Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania was established in 1796 along the Juniata River about 7 miles south of Altoona, PA. Hollidaysburg is named after the two Irish brothers who co-founded the small city, or, as small cities are known in Pennsylvania, a borough. Located between the Portage Railroad and the Pennsylvania Canal, it became an important transfer station. Today, Hollidaysburg is perhaps best known as the home of the Slinky Manufacturing plant.

This 10 Dollar banknote is fun as it plays on the name of the town, or borough, Hollidaysburg. This note was issued with the date of February 14, 1859 – Valentines day. This particular note, being a Five Dollar Bill, has a large, red Roman Numeral V in the middle of the note, as if to commemorate Valentines Day!

Some pretty cool things happened in 1859. For starters, On January 23rd, the Hawaiian Volcano Mauna Loa started erupting continuously for 300 days. Then, Oregon was admitted as the 33rd state on February 14th, 1859, the same day as this banknote was issued. On May 31st, the Philadelphia A’s organized to play something called ‘Town Ball’, which would  become better known as baseball in 1869. On April 17th, the first airmail took off from Lafayette, Indiana – in a balloon. On October 16th, John Brown led the raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and on November 24th Charles Darwin published his book “On the Origin of Species”.  Two days later, on November 26th, another Charles, this one being Charles Dickens, had his last chapter of “A Tale of Two Cities” published as a serial article in a magazine. History is sometimes closer than we think.