The main reason they put coins on Abraham Lincolns eyes when he dies was to keep his eyelids closed. There is also a wives tale about the pennies allowing the dead to travel to the river Styx.
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In ancient Greece and later, Rome, coins were put over a dead person's eyes so that they could pay the toll to cross the River Styx. A spirit unable to pay was doomed to be a ghost, never crossing over to their final reward. It is more likely, however, that coins were place on President Lincoln's eyes because the weight kept his eyes closed.
Currently US coins are made at four mints. The Philadelphia and Denver mints make coins for circulation. The San Francisco makes proof coins sold to collectors and investors. The West Point mint makes special coins that are not put in circulation and are sold to the general public.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is the only US mint to not put a letter mintmark on the coins made there. [ The mint at West Point has , at times, struck coins for the Philadelphia mint with no mintmark]
Current dollar coins are brass, not gold. Also, coins are struck or minted, not printed. Dollar bills are printed.When the coins were first issued in 2007, mint employees weren't fully familiar with the processes needed to add edge lettering to the coins. Several batches were accidentally not put through the edge press so they were put into circulation with plain edges similar to those on 2000-2008 Sacagawea dollars. As a result these coins didn't carry the date, mint mark, or the 2 mottoes E Pluribus Unum and In God We Trust.Unfortunately, an internet rumor was spread that the missing mottoes were due to a conspiracy to remove the words In God We Trust from all US coins (rather than the simple oversight that it was), and the mint gave in to pressure to move the motto to a different place on the coins starting in 2009.
The first "Australian" coins were put into circulation in 1910. They included the Threepence, Sixpence, Shilling and Florin (Two Shillings).
A few coins called a 'dismes' were designed by Benjamin Franklin in 1778, but they weren't released to the public. Some additional experimental pieces were made in 1792 but they too weren't put into circulation. The first regular-issue US coins to be used by the general public were cents and half-cents released in 1793.