Principale rue du faubourg formé au-delà de la porte Saint-Martin.
Histoire de la rue
Anciennement rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin, entre le boulevard Saint-Denis et la rue du Chteau d'Eau, et rue du Faubourg Saint-Laurent pour le surplus. Pendant la Révolution, ces deux parties ont été réunies sous le nom de rue du Faubourg du Nord.
Larg. : 18 m (moindre), depuis l'origine de la voie jusqu'à la rue du 8 Mai 1945 : 30 m, entre les rues du 8 Mai 1945 et du Chteau Landon ; 20 m, le surplus.
Let's take a look at some major events that took place on the 'Sirius-Paris-Arnie date' August 6 in the past, as this may give us more clues.
The Japanese city of Hiroshima became the first victim of a nuclear attack in history on August 6, 1945. We detect Horus/Mars in its symbolism: Japan is the 'Land of the Rising Sun' and the rising sun is traditionally embodied by Horus, who is analogous to the Red Planet as already mentioned. (The Japanese national flag even prominently features a red disk.)
August 6, 1996 was another major day involving Mars. On that date the issue of 'life on Mars' became a serious mainstream topic as breaking news reports suddenly told us that NASA had discovered evidence of past microbial life in a Martian meteorite. (NASA held a major press conference the next day.)
These are very telling in light of what happened in/around August 2003.
Slightly less direct, but equally telling is the 9/11 connection:
The date September 11 in the Gregorian calendar used today almost always coincides with the New Year's Day for the Ethiopian and Coptic or Christian-Egyptian calendars. The ancient Egyptian New Year's Day ('1st of Thoth') was originally set to mark the heliacal rising of Sirius which today takes place around August 6 Gregorian (as viewed from Giza/Cairo). So it can easily be said that August 6 is September 11!
As revealed in the recent public 9/11 Commission hearings (spring '04), the President of the United States was explicitly warned of an imminent al-Qaeda terrorist attack inside the US in a PDB (Presidential Daily Brief) memo dated August 6, '01. This was only a month before 9/11 and yet the White House inexplicably took no preventive actions. This was and still is one of the biggest controversies to come out of the official 9/11 investigation so far.
There is a connection between 9/11 and Mars to underscore the emerging nature of the date, Aug. 6.
First, the summer of 2001 was, like in 2003, marked by a Martian close encounter. It was during June, instead of August, that the Mars 'flyby' took place. Not as spectacular as that of 2003, but the Red Planet was a prominent light in the night sky. On June 13-14 (2001), Mars was at 'opposition' (i.e. 180 degrees away from the Sun) and it made its closest approach to Earth several days later on June 21.
Mars Opposition (June 2001)
On the same day, June 21, there was a total solar eclipse - as if to commemorate the Martian visit. In fact, June 21 was even the day of summer solstice (midsummer)!
So, while not as historic, the 2001 Mars opposition closely preceding the events of 9/11 was spectacular - or in hindsight 'ominous' - in its own way.
It still 'missed' 9/11 by about 3 months... Actually, it did not miss. It hit the bull's-eye perfectly - in a coded form:
September 11 Gregorian corresponds to 'Thoth 1' (New Year's Day) of the Egyptian calendar which was originally marked by the heliacal/dawn rising of Sirius. In the early phase of the ancient Egyptian civilization the Sirius rising (accompanied by the annual Nile flood) coincided with the summer solstice. It was a 'magical' day that the Egyptians naturally used to anchor their calendar. So by highlighting June 21 (i.e. Gregorian summer solstice), the special Mars opposition event in 2001 conceptually pinpointed September 11, the historical/Egyptian summer-solstice date!
On 9/11, there was another remarkable combination of summer solstice, Mars, and the Moon (i.e. all the key players of the June 21 alignment except the Sun). As the earthshaking events of 9/11 were unfolding on the planet, up in the heavens was observed the following configuration: 1) the Moon was at the summer-solstice point (i.e. where the Sun would be on the midsummer day); 2) Mars was positioned exactly 180 degrees away from the Moon on the opposite side of the sky, closely marking the winter-solstice point; and 3) consequently there was a tight Mars-Earth-Moon alignment bridging the two solstice points!
