The 2026 World’s Fair of Money

For the first time since 2019, I attended the annual summer convention of the American Numismatic Association, branded as The World’s Fair of Money®. (The late winter convention is the National Money Show®.) This year the WFM was held in Pittsburgh. Having been away from the hobby for several years, I went only to renew or discover  friendships and I did not deliver a presentation though I judged Literature exhibits. The Literature category had three entrants: The Works of David R. Sear, Selected Banknote Reporters, and Selected Works of Charles Trissler Steigerwalt.

I attended the judges orientation on Tuesday and started rating the exhibits that afternoon. With me was my host in Pittsburgh, a lifelong printer and typesetter. We read the exhibits and talked about them that afternoon and into the evening. When I returned to the convention Wednesday morning, I reviewed my work. In my opinion, all of the Literature exhibits had problems that prevented any of them from a clear first place award. 

First place went to The Works of David R. Sear. The ten display cases held nice, newish copies of the editions of his books. All of the books were closed. Not presented were page proofs, mark-ups, or manuscripts. Nothing was said about content added or deleted across editions. The need to change prices was mentioned but without explanations of cause, only a tautologous statement that rising prices caused prices to change necessitating a new edition.

Historian Dennis Boggs
www.meetmrlincoln.com

Cards around the volumes carried lines and paragraphs about Sear and how he became the leading author of these catalog price guides for Greek, Roman, and Byzantine coins. In my opinion, the best thing about the exhibit was the typesetting on the note cards which were mounted on foam-core panels. 

After I turned in my judging forms, I was free to explore the convention and meet people. With my reporter’s notebook in hand, I introduced myself with my business card, saying that I would be writing about the convention for both online and print media. 

Near the center of the floor, opposite the U.S. Mint, the four representatives of Goldback did not go on record or talk to me and insisted that only the CEO or publicity manager was authorized to speak for the company and no one went on record because they were unauthorized to say that their pricing information is proprietary and not for public release. However, Goldback issued demonstration notes for the convention and those were giveaways on the floor. 

Some of the recent issues of T&S Coins of Vilnius.

T&S Coin of Vilnius was also on the Promenade at booth 1033.  Their representative, Julija Markauskienė, sat down with me to outline their business model and marketing. T&S Coin (https://www.ts-coin.com) specializes in high-relief silver celebrations, limited to 500 pieces per design. The newest products are 2-ounce coins. Many series are colorized. The premium product is sold wholesale to dealers who have pre-positioned customers for these memorials to pirates, samurai, Amazons, elves, the Knights Templar, and very many other popular themes. Coins denominated in dollars have been issued for Liberia and Niue. For Cameroun, the denominations have been in francs. 

Julija Markauskienė greets a customer.

Julija Markauskienė told me that their issues are usually 95% sold out when released. As a result, she said, there is an active secondary market. She told me that their sales break out into roughly one-third each in Europe, Asia, and North America.  

Vintage Collectibles Group (Florida) and Omaha Collectibles Group (Nebraska) are the banners for Matthew Brotherton of Knoxville, Tennessee. A graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Law, Matt came to numismatics because his father was a collector. He told me that he loves history and loves to travel. 

It was nice to stop by and chat with Jonathan K. Kern of Lexington, Kentucky. Long ago, he helped me acquire an ancient Greek coin for my collection, “Towns and Times of Philosophers.” Our children are about the same age. In addition to ancients, Kern works with US federal and related coinage, and he is a PCGS-authorized dealer for direct grading submittals. 

My introduction to numismatics came from Liberty Coin Service of Lansing, Michigan. Back in 1972, the owner, Bill Bradford, and I sat on a curb outside the East Lansing State Bank where he had a box. A few weeks later, he had a counter in a jewelry store. The next year he had the whole store. Ten years later, an admirer of H. L. Mencken’s The American Mercury, he retired from numismatics to start Liberty magazine, selling the store to Pat Heller. Nominally, Pat retired a few years ago, but he was at the show. I met him at the Exhibits on  Tuesday afternoon, and he was at the LCS booth the next day. 

