The Lexington-Concord Sesquicentennial half dollar is a fifty-cent piece
struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1925 as a
commemorative coin in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Battles of
Lexington and Concord. It was designed by Chester Beach. Members of the
Massachusetts congressional delegation introduced legislation in 1924 to
authorize a commemorative half dollar for the anniversary. The bill
passed both houses of Congress and was signed by President Calvin
Coolidge. Beach had to satisfy committees from both Lexington and
Concord, and the Commission of Fine Arts passed the design only
reluctantly, feeling he had been given poor materials to work with. The
coins were sold for $1, and were vended at the anniversary celebrations
in Lexington and in Concord; they were sold at banks across New England.
Although just over half of the authorized mintage of 300,000 was struck,
almost all the coins that were minted were sold. Depending on condition,
they are catalogued in the hundreds of dollars.
Read more:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexington-Concord_Sesquicentennial_half_dollar>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1693:
The most powerful earthquake in Italian history, registering
7.4 Mw, struck the island of Sicily.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1693_Sicily_earthquake>
1943:
Italian-American journalist and trade-union activist Carlo
Tresca, a leading public opponent of the Mafia infiltration of unions,
was assassinated in New York City.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Tresca>
1986:
The Gateway Bridge was opened in Brisbane, Australia, as the
largest prestressed concrete, single-box bridge in the world.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Leo_Hielscher_Bridges>
2013:
French special forces failed in an attempted rescue of a DGSE
agent, who had been taken hostage in 2009 by Al-Shabaab, in Buulo
Mareer, Somalia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulo_Marer_hostage_rescue_attempt>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
blotto:
(informal) (Very) drunk or intoxicated.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blotto>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the
State to the acquisition of wealth. An ambitious man might make his own
aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of his
treachery to his constituents. The history of human conduct does not
warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue, which would make it wise
in a Nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind, as
those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the
sole disposal of a Magistrate created and circumstanced as would be a
President of the United States.
--Alexander Hamilton
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton>
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