The thaler was a silver coin used throughout Europe for four hundred years. Its name lives on in the many currencies called dollar and the Samoan tālā, until 2007 in the Slovenian tolar; the name thaler was used as an abbreviation of Joachimsthaler, a coin type from the town of Joachimsthal in the Kingdom of Bohemia, where there were silver mines and the first such coins were minted in 1518. This original Bohemian thaler carried a lion, from the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Bohemia, on its reverse side. Etymologically, Thal is German for "valley", a thaler is a person or a thing "from the valley"; the Czech spelling was tolar. In the 1902 spelling reform, the German spelling was changed from Thal and Thaler to Tal and Taler, which however did not affect the English spelling of thaler; the Dutch daalders carried the picture of a lion, which gave them the name leeuwendaalder. From an abbreviation of leeuwendaalder come the names of three present-day Balkan currencies, the Romanian and Moldovan Leu and the Bulgarian Lev.

The roots and development of the thaler-sized silver coin date back to the mid-15th century. As the 15th century drew to a close the state of much of Europe's coinage was quite poor because of repeated debasement induced by the costs of continual warfare, by the incessant centuries-long loss of silver and gold in indirect one-sided trades importing spices, porcelain and other fine cloths and exotic goods from India and the Far East; this continual debasement had reached a point that silver content in Groschen-type coins had dropped, in some cases, to less than five percent, making the coins of much less individual value than they had in the beginning. Countering this trend, with the discovery and mining of silver deposits in Europe, Italy began the first tentative steps toward a large silver coinage with the introduction in 1472 of the lira tron in excess of 6 grams, a substantial increase over the 4-gram gros tournois of France. In 1474 a 9-gram lira was issued but it was in 1484 that Archduke Sigismund of Tirol issued the first revolutionary silver coin, the half Guldengroschen of 15.5 grams.

This was a rare coin a trial piece, but it did circulate so that demand could not be met. With the silver deposits—being mined at Schwaz—to work with and his mint at Hall, Sigismund issued, in 1486, large numbers of the first true thaler-sized coin, the Guldengroschen; the Guldengroschen, nicknamed the guldiner, was unqualified success. Soon it was being copied by many states who had the necessary silver; the engravers, no less affected by the Renaissance than were other artists, began creating intricate and elaborate designs featuring the heraldic arms and standards of the minting state as well as brutally realistic, sometimes unflattering, depictions of the ruler. By 1518, guldiners were popping up everywhere in central Europe. In the Kingdom of Bohemia ruled together with Hungary by Louis II of the Jagiellonian dynasty, a guldiner was minted— of similar physical size but less fineness—that was named in German the Joachimsthaler, from the silver mined by the Counts of Schlick at a rich source near Joachimsthal where Thal means "valley" in German.

Joachim, the father of the Virgin Mary, was portrayed on the coin along with the Bohemian lion. Similar coins began to be minted in neighbouring valleys rich in silver deposits, each named after the particular'thal' or valley from which the silver was extracted. There were soon so many of them that these silver coins began to be known more as'thaler' in German and'tolar' in the Czech language. From these earliest'thaler' developed the new thaler – the coin that the Holy Roman Empire had been looking to create as a standard for trade between the regions of Europe; the original Joachimsthaler Guldengroschen was one ounce in weight. The Empire's Reichstaler was defined as containing 400.99 grains of silver and became the coin of account of the whole Empire. In the 17th century, some Joachimsthalers were in circulation in the Tsardom of Russia, where they were called yefimok – a distortion of the name Joachim; the zenith of thaler minting occurred in the late 16th and 17th centuries with the so-called "multiple thalers" called Lösers in Germany.

The first were minted in Duchy of Brunswick-Luneburg, indeed the majority were struck there. Some of these coins reached as much as sixteen normal thalers; the original reason for minting these colossal coins, some of which exceeded a full pound of silver and being over 12 cm in diameter, is uncertain. The name "löser" most was derived from a large gold coin minted in Hamburg called the Portugalöser, worth 10 ducats; some of the silver löser reached this value, but not all. The term was applied to numerous similar coins worth more than a single thaler; these coins are rare, the larger ones costing tens of thousands of dollars, are sought after by serious collectors of thalers. Few circulated in any real sense so they remain in well-preserved condition. In the Holy Roman Empire, the thaler was used as the standard against which the various states' currencies could be valued. One standard adopted by Prussia was the Reichsthaler, which contained ​1⁄14 of a Cologne mark of silver. In 1754, the Conventionsthaler was introduced.

