Single Coin Pack - Victorian

Product History

Victorian Half Sovereign: (obverse) Queen Victoria; (reverse) St George.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was born at Kensington Palace. Her 64-year reign opened with wars with Canada, Afghanistan and China. Overseas trade, the lifeblood of the British economy, increased rapidly and the whole of the Indian subcontinent was effectively in British hands by 1860. It was an age of discoveries in engineering, medicine and science when Britain ruled half the world.

Famous figures of the time included:

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-59) - One of the great figures in the story of shipbuilding and engineering.

Sir Robert Peel - In 1829 established a police force in London.

Joseph Paxton (1801-65) - Built the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace. Profits from this event paid for the establishment of the Science and Natural History Museums and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Lewis Carroll - Wrote 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' in 1865.

Charles Darwin - Went on a voyage to the South Seas in HMS Beagle (1831-36) and wrote 'The Origin of the Species by Natural Selection'.

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) - Made major advances in the study of magnetism and electricity.

David Livingstone - Explored and mapped the 'Dark Continent' of Africa until his death in 1873.

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