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Article by Alexander Noran For those unfamiliar, or only somewhat acquainted with United States coinage, it is likely that when confronted with a coin bearing a ‘D’ mint mark, the assumption will be made that the piece originates from the Denver mint. This is not necessarily so, as long before operations began in the now famous Colorado branch of the US Mint, the distinctive ‘D’ was used in Dahlonega, Georgia. To understand why the federal government saw fit to open a mint in a place as seemingly obscure as Dahlonega, it is necessary to go back to 1828. In this...

Article by Alexander Noran The Spanish suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of combined insurgent and American regular forces in the Spanish-American War (1898), one which would result in Spain ceding many of the remnants of its colonial empire to the United States. One such territory was the Philippine island group, where an insurgent movement turned against its former American allies, and continued waging guerilla warfare until 1901. Following the capture of insurgent leader Emilio Aguinaldo, the socio-political situation on the islands began to settle down, and so the American administration began to turn its attention to building state...

  By Alexander Noran.   Recently, when reading the account of a Frenchman’s experience of the defeat of his nation in the Franco-Prussian War, I came across this passage: “Monday, 31 July [1871]. In London since this morning. Upon reaching Folkestone, I had changed a hundred franc bill into English money. I still had about two hundred francs in French coins. In order not to confuse myself, I put the English money in the left pocket of my vest, and the French money in the right pocket. Back in the hotel that evening, I pulled from my pockets the two...