Around the time Abraham and his family were hanging out in Genesis, the Code of Hammurabi was taking form. In addition to a ton of laws that will never matter, there was one insurance-related rule: if someone who borrowed money was killed or developed a disability, they didn't have to pay back the money they owed.

And so, insurance was born. Throughout the ages, insurance has taken on different forms. Here's the abridged version:

• In the Middle Ages, insurance came in the form of guilds. Anyone who worked in a guild would put some cash into a pot (possibly a literal pot?) and if something happened to one of the guild members—anything from burglary to death—the guild would pay for the damage.

• In the 1600s, people wanted to get from Europe to the Americas and back…with stuff. Not so easy. If you were interested in taking on some of the risk of the trip, you could sign at the bottom of the paper describing the trip (fun fact: that's where the term underwriting comes from). If the ship was lost at sea—which happened a lot—you'd lose a, uh, boatload of cash. But if the ship came back with stuff to sell, you'd make a lot of dough.

• When America was a colony, there were no insurance companies. Life was insanely risky—fires, illnesses, and disasters, oh my—so no one really wanted to insure these people. Eventually it happened, but it took a while. In 1752, the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire was established (by none other than Ben Franklin), and by 1759, we had the first ever life insurance: the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Literally.