The Liberty Head double eagle is an American twenty-dollar gold piece
struck as a pattern coin in 1849, and for commerce from 1850 to 1907.
The eagle, or ten-dollar piece, had been the largest denomination
authorized by the Mint Act of 1792, but Congress considered new
denominations of gold coinage in the 1840s after the discovery of gold
in California generated a large amount of bullion. The gold dollar and
double eagle were the result. After considerable infighting at the
Philadelphia Mint, United States Mint Chief Engraver James B. Longacre
designed the double eagle. Only one 1849 double eagle is known to
survive; it rests in the National Numismatic Collection at the
Smithsonian. The coin was immediately successful; merchants and banks
used it in trade, and it was struck until replaced by the Saint-Gaudens
double eagle in 1907. Many were melted when President Franklin D.
Roosevelt recalled gold coins from the public in 1933.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Head_double_eagle>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1875:
The first indoor game of ice hockey was played at the Victoria
Skating Rink in Montreal by James Creighton and McGill University
students.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_indoor_ice_hockey_game>
1945:
Second World War: The Royal Air Force accidentally bombed the
Bezuidenhout neighbourhood in the Dutch city of The Hague, killing 511
evacuees.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_the_Bezuidenhout>
1972:
Jethro Tull released Thick as a Brick, a concept album
supposedly written by an eight-year-old boy, Gerald Bostock.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thick_as_a_Brick>
2012:
Two passenger trains collided head-on near the town of
Szczekociny in Poland, resulting in 16 deaths and 58 injuries.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szczekociny_rail_crash>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
triangulation:
1. (uncountable, surveying) A technique in which distances and
directions are estimated from an accurately measured baseline and the
principles of trigonometry.
2. (countable, surveying) The network of triangles so obtained, that are
the basis of a chart or map.
3. (countable, chess) A delaying move in which the king moves in a
triangular path to force the advance of a pawn.
4. (uncountable, navigation, seismology) A process by which an unknown
location is found using three known distances from known locations.
5. (uncountable, politics) The practice of repositioning one's group or
oneself on the political spectrum in an attempt to capture the centre.
6. (uncountable, qualitative research) The use of three (or more)
researchers to interview the same people or to evaluate the same
evidence to reduce the impact of individual bias.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/triangulation>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Truth is powerful, and, if not instantly, at least by slow
degrees, may make good her possession. Gleams of good sense may
penetrate through the thickest clouds of error … and, as the true
object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his
preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various
reading should lead him into new trains of thinking; open to him new
mines of science and new incentives to virtue; and perhaps, by a blended
and compound effect, produce in him an improvement which was out of the
limits of his lessons, and raise him to heights the preceptor never
knew.
--William Godwin
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Godwin>