, while decimal coins with no precise equivalent were introduced on 15 February 1971; the smallest and largest non-decimal circulating coins, the half penny and half crown, were withdrawn in 1969, the other non-decimal coins with no precise equivalent in the new currency were withdrawn in 1971.

Non-decimal coins with precise decimal equivalents remained legal tender either until the coins no longer circulated, or the equivalent decimal coins were reduced in size in the early 1990s. The 6d coin was permitted to remain in large circulation throughout the United Kingdom due to the London Underground committee's large investment in coin-operated ticketing machines that used it. Old coins returned to the Royal Mint through the UK banking system will be redeemed by exchanging them for legal tender currency with no time limits; the successor states of the Soviet Union replacing the Soviet ruble in the 1990s. Currencies used in the Eurozone before being replaced by the euro are not legal tender, but all banknotes are redeemable for euros for a minimum of 10 years. India demonetised its 500 and 1000 rupee notes on 8 November 2016; this action affected 86 percent of all cash in circulation. The demonetisation action was intended to curb black money, the hoarding of unaccounted cash, sponsorship of terrorism, but led to long queues from bank runs, leaving more than 30 people dead.

The old notes are now being replaced by new 2000 rupee notes. The Philippines has ceased 2 peso and 50 centavo coins of Flora and Fauna Series in 2000, due to overminting of the coins of BSP Series that has not included the 2 peso and 50 centavo coins of that series. Individual coins or banknotes can be demonetised and cease to be legal tender, but the Bank of England does redeem all Bank of England banknotes by exchanging them for legal tender currency at its counters in London regardless of how old they are. Banknotes issued by retail banks in the UK are not legal tender, but one of the criteria for legal protection under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act is that banknotes must be payable on demand, therefore withdrawn notes remain a liability of the issuing bank without any time limits. In the case of the euro and banknotes of former