United States Mint, Philadelphia. Obverse: Young head of Liberty, facing right; date below. Reverse: Eagle, facing left; denomination below. The piece was designed by George T. Morgan, and, while no more successful than any of his other designs, stands in marked contrast to them. Because of the y

Acupuncture has gone in and out of fashion over the centuries in both China and the West. Part of a 2,000-year-old system of medicine that originated in China, acupuncture spread across Asia and the world with the migration of Asian peoples. In 2002, there were about 15,000 licensed acupuncturist

Before the famous California gold rush, several important strikes were made in the East: in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The earliest took place in Mecklenburg County, N.C., in 1799, where a nugget weighing several pounds was discovered. Its finder used it as a doorstop until some

Once a new national government had been established under a new Constitution, attention naturally turned to ways of proclaiming national identity. A new, national coinage was one way of doing so, especially if it featured patriotic new images, rather than the endless sequence of crowned monarchs

When the Depression and resulting banking crisis hit their community, the residents of the coastal town of Pismo Beach, California picked an unusual but logical medium of exchange. Perhaps with tongue in cheek, the merchants and officials of Pismo Beach decided to make the best of a bad situation

During the early 1930s, the United States and the rest of the industrialized world experienced an economic depression. In 1934, the United States continued its movement toward removing its currency from the gold standard. It even became illegal to possess gold coins or gold-based currency until C

In this lesson, students will carefully examine an authentic Massachusetts thirty-shilling note (1775) from the Museum's collection and hypothesize the meaning of its visual elements. Students will use primary and secondary sources to refine the hypothesis and in the process, discover the role th