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Obverse of the Fort Vancouver Centennial half dollar

Obverse of the coin

The Fort Vancouver Centennial half dollar is a commemorative fifty-cent piece struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1925 in honor of the founding of Fort Vancouver in present-day Vancouver, Washington. The obverse of the commemorative coin (pictured) depicts John McLoughlin, who built the fort for the Hudson's Bay Company in 1825. The reverse shows an armed frontiersman standing in front of the fort. Representative Albert Johnson of Washington state was able to get Congress to authorize a coin for Fort Vancouver's centennial celebrations, and President Calvin Coolidge signed the authorizing act on February 24, 1925. Laura Gardin Fraser was engaged to design the coin on the recommendation of the United States Commission of Fine Arts. The coins were struck at the San Francisco Mint, and then were flown to Washington state by airplane as a publicity stunt. They sold badly, and are valuable today since few of the coins survive. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Ranjit Vilas Palace

... that Wankaner's Ranjit Vilas Palace (pictured) in Gujarat, India, features Venetian Gothic, Italianate, Mughal and Rajput styles?
... that Tova Friedman is a Holocaust survivor who now posts videos of her life and survival on TikTok?
... that the ampullae of Lorenzini enable sharks to sense electric fields?
... that Gilbert Bundy killed himself on the 12th anniversary of a traumatic experience as a war artist at the Battle of Tarawa?
... that the margins of the Hours of Charles the Noble contain 180 depictions of musical instruments, providing a representative overview of medieval instruments?
... that Cleo Damianakes's 1920s book dust jacket designs "made sex respectable", but Hemingway did not like the "large misplaced breasts" on A Farewell to Arms?
... that The Summer Hikaru Died went from drawings on a Twitter account to receiving three times more orders than copies available in its first print run?
... that a doctor told Howie Shanks that he only had a few weeks to live, but he lived another 31 years?

In the news

Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux (pictured) is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
An attack at a nursery in Nong Bua Lamphu province, Thailand, leaves 36 victims, mostly children, dead.
Svante Pääbo is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on human evolutionary genetics.
Ethiopian Yalemzerf Yehualaw and Kenyan Amos Kipruto win the London Marathon women's and men's races.

On this day

October 10: Thanksgiving in Canada (2022)

Spiro Agnew

680 – Husayn ibn Ali, a grandson of Muhammad, was killed at the Battle of Karbala by the forces of Yazid I, whom Husayn had refused to recognize as caliph.
1760 – In a treaty with Dutch colonial authorities, the Ndyuka people of Suriname gained territorial autonomy.
1846 – English astronomer William Lassell discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune.
1973 – U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew (pictured) resigned after being charged with tax evasion.
1992 – After 20 years of construction, Vidyasagar Setu, the longest cable-stayed bridge in India, was opened, joining Kolkata and Howrah.

Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro (b. 1884)
Kim Ki-young (b. 1919)
Huang Na (d. 2004)

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Crowded House

The Australian rock band Crowded House has won 31 awards out of 68 nominations, both nationally and internationally. These including twelve ARIA Music Awards from the Australian Recording Industry Association, and eight APRA Awards from the Australasian Performing Right Association. APRA also listed their track "Don't Dream It's Over" (1986) as the seventh-best Australian song of all time in 2001. Crowded House was formed in Melbourne, Australia, in 1985, by Neil Finn and Paul Hester of the New Zealand group Split Enz. Their most awarded work is "Don't Dream It's Over", from their debut album. The song has earned two ARIA Music Awards, three APRA Awards, a BMI Award, and an MTV Music Video Award. At the 1987 ARIA Music Awards, Crowded House were the first winners in the categories of Best New Talent and Song of the Year. The group's success has been across several categories; they received their most nominations in the Best Group category, winning in 1988 and 1993. At the New Zealand Music Awards, Crowded House has received five nominations, primarily in the category of International Achievement, winning in 1992, 1994 and 1995. (Full list...)

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Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt was a 2019 United States Supreme Court case that determined that, unless they consent, states have sovereign immunity from private lawsuits filed against them in the courts of another state. The 5–4 decision overturned precedent set in the 1979 Supreme Court case Nevada v. Hall. This was the litigants' third time presenting their case to the Supreme Court, which had previously ruled on the issue initially in 2003 and subsequently in 2016. This courtroom sketch by the American sketch artist Arthur Lien depicts Erwin Chemerinsky presenting oral arguments for the respondent in the 2019 case, with the Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh looking on in the background.

Illustration credit: Arthur Lien

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