Tyrants of the Golden Horn is a museum experience. The traveling exhibit is called the world’s most valuable private collection. It embraces “tyrants” from the Tigris to the Thames by displaying the highest quality examples of their most valuable circulating coins, such as the gold solidus of Constantinople. From the first Roman coins struck there to the first modern issues of Turkey, they say that their hallways offer a complete inventory of rulers. Find their website at https://www.thetyrantcollection.com/the-collection/

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Numismatic Truthseekers 

I Took My Change in Baybucks 

Numismatics: The Standard of Proof in Economics 

The Future of Money 

Numismatics: History as Market 

“Money Talks” of the American Numismatic Association

As a longtime admirer of the works of Ayn Rand, I hold money in high regard. The origin of money is in ritual gift exchange, rather than in economic calculation, which came tens of thousands of years of later. That being so, it remains that periodic innovations in economic calculation caused quantum leaps in prosperity and general welfare. People are unlikely to kill or die for what they can sell or buy. 

But I never joined any organizations for numismatics until after 1992. For one thing, I was never a serious collector and still am not. I attended a couple of lectures by Clifford Mishler, then the president of Krause Corporation, publishers of hobby periodicals and books, and later president of the American Numismatic Association. He said that all collectors, whether of coins, stamps, automobiles, vinyl recordings, wine or anything else, share four passions: Completeness, Condition, Rarity, and Value. Those are not my concerns. If I have one of something, regardless of its condition or value, I have an artifact about which there is a story to be told. Coins in particular are the often the most common artifact of any society. You have to be a serious collector to find a truly rare coin. 

 

In 1992, I started hearing the ANA “Money Talks” radio program in the mornings as I was waking up to get ready for work. The ANA says: 

In 1992, “Money Talks,” a radio program on the history and lore of money, began broadcasting across the country on several local radio stations. The “Money Talks” broadcasts were typically 2-4 minutes long and consisted of coin stories that were recorded to educate and encourage interest in the hobby of numismatics.

 

I submitted about 20 scripts, and about half of them were produced for broadcast. The ANA granted me a literary award for a couple of them. 

https://www.money.org/money-talks-radio-archive/

I went on to write more full-length features about Peace Dollars, Large Cents, and other products of U.S. Mint. I also edited a monthly column, Internet Connections, which spotlighted safe and informative websites for collectors, typically, national mints or museums, specialty clubs, and sometimes the websites of dealers who were serious researchers.  

 

 https://archive.org/details/bestofanamtpart1

https://archive.org/details/bestofanamtpart2

The ANA rebranded “Money Talks” as a series of lectures at the semi-annual conventions, and many of them have been recorded and placed in video archives such as YouTube. 

Pay Warrants of the Texian Navy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWGzivjlOUI

The Texas Navy on NecessaryFacts 

Mutiny Aboard the San Antonio  

IRELAND'S POET LAUREATE by Michael Marotta 

 

"Our coins must pitch and spin to please the gambler, and pack into rolls to please the banker." Those were the words of Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 and was regarded as the greatest poet of his time. He was also in charge of the committee that designed Ireland's coins.

 

Yeats was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865. At that time Ireland was completely under the control of England. While working in England, Yeats joined other Irish patriots who eventually won independence for the Emerald Isle. A world-renown playwright and poet, Yeats was elected to the Irish Senate. He chaired the committee that chose the designs for the coins of the new Irish Free State.

Yeats had seen classical Greek coins while studying and writing in Italy during the late 1800s. He arranged for all of the artists on this project to receive ancient Hellenistic coins, so they could see for themselves the powerful images he wanted to bring to Ireland's coins.

 

For over seventy years, Ireland's coins changed little from the winning designs of Percy Metcalf, a young sculptor recommended by the British School in Rome and selected by Yeats' committee. The horse, bull, salmon, hound and other animals of Ireland's eight circulating coins were all joined by a common symbol of Ireland's poetic tradition: the Celtic harp.

 

William Yeats died on January 28, 1939, at the age of 73.

 

(Numismatist, historian, and jurist Theodor Mommsen, was granted a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902.)

 

A.N.A. MONEY TALKS Transcript No. 1400 

ANCIENT HEARTS by Michael E. Marotta 

Look around . . . heart symbols are everywhere on Valentine's Day. 

Maybe even on a coin. 

The first heart symbols that appeared on ancient coins were produced 2500 years ago in North Africa. 

