Free Republic

The coin at the centre of the story was among a small hoard discovered in 1713. It was thought to have been a genuine Roman coin until the mid-19th century... The final blow came in 1863 when Henry Cohen, the leading coin expert of the time at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, considered the problem for his great catalogue of Roman coins. He said that they were not only 'modern' fakes, but poorly made and "ridiculously imagined". Other specialists agreed and to this day Sponsian has been dismissed in scholarly catalogues...A chemical analysis also showed that the coins had been...

WEST DES MOINES, IOWA — In our interview, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich discussed what kind of First Lady his wife Calista might be. Gingrich is quoted in the new e-book “THE RIGHT FIGHTS BACK,” by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas, saying she would be in the Nancy Reagan mold. So that’s where we started. What did he mean by that? I asked. “First of all she is a very strong personality, which Nancy Reagan was,” Gingrich said. “She actually describes herself as being a cross between Nancy Reagan and Laura Bush with just a slight bit of Jackie Kennedy...