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From today's featured article

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. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Bilingual Romantic Road sign in Röttingen, Germany

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In the news

Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic

A series of explosions in Bata, Equatorial Guinea, leaves at least 108 people dead and more than 600 others injured.
In Zamfara, Nigeria, 279 girls who had been kidnapped from a secondary school by armed bandits are released.
In tennis, Naomi Osaka wins the women's singles and Novak Djokovic wins the men's singles at the Australian Open (both winners pictured).
Porfirije is enthroned as the 46th Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

On this day

March 13

Deportation of Jews from the Kraków Ghetto

1567 – A Spanish mercenary army surprised a band of rebels at the Battle of Oosterweel in the Habsburg Netherlands, beginning the Eighty Years' War.
1781 – William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus from the garden of his house in Bath, England, initially considering it to be a comet.
1943 – The Holocaust: Nazi troops began the final liquidation of 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.
1986 – Claiming the right of innocent passage, the American warships Yorktown and Caron entered Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea.
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.

Percival Lowell (b. 1855)
Helen Renton (b. 1931)
Encarnacion Alzona (d. 2001)

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Today's featured picture

Sālote Tupou III (13 March 1900 – 16 December 1965) served as the first queen regnant and the third monarch of Tonga from 1918 until her death in 1965. Photographed here in 1908, she was the eldest daughter and heir of King George Tupou II of Tonga and his first wife Queen Lavinia Veiongo. Because of the lowly rank of her mother, she was not popular, and was disliked so much that it was unsafe for her to go outside the palace.

Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Adam Cuerden

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