As the above illustrations show, the solstice points today are neatly indicated by the intersections of the apparent path of the Sun ('ecliptic', green line) and the Milky Way ('galactic equator', blue band). This arrangement is coincidental/temporary and is thus astronomically quite special. Some view these points as something akin to 'stargates'.
Now, the prophetic quality of all this dramatically increases as we progress forward (from 9/11/01). Mars opposition occurs approximately every 26 months, so the Sun-Earth-Mars alignment would be established again in the summer of 2003 - specifically on Aug. 28. As already discussed, it seemed to have 'anticipated' the 'Martian' event of Schwarzenegger entering politics on August 6. The same type of code was used here since Aug. 6 is or represents the actual day on which Sirius' heliacal rising occurs in our epoch. Through Sirius, June 21, Sept. 11, and Aug. 6 are but different expressions of the same archetypal date!
This calendrical link is reinforced by one of Schwarzenegger's nicknames being 'The Oak'. In pagan tradition, the 'Oak King' is associated with midsummer which is also reflected in the fact that the Christian version of the Oak King, John the Baptist, has his feast day on June 24, intended to mark the summer solstice (~June 21).
"[T]his makes it rather clear that Janet Jackson, via exposing her right breast and her juxtaposition with Beyonce (representing the American spirit), was 'designed' to embody Lady Justice/Liberty - signifying or prompting the rebirth of the spirit of 'Columbia'. The prevalent 'blackness' additionally alludes to the pertinence of another related figure Mary Magdalene, recently made popular by the huge success of the book The Da Vinci Code, as this biblical/esoteric 'wife' of Jesus - embodying the feminine and sexuality - was sometimes portrayed as the 'Black Madonna'."
Mankind set foot on the Moon for the first time on July 20th, 1969 as NASA's Apollo 11 mission successfully landed in the Sea of Tranquility, allowing the first astronaut Neil Armstrong to take his "one small step for (a) man, giant leap for mankind".
The Moon has been shown to be a major component of the LHC secret design and here it is confirmed further by the fact that the Apollo program also intelligently interacts with the LHC…
The Apollo Earth-Moon connection echoes the LHC-SPS relationship (= Earth-Moon ratio)
CERN/LHC is partially situated in the French town Saint-Genus-Pouilly; the name "Pouilly" apparently comes from the Latin "Appolliacum"; in Roman times there was a temple dedicated to Apollo in the area (link 1, link 2)
"Apollo" is also said to mean "to destroy" or "the destroyer" (= Apollyon) and right at CERN/LHC infamously stands a statue of Shiva, a Hindu deity known as "the Destroyer"
Now let's take a look at the Apollo program insignia…
The Orion constellation is centrally depicted in the middle of the insignia, resonating with the LHC "Orion stargate" code
Orion represents Osiris the god of the underworld; the name "Apollo" is associated with a "bottomless pit" (underworld) via Apollyon/Abaddon in the Book of Revelation 9:11
Revelation 9:11 And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
After finding this many correlations, our next logical step is to check for any visual overlay interaction between the Apollo program insignia, which is circular, and the LHC/solar system/Orion Belt Stars diagram we've been working with.
For starters, here is a straightforward overlay arrangement:
Not much happening… except the Moon and the SPS actually appear identical in size. We can check this by putting the two together…
As you can see, they are the exact same size. The SPS representing the Moon matching the size of the Moon… making perfect sense.
But why did we have to move the Apollo insignia for this? It's curious and seems a bit clumsy because the rearrangement didn't result in any other additional alignments. We need to investigate this a little further…
Keeping the Moon snugly inside the SPS, let us now rotate the insignia 180 degrees, i.e. we turn it upside down, like this:
There it is, an unmistakable alignment! The flat feet of the big letter "A" now rest precisely on the solar system's equinoctial axis (red)!