The town of Cyrene was founded in the 7th century B.C. by Greeks. 

Their town was eventually destroyed, but it was near what today is the city of Benghazi, along the coast of Libya. 

The city enjoyed modest prosperity . . . until its inhabitants 

discovered the silphium plant. (The plant is extinct now, but its closest 

living relative is a key ingredient in Worcestershire sauce.) Silphium was 

used as an herb. Its stalk was edible. Its pungent sap was the basis for cough syrups, and gave food an interesting flavor. But the most important use for silphium was as a contraceptive. 

 

Modern research suggests that silphium actually worked, and because of this, it was in great demand. Attempts to cultivate it in Syria and Greece were unsuccessful. It only grew near Cyrene--and, starting in 500 B.C., it became a steady source of income for the townspeople. By Roman times, silphium had been harvested to extinction. 

Over the centuries, the silphium plant came to symbolize Cyrene. The plant appeared on the town's gold, silver and bronze coins, starting around 500 B.C. Often the entire plant was shown. But sometimes, only the seeds of the plant were depicted. The silphium's seeds were heart-shaped, and those heart-shaped seeds that appeared on Cyrene's coins eventually came to symbolize love--a symbol that's still with us today. 

 

Today's program was written by Michael Marotta. "Money Talks" is 

a production of the American Numismatic Association in Colorado Springs, 

America's coin club for over a century. Take a tour of ANA's virtual Money Museum on the Web at www.money.org.

  

Transcript No. 1329                              November 6, 1997

THE MYSTERY OF THE MINT       by Michael Marotta     

 

Imagine a world without coins.  It isn't easy.  Coins and paper money are basic to our civilization.  Yet someone had to invent coins, and the truth is that we just do not know why coins were invented.     

 

Coins first appeared about 2,600 years ago in the ancient country of Lydia, in what is today western Turkey.  But people in the Middle East had already been using gold, silver, copper and other common trade goods as money for thousands of years, going as far back as perhaps 8000 B.C.E.     

 

From our modern viewpoint, the advantages of coinage are obvious. But those advantages were not so obvious to ancient peoples. Today, there are several theories to explain the invention of coinage. Many people think that merchants invented coins by marking nuggets and ingots of precious metals.  The marks were promises of purity and value. 

 

Another theory is that coins were invented to serve temples. After all, ancient coins have gods and goddesses on them.  Temples amassed wealth from donations and the temples might have issued the coins as rewards for good behavior. 

 

However, some scholars today think that the first coins were given to the mercenary soldiers of Greek towns.  These coins may have been like military campaign medals -- badges of honor that may not have been intended to be spent as money.

 

Whatever the origins of coinage, the idea spread rapidly.  Within a hundred years, almost every Greek town from southern Russia to eastern Spain had its own mint.  Today, people collect ancient coins for their historic value and artistic beauty.     

 

This has been "Money Talks."  Today's program was written by Michael Marotta and underwritten by Whitman Coin Products, a division of GoldenBooks, quality coin supplies at affordable prices.  "Money Talks" is a copyrighted production of the American Numismatic Association, 818 N.Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80903, 719/632-2646, ana@money.org,http://www.money.org.

 

 

ANA: MT: Use of Mintmarks                                    

Transcript No. 1648                                                      January 27, 1999

 

USE OF MINTMARKS  by Michael E. Marotta

 

    If you look closely at coins, you will find that some of them have small letters indicating the mint at which they were struck.  Mintmarks go back to ancient times.  They were used to prevent forgery as well as to honor the mintmaster.

 

    Mintmarks date to about the year 400 B.C.  At the time, Greek towns elected their moneyers or mintmasters to annual terms of office.  These men ometimes were the actual die cutters, but usually they were officials who oversaw the cutting of dies and striking of coins.

 

    The mintmaster might engrave his whole name on a die, or just the first letters of his name.  Sometimes he made a "monogram."  The purpose was twofold.  It allowed praise for the man who did the work and identified the person responsible in case the coinage later proved to be of short weight or impure alloy.

 

   When the Roman Empire stretched across three continents, it operated more than 20 different mints with over 50 different mintmarks for a period of 300 years.  We have identified the mintmarks of London in England; Constantinople in Turkey; and Alexandria in Egypt.

