This is the fourth object in the Roosevelt/Saint-Gaudens object group.   Someone once observed that a giraffe was a horse designed by a committee. The same might be said of this coin: what had seemed a good idea around a table in the boardroom proved to be a

By the time they broke with England, the thirteen American colonies had been issuing paper currency for nearly a century. Both they and the loose central government they set up under the Articles of Confederation to oversee matters of common concern would continue to do so throughout the War of I

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

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

This is an anatomical model of a woman, complete with removable parts. The kit includes a clear plastic body or shell, a "complete" skeleton, "all vital organs," and a round plastic display stand. The kit was designed as an educational tool to teach basic anatomy. The intructions explain how to a

Students can learn about the Choate family by investigating a room from their house, a deed from 1772, and artifacts that a family like the Choate's would have owned. In the mid-1760s, Abraham Choate had a 10-room house built in Ipswich, Massachusetts, for his wife, Sarah, and their growing

This website discusses the major events of the War of 1812, including the burning of Washington, and the battles of Fort McHenry and New Orleans. Students will learn from images and objects in the Museum's collections to shed light on the conflict that gave the country a new symbol, the Star

This website was originally designed to complement C-SPAN's 20th Anniversary Television Series, American Presidents: Life Portraits, which debuted in 1999.  The American Presidents website, created for the television series, contains a complete video archive of the series, additiona