The Columbia, South Carolina, Sesquicentennial half dollar is a fifty- cent piece struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1936 as a commemorative coin. Designed by Abraham Wolfe Davidson, it marks the 150th anniversary of the designation of Columbia as South Carolina's state capital. The obverse design (pictured) depicts Lady Justice holding a sword and scales, standing between South Carolina's Old State House, built in 1790, and the New State House, completed in 1903. The reverse shows the palmetto tree, South Carolina's state symbol, with 13 stars representing the original Thirteen Colonies, though they may also be intended to represent the Confederate States. The coins were struck in September 1936, but they were slow to be distributed. Once they were, they were sold to the public in small quantities, frustrating coin dealers who hoped to accumulate more to resell to their customers. They generally sell in the range of hundreds of dollars today, depending on condition. Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia,_South_Carolina,_Sesquicentennial_half_dollar> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1602: Early English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold arrived on Cape Cod in present-day Massachusetts. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholomew_Gosnold> 1904: Russo-Japanese War: After striking several mines off Port Arthur, China, the Japanese battleships Hatsuse and Yashima sank. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yashima> 1966: Disapproving of General Tôn Thất Đính's handling of the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese prime minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ ordered an attack on his forces and ousted Đính from his post. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%B4n_Th%E1%BA%A5t_%C4%90%C3%ADnh> 1990: Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold at auction at Christie's in New York for US$82.5 million, making it the world's most expensive painting at the time. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Dr._Gachet> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: primigravida: (obstetrics, veterinary medicine) A woman or female animal who is pregnant for the first time, or who has been pregnant once. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/primigravida> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:   Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process.   --Brian Eno <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Brian_Eno>