Saturday, November 29, 2008

Holy Roman Empire Invades Honolulu

Now that I have your attention, I'll bet many of you missed this section of your history books.  Well, this little ditty has to do with the last of the special state quarters issues by the U.S. Mint.  

The credit union where my wife works has many customers who come in to buy their presidential gold coins and state quarters.  One of the customers was asking about the final state quarter, the one for Hawaii.  One of her co-workers was trying to describe the design on the back by telling the person that it had one of those old Roman warriors on it.  He had the big cape and the fancy helmet.  I am sure that she was describing King Kamehameha, the man who established the kingdom of Hawai'i.  While his ceremonial outfit may be confused with Roman battle dress, it is hard to picture the Romans rowing across the ocean to the islands of Hawaii.

Anyway, she turned to another coworker, who majored in history, and asked her when the Roman Empire extended that far.  She replied, with a straight face, right after Troy sacked Guam.  Now, given that the Trojan Horse was made of wood, that tactic might have worked on Guam.  Although, seeing a giant horse swimming up to the shore might look a little suspicious.  Don't know, wasn't there.