The Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar was a fifty-cent piece struck intermittently by the United States Bureau of the Mint between 1926 and 1939. The coin was designed by Laura Gardin Fraser and James Earle Fraser, and honors those who traveled the Oregon Trail and settled the Pacific Coast of the United States. Ohio-born Ezra Meeker had traveled the Trail with his family in 1852 and spent the final two decades of his long life publicizing the Trail. In 1926, at age 95, he appeared before a Senate committee, requesting that the government issue a commemorative coin to raise money for markers to show where the Trail had been. The many varieties produced after Meeker's death in 1928 came to be considered ripoffs, and in 1939 Congress ended the series. The Oregon Trail Memorial Association, distributor of the coin, had difficulty in selling them, and they remained available from the OTMA's successor organization as late as 1953. Just over 260,000 of the 6,000,000 authorized coins were struck, of which about 60,000 were melted. The US commemorative coin struck over the longest period, the Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar has been widely praised for its design.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail_Memorial_half_dollar
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1493:
Christopher Columbus became the first European to land on Puerto Rico, naming it San Juan Bautista after John the Baptist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico
1816:
The University of Warsaw (main gate pictured), currently the largest university in Poland, was established as Congress Poland found itself a territory without a university. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Warsaw
1941:
World War II: The Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran destroyed each other in the Indian Ocean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_between_HMAS_Sydney_and_German_auxiliary_cruiser_Kormoran
1969:
Playing for Santos against Vasco da Gama in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian footballer Pelé scored his 1000th goal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pel%C3%A9
1994:
The first National Lottery draw in the United Kingdom was held, with seven winners sharing a prize of £5,874,778. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lottery_(United_Kingdom)
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
omega: 1. The final letter of the Greek alphabet. 2. (idiomatic) The end; the final, last or ultimate in a series. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/omega
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
First of all, everyone must acknowledge and feel that child slavery still exists in the world, in its ugliest face and form. And this is an evil, which is crime against humanity, which is intolerable, which is unacceptable and which must go. That sense of recognition must be developed first of all. And secondly there is a need of higher amounts of political will. There is a need of higher amount of corporate engagement, and the engagement of the public towards it. So, everybody has a responsibility to save and protect the children on this planet. --Kailash Satyarthi https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kailash_Satyarthi