At this point we have little reason to doubt we are dealing with a real hidden design here and not some happy coincidence. The following further confirms the reality of what we are uncovering…
Apollo 11 had its own insignia…
Let's bring together the two insignias (they are sized so that the inner edges of the circles match perfectly):
It's unmistakable: The same letter "A" stands tall like a pyramid right on the surface of the Moon!
The "pyramid" allusion here is no accident either.
There is this…
And there is also the Orion Correlation Theory: The Apollo insignia displays Orion and the Correlation Theory identifies Orion with the pyramids.
The Orion Correlation Theory emerged in the 1990s. The Apollo program was active back in the 1960s…
Somebody knew back then.
Both the Apollo program and CERN's LHC were enormous undertakings carried out by mankind to boldly go where no man has gone before. And we now see that they mysteriously interact with each other, whispering "Orion Stargate".
In Closing
So there you have it. I am confident I have provided enough compelling evidence to establish that CERN's Large Hadron Collider has a secret side that appears to be fully celestial in nature, ultimately pointing its ethereal finger to the Moon and Orion, as well as Mars.
Is the LHC a "Gate of the God", a "Tower of Babel", symbolically or literally connecting "heaven and earth"? Is it an "Orion Stargate" blueprint that can, if sufficiently decode, help us become a more inter-dimensional civilization?
And just who is behind the LHC secret design?
I don't have all the answers. It's all still very mysterious. The new revelations in this article, however, should serve as a major breakthrough paving the way for further investigation that will leads us to more stunning discoveries and more concrete answers to the big questions.
As always, if you are intrigued and would like to keep up with the latest, cutting-edge multicontextual discoveries (remember, a lot of the findings in this article are from my investigation all the way back in 2008-2010), consider joining STRUG (Super Torch Ritual Underground, our subscriber section), where information moves faster than the speed of light. Please also help us out by spreading the word. (If this article is met with silence, I might stop posting major public/free/Etemenanki articles.)
Then two days later on August 5, NASA's MSL/Curiosity will attempt a dramatic landing on... Mars.
This will make huge headlines around the world, seriously challenging the Olympics for the media's attention. This will in effect telegraph the notion that the underlying idea of the royal Grail/Babylon baby and bloodline are somehow "Martian" in nature. It's no coincidence that Disney film John Carter was released early March - a story set on Mars, based on the novel... A Princess of Mars.
A "Tower of Babel" - officially called "Memory Tower" - was erected during Beijing's closing ceremony on August 24, 2008. Per traditional symbolism, the Babylonian "gate of the gods" unites heaven and earth.
Five days later, a film starring Vin Diesel called Babylon A.D. was released in theaters.
Originally titled (novel) "Babylon Babies", the story revolves around a mysterious girl with supernatural powers named... Aurora.
Her big secret is that she's been technologically modified to become a "virgin" mother who miraculously gives birth to messianic twins. This is eventually revealed to be a fake miracle planned and orchestrated by a power-hungry religious group to boost membership.
August 29- Babylon A.D. release date - adds to the pregnancy/birth theme as it is the birthday of the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor, associated with the Milky Way/Nile andthe flood ("water breaking") and considered a herald of imminent birth.
In 2005, August 29 was the exact date of New Orleans' "water breaking" impact moment when Hurricane Katrina made landfall there... right at the midpoint of a Galactic-Mayan timeline directly involving the year 2012.
"Katrina" means "Catherine" as in Catherine "Kate" Middleton, i.e. the UK princess whose pregnancy/childbirth we've been long projecting for the Mayan window of 2012-2013 on our sites (Etemenanki/STRUG).
August 29 is also Judgment Day in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The series is all about an inter-temporal battle over the pregnancy, birth and survival of a "messianic" figure, John Connor, the son of Sarah whose name means "princess".
