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>
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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>
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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>
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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>
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