 

    Today most nations have only one mint.  Larger countries often assign letters of the alphabet to identify mint cities, starting with the nation's capital.  On French coins, for example, the letter "A" stands for Paris. An "A" on a German coin, on the other hand, usually means "Berlin."

 

    Some nations contract out the production of their coinage.  On some British and Canadian coins, for example, the letter "H" stands for the "Heaton" company.

 

    In the United States, the main mint at Philadelphia typically did not use the "P" mintmark until recent decades.  Today, most American coins have either a "P" for "Philadelphia" or "D" for "Denver."  Usually you will see an "S" for "San Francisco" or "W" for "West Point" only on special coins and proof sets.

 

    This has been "Money Talks."  Today's program was written by Michael Marotta and underwritten by Whitman Coin Products, a division of Golden Books, the right choice for coin collecting books and supplies. "Money Talks" is a copyrighted production of the American Numismatic Association, 818 N. Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80903, 719/632-2646, ana@money.org, http://www.money.org.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Accounting for Civilization 

Debt: The Seed of Civilization 

Robert Leonard’s “Curious Currency” 

Numismatics; History as Market 

Money as Speech and Peacemaking 

The Future of Money 

Mere Gold is Not Enough: Hayek’s “Denationalization” 

Numismatics: The Standard of Proof in Economics 

Scripophily 

The Art of Finance 

Challenge Coins 

 

Not Conned by Seghal’s Coined 

My Numismatic Bibliography (Partial List) 

 

Long ago Miletus was great.

In five generations from 650 BCE  to 500 BCE --a span from your grandparents to your grandchildren--civilization was transformed by the confluential inventions of democracy, mercantilism, coinage, and philosophy. Thales of Miletos exemplified the times, He is credited with predicting an eclipse, taking out futures contracts on olive presses and leasing them when the harvest came in, and developing the first formal proof in geometry. What we call the Socratic Method was the Milesian Way brought to Athens by Aspasia of Miletos.

Traditionally, cities had been ruled by kings. That story is in The Iliad and The Odyssey. Something changed. It probably happened in one lifetime. Tyrants replaced kings. We do not like tyrants and the word has a negative connotation but tyrants of the archaic world were self-made men on the rise who took over the affairs of their towns. And they could be overthrown, exiled or killed. That took planning and the conspirators became an oligarchy. Widen the ruling junto and you have a democracy. 

At this time, philosophy, argument by reason and evidence, was replacing religion as the informative narrative in the culture.

The citizens voted to go to wars in which they were the soldiers. That was not the traditional way. Rather than expendable masses of untrained farmboys, Greek mercenary armies were made up of bronze-clad hoplites. Your shield protected the man on your left whose right arm was raised with his spear. Social cohesian was critical to success. In return for victory, these armies were paid with the first coins. 

With armies outside their walls, sometimes citizens under the cover of darkness took their money and fled in their ships to found new towns. Thus, the coins of Abdera in Thrace mimicked the coins of their hometown, Teos in Ionia. Small silvers worth a day's wages from the anonymous towns of the Cheronesos peninsula in Thrace c 350 BCE copied the archaic designs of Miletos.

Miletos c. 550 BCE electrum sixth stater 2.37 grams (ex: Singer).

Recumbent lion / incuse punches.

SNG Von Aulock 1796

About 25 years ago, Dr. Gordon Andreas ("Andy") Singer 

was set up at the MSNS Thanksgiving show. 

His table displayed medieval coins.

I gave them some attention and started to walk past 

and he asked me what I was looking for and I said, "Archaic silver." 

And he replied, "Gold can be as cheap as silver." 

I read the tag and told him that 

the coin was misattributed to Phocaea when it was clearly Miletos. 

He said that it wasn't his specialty 

and the coin was mine at that price if I wanted it.

The failure of the Ionian Revolt was a lesson for the American revolutionaries of 1776. The Ionian Revolt started in 499 BCE in Miletos. The 12 cities were Miletus, Myus, Priene, Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Clazomenae, Phocaea, Erythrae, Samos and Chios. As much as they shared in common culture, and even though they declared a central temple to Poseidon in Priene they never formed a political league and were re-conquered one at a time, in a string of defeats. It was over by 493. 