In 1837, the Prussian thaler

Adam Warren is an American comic book writer and artist, most famous for his original graphic novel Empowered, an adaptation of the characters known as Dirty Pair into an American comic book, being one of the first American commercial illustrators to be influenced by the general manga style. He has contributed to several Gen¹³ comics, worked as writer and character designer for the Marvel Comics series Livewires, done numerous freelance works, his current project is Empowered, which he has been ongoing since 2007. Adam Warren was born in New Hampshire, he began attending The Kubert School in Dover, New Jersey in 1985, but became unsure about his future in comics after less than a year of attendance. Over the Christmas break of his first year, he chanced upon manga and anime, some of, the original Dirty Pair, this renewed his drive to become an artist. After graduating from the Kubert School, Warren spent a year attempting to acquire the rights to produce a comic based on the Dirty Pair, he was able to make inroads with the help of Toren Smith and Studio Proteus, who had connections in Japan.

Warren put together a portfolio of Dirty Pair–related work which Smith took to Sunrise Studios, but they were unimpressed with the work and negotiations went nowhere. Smith contacted Takachiho Haruka, the creator of the Dirty Pair, directly. Haruka was much more impressed with Warren's art and Smith's ideas and agreed to license the characters for an American comic; this directly resulted in Warren's first major work, Dirty Pair: Biohazards, which he co-wrote with Smith and published through Studio Proteus and Eclipse Comics in 1989. The next two Dirty Pair works would be co-written with Smith and released by Eclipse Comics. Starting with the fourth book, Sim Hell, it became a solo project and was released by Dark Horse Comics. Throughout the'90s and into the 2000s Warren produced several Dirty Pair comics and trade paperbacks, a four-part Bubblegum Crisis series called Grand Mal as well as cover, pin-up and other "freelance" art. During this time he provided numerous cover illustrations, most notably covers for the X-Men, Star Wars, Fantastic Four, Appleseed series, as well as some trading card art, in-house Christmas cards for Studio Proteus.

Between Dirty Pair works he penned a three-part Terminator series called Hunters and Killers in 1992. Towards the end of the'90s and into the early 2000s he was one of the main writers, to a lesser extent artist, for the Gen¹³ series from Wildstorm comics, he has done art commission work for PSM magazine. His PlayStation comics relate to their major featured article and are found on the back page of the magazine, his art has been featured in their swimsuit edition. He has been known to do some translation and scripting work, Seraphic Feather and Cannon God Exaxxion being two of the only known credited examples. Warren's latest completed works are Livewires and Iron Man: Hypervelocity. Although Warren had promised several times in the past to continue work with the Lovely Angels, it has been several years since his last major Dirty Pair work. To date at least two planned DP related series have failed to come to market. Warren created several pictures based on the video game SSX 3 of the SSX series.

Warren's latest work, which he is both writing and drawing, is a series of original graphic novels called Empowered. He describes the series as "an episodic'sexy superhero comedy', mixing a twisted take on costumed crime-fighting and absurdist workplace humor with a strong dose of that'manga flava'... and just a dash of the kinky." The first trade paper back was published by Dark Horse Comics in March 2007 after a slight delay, Volume Two was released in September 2007, Volume Three in March 2008 and Volume Four was released towards the end of October 2008 after a delay of about a month or so. Volume Five was released in late June 2009. Volume Six was released on September 21, 2010; the series is neither colored, but rather sourced directly from pencil drawings. Warren makes tight pencil layouts of the pages before they are inked and colored. According to Warren himself, everyone who saw the layouts said, to his chagrin, that they liked them better than the final colored pages. On Empowered he tried a new style, the pages are greyscale reproductions of pencil "layouts", they are neither inked nor toned.

The layouts that he uses are more tightened versions of his layouts for previous works. This pencil layout style is seen on several of his Dirty Pair short stories, in a pair of pages of Gen13 Magical Drama Queen Roxy, a Gen¹³ miniseries, where one of the characters starts a deconstructing/poststructuralist device that deconstructs the comic through all the stages of production: color, color guides, inked page, tight pencil layout, rough pencil layout and script. Adam Warren at the Grand Comics Database Adam Warren at the Comic Book DB Adam Warren at deviantART Adam Warren at Marvel.com 2004 Interview, part 1 at Pulp-Mag.com 2004 Interview, part 2 at Pulp-Mag.com June 2009 Interview at DarkHorse.com Conversing on Comics with Adam Warren. Comic Book Resources Adam Warren talks "Empowered"—and other fun adventures; the Comic Archive

The Nordia 2017 Stamp Exhibition was an international stamp exhibition held 27–29 October 2017 at the Spektrum and DGI-Huset in Vejle, Denmark. The exhibition was granted patronage from the Federation of European Philatelic Associations; the event included the 4th International Polar Philatelic Exhibition. The Grand Prix awards went to the following exhibits:The Grand Prix Nordic went to Klaas Biermann for ‘Norway Coat Of Arms 1855-1868‘; the Grand Prix International went to Per Bunnstad for ‘Albatross: A Dramatic Event during the First World War‘. The Grand Prix National went to Torben Malm for ‘Service Stamps of Denmark, 1871-1924‘; the Polar Grand went to Hugh Osborne for ‘South Georgia Postal History, 1904-1942‘. Official website