The Roanoke Island, North Carolina, half dollar is a commemorative coin issued by the U.S. Bureau of the Mint in 1937. It commemorated the 350th anniversary of the Roanoke Colony, depicting on one side Sir Walter Raleigh (pictured), and on the other Eleanor Dare, holding her child, Virginia Dare, the first child of English descent born in an English colony in the Americas. The coin was one of many commemorative issues authorized by Congress in 1936. As the colony was founded in 1587, the coins were struck in 1937. William Marks Simpson, a sculptor who created several commemorative coins of the era, designed the coin. His work required only slight modification by the Commission of Fine Arts. The legislation allowed the Roanoke Island Memorial Association to buy at least 25,000 coins at a time before July 1937; they placed two orders for the minimum amount. Eventually, 21,000 were returned to the Mint for redemption and melting. Numismatic catalogs value the coin in the low hundreds of dollars.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Island,_North_Carolina,_half_dollar
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1783:
The Mechanical Turk, a fraudulent chess-playing "machine" by Wolfgang von Kempelen that was secretly controlled by a hidden human, began a tour of Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk
1809:
Napoleonic Wars: After a three-day chase, a British squadron under Alexander Cochrane captured the French ship-of-the-line D'Hautpoul off Puerto Rico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troude%27s_expedition_to_the_Caribbean
1973:
George Lucas began writing a 13-page film treatment entitled The Star Wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_%28film%29
1984:
Metropolitan Police officer Yvonne Fletcher was shot and killed while on duty during a protest outside the Libyan embassy in London's St James's Square, resulting in an 11-day police siege of the building and a breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two nations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Fletcher
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
hostage to fortune: 1. (chiefly Britain) An action, promise, or remark that is considered unwise because it could be difficult to fulfil or could cause trouble later on. 2. (chiefly US) A person or thing whose fate is seen as dependent on chance or luck. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hostage_to_fortune
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being; the words are rising to their lips in immediate spontaneity … The theater is supremely fitted to say: "Behold! These things are." --Thornton Wilder https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thornton_Wilder