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles October 20, '08 episode "The Tower Is Tall But The Fall Is Short"
Catherine Weaver (in charge of Project 'Babylon'): "I'm building something..."
In the most recent installment in the Terminator film series (Terminator Salvation) the messianic protagonist John Connor is played by actor Christian Bale, who back in 2008 also became... Batman ("Bruce Wayne"). Christian Bale is Batman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). The Aurora shooter reportedly claimed he was The Joker, Batman's nemesis.
Martian Grail King Rises:
"Terminator" is also an astronomical term referring to the dividing line between light/day and shadow/night on the surface of a celestial body. The only "terminator" we can see in everyday life is that of the Moon (i.e. the phases of the Moon) which is Diana (Moon goddess). Kate Middleton married Princess Diana's first son, Prince William, a messianic figure in the mold of the Once and Future King ("Arthur"), whose first child she should be pregnant with soon if not already.
It was a potent sign, right at the start of the year 2012, that NASA's "GRAIL" twin spacecraft entered orbit around the Moon/Diana (on New Year's Eve/Day).
The "Holy Grail" is obviously of great significance to not only Prince William but the whole British Royal Family, having to do with the semi-historical issue of the messianic "Grail bloodline." (Holy Grail = Sangreal = Royal Blood.) The GRAIL mission ("Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory") is all about mapping the gravitational field of the Moon or in effect scanning the interior or "womb" of Diana, or interchangeably, "womb of Kate Middleton." The word "gravity" is related to the Latin word gravidity (meaning "heavy") which is a scientific term for the state of... pregnancy. You get the point.
Aurora in Babylon A.D. gives birth to twin "Babylon Babies". NASA's GRAIL consists of twin lunar spacecraft.
Another telling clue is the date of the Aurora massacre itself, "July 20," the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Though often overlooked, it's also a Martian date as it was on July 20, 1976 that NASA's Viking 1 mission made history by successfully landing on the Red Planet for the first time.
The Aurora tragedy took place in "Colorado," a name meaning "colored red" in Spanish. The shooter dyed his hair orange-red.
For more blatant Martian signals, we have a remake of Total Recallcoming mere 7 days after the start of the London Olympics. The original 1990 version starring Schwarzenegger was all about (resurrecting) Mars. The new version is set in... UK/London.
Then two days later on August 5, NASA's MSL/Curiosity will attempt a dramatic landing on... Mars.
This will make huge headlines around the world, seriously challenging the Olympics for the media's attention. This will in effect telegraph the notion that the underlying idea of the royal Grail/Babylon baby and bloodline are somehow "Martian" in nature. It's no coincidence that Disney film John Carter was released early March - a story set on Mars, based on the novel... A Princess of Mars.
A phi-based Mayan time code connects all this to the Royal Wedding and (the Gulf of) Mexico where the Maya lived/live.
"Maya" is today Mexico and the name "Mexico" via Mextlirefers to a "god of war" which in Roman mythology is Mars. "Mexico" via Mexihco means "Place at the Center of the Moon" implying "in the womb of Diana". Or, "In-Diana"... i.e. Indiana.
Between January's GRAIL/Phobos-Grunt and March's John Carter (of Mars)/Mars close encounter, we had a bigger "ritual" in the form of the Super Bowl featuring Madonna at halftime (February 5)... in Indiana.
[Madonna]
If you knew the hidden context, you could see that Madonna was being a "Princess of Mars".
[Scene in John Carter] ["Princess of Mars"]
All about the Rise of the Martian Queen/King/Prince.
I can already hear the grumblings: "Why should the royals be so special as to be considered extraterrestrial?" "Are we expected to worship them as gods?" "This is bullshit, I refuse to accept their disgusting elitism!"
Relax. It's a story. A movie. You're being fed information in coded form. It's not being force-fed. Only you can prevent yourself from broadening your knowledge and understanding.
Symbols help us think. A "king" or "queen" as a leader represent the people. The nature of the people is ideally reflected in the one on the throne. Where the leader goes, the people go. As the leader, so the people. In concept at least.
So the suggested extraterrestrial, "Martian" nature of the royal Grail/Babylon bloodline, particularly the upcoming royal baby, would also apply in some way to the rest of mankind. The story of us. Our Genesis. That's where Prometheus comes in, another massively hyped movie released this year at the time of the Venus Transit early June. All about mankind's extraterrestrial origin.
The mythological figure Prometheus, a titan, created humans and gave them fire. The Olympic flame officially represents this Promethean fire.
"A king has his reign, and then he dies..." - quote from Prometheus
Humans... Martian DNA... or "MDNA" (title of Madonna's new album released this year)...
All this is essentially a continuation of the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, the symbolic communication we witnessed there. Greece is the birthplace/genesis of the Olympic Games. 2004 was the year of the previous Transit of Venus (2004 & 2012). Martian panspermia, Martian pregnancy, Martian birth... The Holy Grail. I should know, I wrote all about it in 2004.
At this point I should remind the reader that I accurately predicted (and I don't use that term lightly) the William-Kate royal engagement almost to the day in 2010 (see Lucifer's Destiny). A full year before that, I had already started projecting what would be happening in 2010-2012. This was back in 2009 when there was no sign of a royal engagement:
Is this it? The long-awaited moment of theresurrection of the phoenix?A somewhat ironicrebirth of 'King William'? [...]
It's as if we are in for a major shift in the British Royal Family starting 2010 just in time for the2012 LondonOlympics. [...]
A straightforward interpretation would be that Prince William will become King William in or around 2012. If not literal, then this should at least be a major symbolic storylineset to (if not already) drive key world eventsin/around 2010-2012. [red emphasis added]
Well, here we are in 2012 and things are indeed in motion as far as the British Royal Family per our prognostication.
The Olympic ceremonies are a "mega-ritual," not doubt about that. So many people out there are shouting: "Oh my god, alien invasion! Project Blue Beam! False flag attack!" It's understandable but most are just new at this. I've been at this for more than a decade. I was heavily into this it before 9/11. I can point to the fact that I wrote an article on the 9/11 attacks in October 2001 from a multicontextual perspective that's not so different from what I talk about today... including Mars.
From experience I can say that foresight is not something easily attained. Our reality is not static, it's dynamic. The future is fluid and influenced by what we do, see, and are aware of in the present. The future reacts to our actions and perception so as not to "reward" the unworthy with the gift of foresight. The more purely you align with truth, the more you are "worthy", that is to say, the more you resonate with the future (unrealized possibilities). Most "conspiracy theorists" don't have this quality in them which requires a great sense of balance, lots of self-examination and ego-control. That's why 99.999% of the time they can't foresee anything correctly. Their uncontrolled ego magnet screws up the truth compass. If you can't start from a place of no assumptions and no preconceived worldview, you won't get far. If you go "I'm a Christian" or "I'm an atheist", or "I'm looking for conspiracies by the NWO, the stinking Illuminati!" for instance, you're immediately done right there before you even start, a dead-ender. Talk about self-sabotage. It's so easy to contaminate our reality/future vision with our conscious and subconscious preconceptions. So, while listening to folks like Alex Jone might initially help you deprogram yourself from the mainstream unquestioning mindset, constantly listening to the endless stream of their version of "I hate my parents, they ruined my life, bahhhh!" day in and day out, well, now that's just another worldview programming, another religion, yes, "mind control." It's very unhealthy. You need to stay balanced so as not to get stuck in a fixed line of thinking. That just makes you a robot.
Back to "King William 2012"... Here we are in 2012, just days away from the London Olympics, and "signs" such as the Aurora mass shooting keep pointing to the same storyline, the focus more on royal pregnancy than coronation per se though that's exactly what we see depicted in the London Olympic logo (as I interpreted it back in 2007):
- Prince William turns 30 (= XXX) in 2012 - 2012 Olympics = Games of the XXX Olympiad
"Coronation" of course has its celestial counterpart in corona, meaning "crown". Corona is the plasma atmosphere around the Sun (or other celestial body) that you can see during a total eclipse.
Though technically not identical, a "solar atmosphere" is conceptually interchangeable with "solar wind"... which in turn encodes the name of the British Royal Family, "Windsor".
It is also the "atmosphere/wind" of the Sun, in the form of solar flares and CMEs bombarding the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere, that produces auroras.
In this context, a "coronation ritual" can take place celestially via "solar wind" and auroras around the earth, in effect crowning the entire planet or all of us. Martian king... Martian race... here on earth. And we are apparently about to get an opportunity to have a "total recall" of our forgotten ("Martian") genesis, how we began.
The entire period of the London Olympics is "radioactive." But I'm going to go ahead and say that I see the latter part of August as a window for big things. Anchor dates ~August 24 and 29.
Just scratching the surface but that's it for now.
Explores how a secret cabal of influential families has shaped the United States according to the principles of sacred geometry and Goddess veneration
• Exposes the esoteric influences behind the National Grange Order of Husbandry
• Examines the sacred design and hidden purpose of the Washington Monument
• Reveals how the three obelisks in New York City depict the stars of Orion’s Belt
• Explains how every baseball diamond is actually a temple to the Goddess
In America: Nation of the Goddess, Alan Butler and Janet Wolter reveal how a secret cabal of influential “Venus” families with a lineage tracing back to the Eleusinian Mysteries has shaped the history of the United States since its founding. The evidence for such incredible assertions comes from American institutions such as the National Grange Order of Husbandry and from the man-made landscape of the United States where massive structures and whole cities conform to an agenda designed to elevate the feminine within religion and society.
The authors explain how the Venus families, working through the Freemasons and later the Grange, planned the American Revolution and the creation of the United States. It was this group who set the stage for the Founding Fathers to create Washington, D.C., according to the principles of sacred geometry, with an eye toward establishing the New Jerusalem. The authors explore the sacred design of the Washington Monument, revealing its occult purpose and connections to the heavens. They reveal how the obelisks in New York City depict the stars of Orion’s Belt just like the Giza pyramids and how the site of one of them, St. Paul’s Chapel, is the American counterpart to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. Exposing the strong esoteric influences behind the establishment of the Grange in the United States, they connect this apparently conservative order of farmers to the Venus families and trace its lineage back to the Cisterians, who were a major voice in the promotion of the Crusades and the establishment of the Knights Templar.
The authors conclude with the startling revelation that nearly every city in America has a temple to the Goddess hidden in plain sight--their baseball diamonds--exposing the extent to which the Venus families are still at work behind the scenes.
The Champ de Mars is a large public green space in Paris, France, located in the seventh district between the Eiffel Tower and the École Militaire. The park is named after the Roman Campus Martius ("Field of Mars"), a tribute to the Roman god of war. The name refers to the fact that the lawns here were previously used by the French military as drilling and marching grounds.
Champ de Mars was originally part of a large flat area called Grenelle, which was intended for market gardening. Citizens would apply for small plots of land and use them to grow fruit, vegetables and flowers for the local market. However, the Grenelle Plain was not a very fertile place to farm.
The construction of the École Militaire in 1765, designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, was the first step towards the Champ de Mars in its current form. Areas of military exercises were originally planned in the area south of the school, in the current location of Fontenoy. The choice to build an esplanade north of the school led to the noble façade that surrounds the Champ de Mars today. The planners leveled the ground, surrounded it by a large ditch and a long cobblestone boulevard, and as a final touch, the esplanade was enclosed by a fine lattice garden.
On August 27, 1783, Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers launched the world's first hydrogen-filled balloon from Champ-de-Mars.
This place witnessed the spectacle and beauty of the festivals best remembered by the French Revolution. On July 14, 1790, the first celebration of Federation Day (fête de la Fédération) was held on the Champ de Mars, now known as Bastille Day, exactly one year after his incarceration. The following year, on 17 July 1791, the Champ de Mars was massacred. Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first mayor of Paris, fell victim to his own revolution and was guillotinated there on November 12, 1793.
The Champion of the Supreme Being was also held on June 8, 1794 in Champ de Mars. According to the design of the painter Jacques-Louis David, a massive "National Altar" was built on top of the artificial hill, which was crossed. at the tree of freedom. The festival is considered to be the most successful of this type of revolution. For a hundred days, the restored Napoleon Champ de Mai held a ceremony during which he vowed to follow the 1815 Charter on Champ de Mars.
In 2012, the exhibition was held at the United Buddy Bears Champ de Mars, an international art exhibition featuring individual countries from more than 140 two-meter bears. They promote peace, love, tolerance and international understanding and are displayed throughout the planet. They stand in front of the Eiffel Tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris.
Champ de Mars was used as the scene in James Bond's 1985 film A View to a Kill, where Bond (last played by Roger Moore) drove a Renault 11 taxi he had hijacked at the Eiffel Tower.
Champ de Mars is the venue for beach volleyball at the 2024 Summer Olympics and five at the 2024 Summer Paralympics.
1893 Queen Isabella Commemorative Quarter. (Image via me)
A few things I’ve picked up from researching early commemorative coins:
The people behind them always hope they can raise a ton of money for a pet project or monument or expo. They rarely do.
The designs usually get denigrated by the numismatic press – oftentimes with a venom critics reserve for Limp Bizkit albums or Michael Bay movies.
The mint melts down the excess/unsold coins. As a result, the ones that did sell end up becoming valuable decades later – screwing over collectors on a budget like yours truly.
Those issues were all in play for the 1893 Isabella Quarter.
The Queen Isabella commemorative quarter traces its beginnings to the World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. Congress had already authorized the minting of a commemorative half dollar featuring Christopher Columbus, but a group of women, led by Bertha Palmer, whose husband, Potter, owned the famed Palmer House hotel in Chicago, thought they could do better.
Spearheaded by renowned women’s rights activist, and future $1 coin subject, Susan B. Anthony, the Board of Lady Managers had been awarded $10,000 in federal funds to help manage the Columbian Expo. In early 1893, the Board went before the House Appropriations Committee to ask that the $10,000 could be paid to them in the form of 40,000 specially designed commemorative quarters, which they could then sell at a profit. Congress obliged and the Board set about becoming “the authors of the first really beautiful and artistic coin that has ever been issued by the government of the United States.”
Obviously, the Board wanted a female on the obverse and decided on Queen Isabella I of Castile, who had provided vital financial support for Columbus’s voyages. Putting a foreign monarch on U.S. currency was unprecedented (indeed, there had a been a revolution over it), but according to Coin Week, the main source of conflict was over design.
Caroline Peddle, a former student of famed artist and coin designer Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was hired by the Board to design the coin. However, her sketches, which included a seated Isabella on the obverse and the inscription “Commemorative coin issued for the Board of Lady Managers of the World’s Columbian Exposition by Act of Congress, 1492–1892” on the reverse, were deemed to look too token-like and rejected. Rather than be allowed to redesign the coin, the Mint took away the reverse side and gave it to one of their in-house artists, Charles Barber, to design.
After some more back-and-forth and additional restrictions imposed by the Mint, Peddle resigned. The Mint then cobbled together some portraits of Isabella and ultimately produced an image of a young Isabella wearing a crown on her head for the obverse. On the reverse, the Mint went with an image of a woman kneeling while holding a distaff and spindle- symbolizing her industry. The Board had suggested an image of the Woman’s Building at the Expo, and Palmer later stated that the Board disliked the Mint’s reverse image because “we did not consider [it] typical of the woman of the present day.” However, the Mint made the final decision and approved the coin design.
