14 October
The heptagonal 50p coin became part of the official British currency on this day in 1969, prompting the formation of the Anti-Heptagonists organisation to campaign against it.
One hundred and twenty million of the new 50p pieces, then claimed to be the only seven-sided coins in the world (we’ve now got two in Britain alone), were minted to replace the old ‘ten bob’ note in the run up to full decimalisation on ‘D Day’, 15 February 1971. But not everyone was impressed.
Retired army colonel Essex Moorcroft led the dissenters in founding the Anti-Heptagonists, who campaigned against the new coin on the grounds that it was ‘ugly’ and ‘an insult to our sovereign whose image it bears’.
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