The origin of the dollar
A silver coin struck here from about 1520 gave its name to the world's best-known currency.
Miloš Hlávka 09:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC) — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jan Helebrant — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Palickap — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Lubor Ferenc — CC BY-SA 4.0
The coin was struck here as the Joachimsthaler, the thaler of Joachim's valley, then shortened to thaler and spread across Europe as a standard silver coin. The Dutch pronounced it daalder and carried it to their American colonies, and from there it became the dollar. The name travelled from a small Czech valley to the world's currency.
If history interests you, yes; few places combine the origin of the dollar, the origin of radium and forced-labour camps in one town. The journey is half an hour and the museum small, so allow half a day in total. Check the hours first, since they are seasonal.
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A museum in a sixteenth-century mint building in the mountain town of Jáchymov, and the origin of the word dollar. The story runs like this: silver was found here in 1516 and a large mining town grew within years. A big silver coin was struck and called the Joachimsthaler after the valley, then shortened to thaler, which became the Dutch daalder and then the dollar. The world's best-known currency carries the name of this valley. The town has a second, heavier history: after the silver was exhausted, uranium was mined here, and it was from this ore that Marie Curie isolated radium. In the 1950s forced-labour camps were built here in which political prisoners worked the uranium mines in lethal conditions. The museum covers both layers: the silver boom and the uranium era with what came with it. The site is about twenty kilometres north of Karlovy Vary and is reached by bus.
A silver coin struck here from about 1520 gave its name to the world's best-known currency.
The radium she isolated came from the ore of these mines.
Political prisoners worked these uranium mines in lethal conditions.
Jáchymov, about twenty kilometres north of Karlovy Vary