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

_______________________________ 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

_____________________________ 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

___________________________ 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