Animals have been used on coins since… well, the beginning of coins. Deer appeared on early staters—some of the first coins. Greek and Roman coins featured an assortment of animals. But choosing an animal to symbolize an entire country on a coin can leave the population of that country collectively scratching their heads or inspired…. Read more »

In the late 1800s southeast of what is now Phoenix, Oregon, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts hired two young boys to shovel out an old, debris-filled chicken coop. During the job, the boys found a seemingly innocuous tin can buried beneath the hen house. Lugging it out, they realized it was extremely heavy. They guessed it… Read more »

Sometime as far back as the Iron Age a person decided to stash a number of coins deep in a cave for safekeeping. Fast-forward to a modern climber who discovers four of these coins and kicks off a full-scale archeological dig at Reynard’s Kitchen Cave in England’s Dovedale Valley. To date, 26 coins have been… Read more »

It’s the late 1840s in central California. No way to describe this time and place in history other than the Wild West. The Gold Rush is in full swing. American settlers are fighting to establish a toehold in the rugged terrain. Many hoped to find a fortune in gold. And a few did, in the… Read more »

Since gold was first discovered, people have wanted to know how to make it. Unfortunately, alchemy is not possible. But how is gold — or Au, its elemental name — created? Though geologists have had theories for years about how the Earth creates gold, it wasn’t until recently that scientists discovered how the universe creates… Read more »