Unity did not come easily to the Americans. Proposed by Congress on 15 November 1777, the Articles of Confederation were not ratified until 1 March 1781. Contrast that with the fact that the Marine Corps was created on 10 November 1775 after the Battle of Bunker Hill 17 June 1775 and the Battle of Lexington and Concord 19 April 1775. 

I learned in high school that the "American revolution" was not the War for Independence. The revolution happened in the minds of the colonial leaders following the French-Indian War 1757-1763 when they realized that they were mostly on their own and their opportunities for full rights under English law--such as the Bill of Rights of 1689--were weak. The Albany Plan of Union (10 July 1754) was one of several compacts between and among the American colonies. Some attempts at unity were forceful, as when Massachusetts occupied New Hampshire (which it had to give back) and Maine (which it kept). Wars between New York and New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and Delaware were brief. 

Miletos electrum stater from the Rosen collection.

Golden ages come and go. Greek civilization was a complex. Common language and a plethora of independent city-states allowed the exchange of ideas. People interested in ideas gathered in Athens, then were induced to Alexandria. Syracuse was always available, as was Rhodes. And when Alexandria could no longer afford her librarians, the philosophers found homes in other cities, spreading the knowledge rather than hoarding it, though the great library did continue.  

When the first coins were struck, wealth was land and cows. Land was inherited. Coinage changed the form of wealth. More importantly, it allowed the creation of wealth by new means. Aristotle was not alone in opposing it. While livestock breeds naturally, to make money from money is unnatural. Many people today still believe that. 

British North America had no native gold or silver. Spain went bankrupt by looting the native Aztecs and Incas of their gold and silver. However, the British colonies created paper money and from that came roads, canals, railroads, airlines, telegraphs, telephones, and computers. 

Just as tyrants have a bad name today, so, too, do we denigrate sophistry. The ancient sophists were mercenary scholars who charged money for their lesssons. Plato did not like them, though he gave a fair hearing to Protagoras in one of the books of The Republic. 

Diogenes of Sinope was traveling when his ship was stopped and all aboard were taken to a slave market and sold. In those days, once apart from your city, you had no protection.

Obverse and reverse of a drachmon of
Sinope that could have been struck under
the authority of Diogenes who was later
accused of adulterating the coinage.

The ancient Greeks had a word for the person with no interest in politics: idiot. Concerned only with himself, he did not take part in civic life or at least did not come to the Assembly to argue and vote and take the responsibility of holding annual offices. When they attended the assembly, they paid themselves the same wages as a soldier in the field or a rower on a ship: one drachmon per day. The Spartans thought that this was evidence of the corruption of democracy, that the citizens voted themselves payments from the public treasury. In America, we do acknowledge civic engagement. However, our contribution to civilization is honoring the individual who minds their own business.

"Mind Your Business" Continental currency 1776 and Fugio cent 1787.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Bringing Philosophy to Athens: Aspasia of Miletos 

Hypatia of Alexandria 

Is Philosophy a Science? 

Numismatics: History as Market 

Numismatics: The Standard of Proof in Economics 

The Mercury Dime

When I first was given the opportunity to choose my own username on a mainframe computer (actually, a DEC VAX super-mini) in 1989, I asked for Mercury, the Roman messenger god, the patron of merchants (and pirates, it being sometimes hard to tell them apart). Likely inherited from the Etruscans, Mercury is associated with the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth, and also, perhaps the Aztec Coyototl, the trickster who invented writing. 

I have been “Mercury” in one form or another on many systems since, and I have held my Gmail account, mike49mercury, for many years. It is true that 49 is my birth year, but to me 49 is the square of 7 for the Mercury 7 astronauts, having lost track of a mercury7 username some decades back. 

 

I sold several articles about the Mercury dime to the American Numismatic Association, the Michigan State Numismatic Society, and others. It does echo the Roman denarius of the Republic with the wings on Liberty’s head modeling the raised face guards on the helmet of Roma. And for better or worse, the coin is in the neo-classical style that was ubiquitous during the gilded age of American aesthetics between the Civil War and the Great Depression. 

As a numismatist, I am a writer, not a collector.
But I can’t make this up from thin air.
So, I do visit coin stores in my town to chat and learn.
And I found this one for myself. 
Very high grade examples like this are extremely common
from the war years 1940-1945
when these were struck in astronomical quantities. 

