The story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island is a sobering reminder of how risky a journey to the New World was in the 16th Century. It’s a romantic tale, but one tinged with sadness at the lives lost. Though it pertained to a specific geographical location, the commemorative half dollar issued [...]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Though America’s smallest state, Rhode Island nevertheless managed to obtain a commemorative coin of its own in 1936. This type marked the 300th anniversary of the founding of Providence, now the state’s capital, yet no mention of this city may be found on the coin!
The prime mover behind the founding of Providence was Roger Williams [...]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Commemorative coins were still something of a novelty in 1920 when Congress authorized the coining of half dollars to celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims. Only eight commemorative coin programs had gone before. Some of these included multiple denominations, while a few even offered two different dates of the same design. [...]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
“Remember the Maine” was the rallying cry which led the United States into the Spanish-American War of 1898. Although later investigations suggested that the explosion which sank the battleship U.S.S. Maine at Havana, Cuba was probably caused by the spontaneous combustion of coal dust rather than a Spanish saboteur, Americans of that time were [...]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
“Open for me your cabinet of Patterns, and I open for you a record, which, but for these half-forgotten witnesses, would have disappeared under the finger of Time. ….Now, only these live to tell the tale of what might have been.” Those words of Mint Curator Patterson DuBois in the January 1883 American Journal [...]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
The Panama Canal ranks among the greatest man-made marvels in the world—a 51-mile-long system of natural lakes, excavated channels and locks that slashes up to 8,000 nautical miles from voyages between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It was viewed as such an accomplishment that Uncle Sam marked its opening with a gala world’s fair in [...]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Today, more than eighty years after the Panama Canal was completed, it remains one of the engineering marvels of the modern age. It took ten years and 375 million dollars to complete, and when the S.S. Ancon sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean on August 15, 1914, there was cause for great celebration. [...]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Ever since Balboa first gazed upon the Pacific Ocean in 1513, Europeans had dreamed and schemed of ways to connect the Gulf of Mexico with the large ocean to the west. Four hundred years later that dream was realized with the opening of the Panama Canal. It took ten years and many millions of dollars [...]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
For at least a decade before the California gold rush of 1849, there was a growing migration of settlers to the West. Most of these pioneers were bound for the rich farmland of the Willamette Valley in the Oregon territory and followed a route which stretched over 2,000 miles from Independence, Missouri to Fort Vancouver, [...]
Sunday, May 24, 2009
In recent years, complaints that Congress is too careless in authorizing commemorative coin issues are frequently heard. It’s been said that too many events and causes of only limited national importance have been honored and funded through the sale of such coins. Obviously, Congress has a knack for repeating its mistakes, since the same complaints [...]
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
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