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Barry Sheene
Barry Sheene

The Barry Sheene Medal is an annual award honouring the achievements of a driver in the Supercars Championship, an Australian touring car series. Tony Cochrane, the chairman of the championship's organising body Australian Vee Eight Supercar Company, instigated the award in 2003. The medal is named after the two-time Grand Prix motorcycle world champion and motor racing television commentator Barry Sheene (pictured). It is presented to the driver adjudged to have displayed "outstanding leadership, media interaction, character, personality, fan appeal and sportsmanship throughout the season". The inaugural recipient was the Stone Brothers Racing driver Marcos Ambrose in 2003. He won his first drivers' championship title that year. Ambrose claimed a second championship title the following year and earned a second medal win. Since then, four drivers have won the award more than once: Craig Lowndes, Jamie Whincup, Scott McLaughlin and David Reynolds. Lowndes has the most victories of any competitor, collecting the award five times. (Full list...)

Thaler

Portugalösers were a specific denomination of large gold coins, worth ten ducats, which were based on Portuguese coinage, and generally minted beginning in the 1550s for commemoration, sale, or by commission to institutions or individuals.

This picture shows a 1679 half-portugalöser coin, equivalent to five ducats, minted in Hamburg, then a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. The obverse (left) depicts a panorama of the city with the Port of Hamburg in the foreground, while the reverse (right) depicts an allegory of peace. The inscriptions on the coin, in German, read 'Lord, may thy kindness be with us just as we have hoped for' on the obverse, and 'God loves our praise so graciously that he gives unto war first resistance then peace' on the reverse. This coin is now in the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

Coin design credit: Free Imperial City of Hamburg; engraved by Johann Christoph Retke; photographed by the National Numismatic Collection

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