 

The wings on Liberty’s Phrygian cap (worn by a freed slave) represent freedom of thought. The reverse depicts the Roman fasces, a bundle of rods, the center rod an ax reflecting the absolute authority of the state. In ancient Rome, if found guilty of a felony, the prisoner would be beaten to death with the rods – unless granted the mercy of the ax. Perhaps the best way to resolve that seeming contradiction is to consider the words of the US Supreme Court (Reynolds vs. The United States) in affirming that polygamy is unlawful, regardless of sentiments in the Territory of Utah: You can believe whatever you want, but you cannot do whatever you want. 

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Music Makes You Braver 

Numismatics: the Standard of Proof in Economics 

Forgery and Fraud in Numismatics 

Numismatic Truthseekers 

Hallelujah 

MARIA MITCHELL QUARTER DOLLAR CIRCULATING COMMEMORATIVE

Maria Mitchell deserves to be honored on the newest series of U.S. circulating commemorative quarter dollars, 2022-2025. She was the first American woman to be a professional astronomer, and one of the first American astronomers acknowledged by both European and American academic communities. An informally educated autodidact, she became the first professor of astronomy at Vassar. The spotlight of fame fell on her when she was the first person in history to discover a comet using a telescope. The year was 1847. She was 29 years old. For her work, she won the gold medal offered by the King of Denmark. 

Her name is pronounced “ma-RYE-ah” (like the wind in Paint Your Wagon). Born on August 1, 1818, she was raised on Nantucket where her father was a naturalist and banker. Her parents, William and Lydia (Coleman) Mitchell, were Quakers and her commitment to social equality was aligned to their faith. Largely self-taught, she attended classes at local schools, one of them run by her father. She studied mathematics (of course) and also learned astronomy, surveying, and navigation. One of her father’s occupations was setting the chronometers of whalers and other ships that harbored at Nantucket, and she did the work when he was away on the mainland, often at Harvard College.[1]

Annie J. Cannon
commemorative 
dollar coin 2019

 When she was 12, she and her father calculated an exact position of their home by measuring the Great Solar Eclipse of February 12, 1831. Two years later, she was setting chronometers for ship captains. When her father won a contract to work for the US Coast Survey, she accompanied him. 

 

Mitchell owned a Dollond-style achromatic ship’s telescope (3-inch aperture; 46-inch focal length).[2] In 1847, the family lived in the Pacific Bank Building on Main Street in Nantucket because her father was the head cashier there. She observed from the roof. On October 1, she saw a faint star that was new to her; and she soon verified that it was not listed in the tables and charts. Tracking it, she determined that it was a comet publishing her calculations of its orbit in Silliman’s Journal of Yale (later known as the American Journal of Science). That helped to secure her claim to primacy of discovery and the winning of the gold medal.[3] 

 

Email to the Board of the American Astronomical Society
recommending the Maria Mitchell Quarter.
(As with several others to astronomy leaderships, no replies have come.)

Later, she moved briefly to Boston and computed the orbit of Venus for the US Nautical Almanac [1]. She served as the librarian of the Boston Athenaeum and then toured Europe on her own, meeting with John Herschel, George Biddle Airy, and other astronomers. She returned to the States, and in 1865 she was appointed professor of astronomy at Vassar College, which, ironically enough paid her less than other professors, though not for her lack a university degree. She took her students to observations of the transit of Venus and solar eclipses (1869, 1878, and others) in Nebraska and Colorado. 

20 Prominent American Women To Be Honored On US 2022-2025 Quarters

Public Law No: 116-330 (01/13/2021 here 

at https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1923/text.

The Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020

“(C) SINGLE PROMINENT AMERICAN WOMAN ON EACH QUARTER DOLLAR.—The design on the reverse side of each quarter dollar issued under this subsection shall be emblematic of the accomplishments and contributions of one prominent woman of the United States, and may include contributions to the United States in a wide spectrum of accomplishments ...

Nominations for women to be honored on the new series of coins are being curated in part by the Smithsonian Women’s History Initiative (https://womenshistory.si.edu and WomensHistory@si.edu).

