World War I to end Sunday

Here's something I didn't know: Germany is about to make its final payment on the reparations debts which were imposed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Sunday's sum is the final payment on interest accrued between 1945 and 1952 on foreign bonds the German government had issued between the two world wars to raise capital for Treaty of Versailles payments. The money Germany pays on Sunday will therefore actually go to private investors who own these bonds.

The actual reparations payments themselves were finished in 1983. Under the London Agreement on German External Debts, signed by then Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1953, Germany was excused from paying off the €125 million in interest on the bonds until after the country was reunified.