The Lewis and Clark Exposition gold dollar is a commemorative coin
struck in 1904 and 1905 as part of the United States Government's
participation in the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. That fair
was held in 1905 in Portland, Oregon, to mark the centennial of the
Lewis and Clark Expedition. Designed by United States Bureau of the Mint
Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber, the coin did not sell well with less
than a tenth of the authorized mintage of 250,000. They were, for the
most part, sold to the public by numismatic promoter Farran Zerbe, who
had also vended the Louisiana Purchase Exposition gold dollar. As he was
unable to sell much of the issue, surplus coins were melted by the Mint.
The coins have continued to increase in value, and today are worth
between hundreds and thousands of dollars, depending on condition. The
Lewis and Clark Exposition dollar is the only American coin to be "two-
headed", with a portrait of one of the expedition leaders on each side.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_and_Clark_Exposition_gold_dollar>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1781:
William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus from the garden
of his house in Bath, England, initially considering it to be a comet.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus>
1943:
The Holocaust: Nazi troops began liquidating the Kraków Ghetto
in Poland, sending about 2,000 Jews to the Płaszów labor camp
(deportation pictured), with the remaining 5,000 either killed or sent
to Auschwitz.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_Ghetto>
1986:
Claiming the right of innocent passage, the American warships
Yorktown and Caron entered Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_Black_Sea_incident>
2013:
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis, making
him the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, and the first
from the Southern Hemisphere.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Francis>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
ledger:
1. A book for keeping notes, especially one for keeping accounting
records; a record book, a register.
2. A large, flat stone, especially one laid over a tomb.
3. (accounting) A collection of accounting entries consisting of credits
and debits.
4. (construction) A board attached to a wall to provide support for
attaching other structural elements (such as deck joists or roof
rafters) to a building.
5. (fishing) Short for ledger bait (“fishing bait attached to a floating
line fastened to the bank of a pond, stream, etc.”) or ledger line
(“fishing line used with ledger bait for bottom fishing; ligger”).
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ledger>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires
emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can
comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious,
since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the
"natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is
not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of
sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the
majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the
Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the
wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant.
--Mircea Eliade
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade>