Keswick, Cumbria

Keswick, Cumbria.
Keswick, Cumbria, is an English market town and civil parish, historically in Cumberland, and since 1974 in the Borough of Allerdale. The town, in the Lake District National Park, just north of Derwentwater, and 4 miles (6.4 km) from Bassenthwaite, had a population of 4,821 at the time of the 2011 census. There is considerable evidence of prehistoric occupation of the Keswick area. The first recorded mention of the town dates from the 13th century, when Edward I granted a charter for Keswick's market, which has maintained a continuous 700-year existence. In Tudor times the town was an important mining area, and from the 18th century onwards it has increasingly been known as a holiday centre; tourism has been its principal industry for more than 150 years. Two of the Lake Poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, lived in Keswick in the early 19th century and made the scenic beauty of the area widely known to readers in Britain and beyond.

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Gadsden Purchase half dollar

Gadsden Purchase half dollar.
The Gadsden Purchase half dollar was a proposed commemorative coin to be issued by the United States Bureau of the Mint. El Paso coin dealer L. W. Hoffecker (pictured) wanted a coin issued he could control and distribute. He gained the support of several members of Congress, and a bill was introduced. Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon sent a letter and two officials in opposition to the bill at its committee hearing, but it passed both houses of Congress without dissent. On April 21, 1930, President Herbert Hoover vetoed the bill, deeming commemorative coins abusive; the House of Representatives sustained his veto. No commemorative coins were struck during the remainder of the Hoover administration, and although they began again after Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated, in 1938, Roosevelt vetoed one, citing Hoover's action, as would Truman and Eisenhower. No commemorative coins were struck from 1955 until after the Treasury Department changed its position in 1981.

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Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents

Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents.
Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents is the collective name for two late-15th-century portrait panels by the German painter Albrecht Dürer. They show his parents, Barbara Holper and Albrecht Dürer the Elder, when she was around 39 and he was 63, and are among four paintings or drawings Dürer made of the couple. The portraits are unflinching records of the physical and emotional effects of ageing, which Dürer may have intended either to display his skill to his parents or as keepsakes while he travelled as a journeyman painter. His father's panel is considered the superior work and has been described as one of Dürer's most exact and honest portraits. The Dürer family was close, and his later writings show the love and respect he felt toward his parents. The panels, separated since at least 1628, were reunited in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum's 2012 exhibition "The Early Dürer".

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