SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

Thought I'd struck lucky today. Three £2 coins in my purse. That was good to start with.

Then I noticed the inscription on the edge and wondered if I could pile the coins up so that the whole inscription could be read. Yes, I'll blip that I thought, and knocked them over in the process. Which is when I thought my luck had changed as I saw that one of the three coins had its inscription the wrong way up. Woa, a rare coin!

But it didn't take long (thanks Google) to learn that the edges of the coins are struck first so the chances of the inscription being one way up or the other are 50/50.

I'll spend them then.

The inscription is taken from a letter by Sir Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke, in which he describes how his work was built on the knowledge of those that had gone before him. "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."