Friday, June 8, 2018

A Sailor of Austria by John Biggins

I began reading "A Sailor of Austria" last night.  It's dictated by this guy who's 100 years and six months old, and he's in a nursing home run by nuns in England.  The Queen sends a personal letter to everyone who lives to be 100.  But not to this guy, because he doesn't have his birth certificate.

He fought in both world wars, commanding submarines, and did all sorts of interesting stuff over his life.  But no birth certificate?  No letter from the Queen.

He asks his doctor to give him his death certificate in advance so he will have some proof that he exists.

It struck a chord with me.  I've had tons of problems related to my birth certificate over the years.  I still don't have an acceptable birth certificate even though I was born in the Bronx, NY a few years ago; so my Nevada drivers license is restricted...I can't board a plane or enter a government building.

My kind of book.

Monday, June 4, 2018

A Nickel here a nickel there

I'm reading a book..."Who We Are and Where We Came From"... Author is an expert on the human genome.  Says he has examined the genomes of American Indians all the way down to the tip of South America, and he found that American Indians are more closely related to Southern Europeans (French & Italians) than they are to Asians.

Hard to believe.  But I remember reading that the guy who was used as the model for the Indian on the face of the Buffalo nickel was actually Italian.  So I went to Wikipedia to check it out.  Wikipedia has a whole different story about various Indian chiefs who claim they were used as the model for the Indian on the nickel.  But (big error) Wikipedia said that the famous Buffalo nickel with the buffalo having only 3 legs, was coined in 1937.  I know for a fact this nickel was coined at the Denver Mint in 1936.

Millions of young numismatists have probably read the Wiki article and they're searching for 1937 nickels and checking the reverse for the buffalo with only 3 (or 3.5) legs.  Their young lives are being wasted.  They should be checking the nickels dated 1936 with a D (for the Denver mint.)

Anyway, I don't know where my coin book is, so I can't find out if the model for the nickel was an Italian or not.  Maybe the Indian with the tear running down his face because of the trash in the Hudson River was the Italian guy, and I mixed them up.

Lavengro