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This Week in History
The Battle of Actium, September 2, 31 BC.
The Battle of Actium, fought on 2 September 31 BC in the Ionian Sea near Actium, was the decisive conflict of the civil war between Octavian Caesar (later known as Augustus) and the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt. This battle marked the end of over a decade of rivalry between Octavian and Antony, which began after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. Background In 60 BC, Julius Caesar, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and Pompey the Great formed the First Tr
The IRA Assassination of Lord Mountbatten, August 27, 1979
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, a member of the British royal family, was assassinated on August 27, 1979, by Thomas McMahon, an Irish Republican and volunteer with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The Target: Lord Mountbatten Lord Louis Mountbatten, born in 1900, was a figure of considerable historical significance. As a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, a second cousin to Queen Elizabeth II, and the uncle of her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,
The Sack of Rome, August 24, 410 AD.
On August 24, 410 AD, the Visigoths, led by King Alaric, sacked Rome, marking the city’s first fall to a foreign invader in nearly 800 years. This event is widely seen as a turning point in the decline of the Western Roman Empire. The Gothic Struggle for Power In 398, after three years of war with the Roman Empire, Alaric secured a legal settlement for his Goths within the borders of the Eastern Empire, granting them control over the Eastern Illyricum prefecture. Alongside them, three
Death of Alexios I Komnenos, August 15, 1118.
Alexios I Komnenos (c.1057 – 15 August 1118) was Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118. Despite inheriting a crumbling empire and contending with continual warfare throughout his reign, Alexios managed to halt the Byzantine decline and start the military, financial, and territorial recovery known as the Komnenian restoration. Early Life & Accession Alexios was the son of John Komnenos and Anna Dalassene, and the nephew of Emperor Isaac I Komnenos. Upon Isaac’s abdication in 1059, Ale
Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, August 6, 1806.
The Holy Roman Empire effectively dissolved on August 6, 1806, when Francis II of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicated his title, releasing all Imperial states and officials from their oaths and obligations to the empire. The Decline of the Empire By the 18th century, the Holy Roman Empire was perceived to be in a state of decline. The absence of a standing army, a central treasury, and weak central control by an elective rather than hereditary monarch
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Weekly Highlights
Experiments In Greek Minting Technique
Ancient coins. The following is a scan of the article by D. G. Sellwood in the 1963 edition of The Numismatic Chronicle. The two sample coins and publication were sold on VAuctions in September, 2016: http://www.vauctions.com/ViewArchiveItem.asp?id=32953 Lot 698. [Miscellaneous]. Lot of two modern trial strikes by David Sellwood using experimental minting techniques. Includes: AR ‘tetradrachm’. Grape bunch / Side view of triple-crested Corinthian helmet right within incuse square // A
Earliest Coinage
The practice of using coins as a medium of trade began during the Iron Age in the 7th and 6th Centuries BC, in Greece, Anatolia, India and China. Coins proved to be an efficient vehicle of exchange not only locally, but between different areas, since the coins were small and contained intrinsic value due to their composition of silver and gold. Trade obviously existed for millennia before the practice of stamping an image on a piece of metal, but once the concept of the Lydians began to spread,
Coin Hoards
With all of the attention over the past number of years with provenance on coins to curtail illegal digging and trafficking, along with issues of importing, dealers are trying harder to add as much as they can about a coin’s history of ownership. One of the best and most interesting pieces of provenance is when a coin comes to market that is part of a documented hoard. Not only do you get to own a piece of history with Coin Hoards, you also get to know exactly where it was found after being hidd
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The Celator
