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