 

Notes 

[1] The Maria Mitchell Foundation biography here: https://www.mariamitchell.org/about-maria-mitchell

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Mitchell (of course; but follow the footnotes)

[3] “Maria Mitchell at 200: a pioneering astronomer who fought for women in science, “ Richard Holmes, Nature, 26 June 2018, here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05458-6. 

Other Resources
“A Woman in Eclipse: Maria Mitchell and the Great Solar Expedition of 1878,” by David Barron, here: https://undark.org/2017/08/17/wilo-maria-mitchell-astronomer-eclipse/
“This Month in Astronomical History: Maria Mitchell,” History of Astronomy Division, American Astronomical Society, here:
https://aas.org/posts/news/2020/09/month-astronomical-history-august-2020

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

She’s Such a Geek! 

Females and Women 

Bringing Philosophy to Athens: Aspasia of Miletus 

Hypatia of Alexandria 

The Madame Curie Complex 

 

Ten Years of Necessary Facts

This blog was launched on 2 January 2011. It was inspired by Gregory Browne’s Necessary Factual Truths (University Press of America, 2001). I met Dr. Browne at Eastern Michigan University in the fall semester 2007. Waiting for a class in police operations, I was walking the halls and heard him lecturing. It was obviously a philosophy class and he sounded reasonable. I looked in and saw “Ayn Rand” on the blackboard closing an array of philosophers in historical sequence. A couple of weeks later, I heard him actually mention Ayn Rand. So, I introduced myself. And I bought the book format of his doctoral dissertation. It derives from a refutation by Leonard Peikoff of the Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy. 

All-time Readership Frequency
(The anomalous spike is Hurricane Harvey)

All-time Readership Geography
At times Russia, India, or China dominated.

Before EMU, I was at Washtenaw Community College. Taking a class in symbolic logic (required for criminal justice majors), the instructor was Elizabeth E. Goodnick. She displayed a nervous habit typical of high-IQ children. So I took a Platonic interest in her and asked about her research. She said that she was pursuing David Hume even though she herself was a rationalist. I replied, “So you accept that A is A, but you are not certain that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow?” She said that was correct. That is the Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy: rational versus empirical; logical versus real; theoretical versus practical; moral versus practical; art versus science. 

 

Reclaiming the worldview of Aristotle, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism is a modern instantiation of the rational empiricism of the Enlightenment. We commonly know it as the scientific method. Theories explain facts; facts validate theories. Contradictions do not exist. Existence is identity: to be is to be something. The senses are valid. Knowledge is possible because reason works. Moral actions are practical and money is a valid measure of moral action. It is not the only measure. 

 

Ten Most Popular Posts

Second Ten Most Popular Posts

After ten years posting 668 articles, resulting in 351,444 page views, I have seven followers. I stopped taking comments this year after a spate of spammers inserted their own links. I have had offers from search engine optimizers to help me monetize this blog. I turn them all down because here I write for myself. I do get paid to write what other people want and I am happy for those opportunities. For myself, writing here is research and development, or maybe just keyboard practice. Socially, for myself, this is like a concert violinist taking his guitar and a bottle of wine down to the park to jam, or Itzak Perlman playing klezmer. 

Speaking of music, though, I do not, or at least have not yet. That seems a curious lacuna.

A Partial Index of Ideas Within This Blog (2017)

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

General Topics:

Imaginary Numbers are Real: Pegasus is Not 

Sociology: A Defense and a Call for Reform 

The Economic Value in a Liberal Education 

Why Evidence is Not Enough 

Supplies and Demands 

 

Military:

Leaders are Readers 

Hurricane Tejas 

 

Criminology:

Integrating Criminologies 

Employee Theft 

20% of Scientists are Crooks 

 

Ayn Rand:

The Influence of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism 

Ayn Rand and Star Trek 

 

Science:

The Scientific Method 

Science in the Middle Ages 

 

Astronomy:

Seeing in the Dark: Your Front Row Seat to the Universe 

Asterisms 

 

Numismatics:

Numismatics: The Standard of Proof in Economics 

Numismatics: History as Market 

 

Linguistics:

Linguistics Debate: What Colors are Your Rainbow?  

Sándor Kőrösi Csoma 

The Living Fish Swims Under Water 

 

Popular Culture

Nerd Nation 4.5

She’s Such a Geek! 

World Peace Through Massive Retaliation