To say that the reception for the commemorative quarter was not warm is a bit like saying that the American public didn’t embrace Apple’s Newton. The American Journal of Numsimatics was particularly brutal:
[W]e do not know who designed it, but in this instance, as in the half dollar, the contrast between examples of the numismatic art of the nation, as displayed on the Columbian coins, on the one hand, and the spirited and admirable work of the architects of the buildings, for instance, on the other, is painful. If these coins really represent the highest achievements of our medalist and our mints, under the inspiration of an opportunity without restrictions, the like of which has never been presented hitherto in the history of our national coinage, we might as well despair of its future…
The American Journal of Numismatics in October 1893, quoted by PCGS.
The Journal also drew a “mournful” comparison between the reverse design of the kneeling woman holding the distaff and spindle and the well-known “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?” anti-slavery Hard Times Token. Surely, the Board felt vindicated by that line – although there’s no evidence Palmer or anyone else affiliated with them ever wrote to the Mint to say: “See? I told you we should gone with the building on the reverse.”
1838 HT-81 “Am I Not A Woman & A Sister?” (Image via me)
Sales figures, meanwhile, were disappointing. Of the 40,000 coins minted, a little more than half (21,180) ended up selling. According to NGC, the quarter’s sales were cannibalized by the Columbian Expo half dollar, which sold for the same price and was more widely available at the fair (5 million Columbian Expo half dollars were minted – 125 times as many compared to the Isabella quarter). While it didn’t come close to selling out, Coin Week points out that the quarters, which sold for $1 each, ended up being profitable for the Board. A $20,000-plus stream of revenue may not have been much, but it was double the original federal appropriation awarded to the Board. Of the remaining 19,000-plus quarters, approximately 15,000 went back to the Mint for melting.
1893 Columbian Expo Half Dollar. (Image via me)
In recent years, the coin’s reputation has been rehabilitated and has become a highly sought-after collector’s item. Contemporary reviewers have praised its quaint design and its uniqueness among U.S. commemorative coins (until the modern commemoratives came around, it held the distinction as the only commemorative quarter in U.S. history – as well as the only one to depict a foreign monarch). Even the reverse of the coin has been somewhat vindicated. Art historian Cornelius Vermeule argued that the design wasn’t necessarily evocative of the anti-slavery token and even traced elements of it back to antiquities. “[S]ome details of drapery to a servant girl from the East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, work of about 460 B.C. with additions and revisions in the first or second centuries A.D.,” he wrote.
I love the design and how it distinguishes this coin from other early commemoratives. Too many coins from that era have a generic male bust on the obverse and either an eagle or state symbol on the reverse. Because of the relative scarcity of this coin, buying one wasn’t cheap (this one had been cleaned, which lowered its value, but it still ended up costing over $100). The price tag was worth it, as this has become one of my favorite coins.
So I guess the lesson here is that I should buy more modern commemoratives – even those that I think are ugly. After all, maybe they’ll skyrocket in value in 100 years…
The Full Moon these days is the Worm of March 2003.
Spring tide
There is high Full Moon ocean tide on this date. Combined Sun and Moon gravitational tidal force working on Earth is strong, because of the Sun-Earth-Moon syzygy alignment.
Apparent angular diameter ∠1953"
∠1953"
Lunation 39 / 992
The Moon is 15 days old and navigating through the middle part of the current synodic month. This is lunation 39 of Meeus index or 992 from Brown series.
|
Synodic month length 29.7 days
29 days
Lunation length longer than mean
4 hours
Lunar orbit details for 03/18/2003
True anomaly ∠127.8°
∠127.8°
Moon before perigee
10 days|
Distance to Moon 366 938 km
366 938 km
Moon before descending node
8 days|
Moon after northern standstill
5 days|
Draconic month
8 days|
Sun-Earth-Moon syzygy
The Moon is in a Full Moon geocentric opposition with the Sun and thus forming Sun-Earth-Moon syzygy alignment.
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1838 HT-81 “Am I Not A Woman & A Sister?” (Image via me)
1893 Columbian Expo Half Dollar. (Image via me)
Full MoonImage credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.