Hello, I've been on this forum for a while now, and I've seen some wonderful coins, and so I decided to do a small project of my own, since I'd like to introduce you to more coins from my country, Portugal, I also added some from context that led to the mintage of these coins.
The beginning of the 20th century was marked by several political, social and economic issues that drastically changed the world in which we live. And the small country called Portugal did not escape the revolutionary designs of the time.
The country in the 1900s was governed by King D. Carlos, he ascended the throne on October 19, 1899, due to factors that I will not digress into, his reign was marked by a certain incompetence of the king in resolving problems social and economic issues, as well as his lack of interest in national politics, and today the king is still recognized as a great benefactor of marine biology and oceanography , also known as the numismatist king in numismatist circles due to his coin collection.
But his downfall undoubtedly came from the English ultimatum of 1890, in which Portugal had to back down on its intentions in Africa, more specifically not to connect its colonies of Angola and Mozambique by land. On the fateful day of February 1, 1908, King D.Carlos and Infante D.Manuel were fatally shot, in a carriage, while returning to the capital, Lisbon. Surviving the attack, the king's second son, D.Manuel II, ascends to the throne, who at just 18 years old would assume the destiny of the kingdom, but as a second son, he had not had the same education as the deceased infant, as nobody expected for the second son to come to the throne.
Taking advantage of the social/economic crisis, on October 5, 1910, the monarchy fell and the Portuguese republic was born in its place, forming a provisional government that would govern until the promulgation of the constitution in 1911. Among the first steps taken by the new regime It was decided that it needed symbols that represented not the nation, but rather the ideas of freedom and democracy promised.
The new republican regime quickly realized that the nation needed new symbols that aligned with the new ideological line, thus giving rise to the bust of the republic, the personification of the young republic, a kind of Portuguese Marianne. A new national anthem was adopted, and the colors of the national flag, blue and white, were replaced by red and green.
Finally, the old monarchical currency (the Real) would be replaced in favor of the new monetary unit (the escudo)whose circulation would cover the entire national and colonial territory, with 3 notable exceptions, in Portuguese India the monetary unit remained the rupee, and in Macau and Timor the monetary unit is the pataca.
But due to numerous technical and administrative difficulties, the first coins that began to be minted, with the denomination of 50 cents, would only begin to be produced on August 11, 1912. But truly the first coin of a republican nature, it belongs the 1 rupee coin private to the state of India, ordered to be coined by decree of December 25, 1910 and mintage started on August, 1912, I will speak about these 1 rupee coins in another post.
Obverse - in the center of the field limited by a border with alternately circular and triangular elements, the symbolic bust of the homeland (or republic) in profile on the left with a Phrygian cap and a crown of 3 ears of wheat, bordered by the legend and, on the I see, the era of coinage.
Reverse - to the center of the field limited by a border of alternately circular and triangular elements, the national coat of arms surrounded by laurel branches intertwined at the bottom by a bow and, on the lower edge, the face value <50 centavos>.
Serrated Edge
Metal: Ag 835 / 30mm/ Weight: 12.50g
Year 1912- mintage: 1,695,000 Year 1913- mintage:4 443 298 Year 1914-mintage:4 991 790 Year 1916-mintage: 5 079 935
I must warn that in the years 1914 and 1916 there are coins in proof-like condition, which require a premium when buying and selling.
I apologize for the photos, but it is really difficult to photograph coins, and I also apologize for any grammatical errors. I hope to post some more coins. I HOPE YOU LIKE MY POST, AND MY COINS.

Part 1
Judaism: a Retreat from Biblical Monotheism
The history of the Jewish people is clearly divided into two periods: before and after the expiatory death of Jesus Christ. As the Sacrifice for the sins of the world had not yet been carried out, Old Testament history continued, the entire meaning of which consisted in waiting and preparation to meet the coming Savior. Messianic expectations were particularly pronounced during the last decades before the arrival of the Savior into the world. People not only in Jerusalem, but also in other cities and villages of Palestine, waited for the Messiah foretold in the Holy Scripture.
Christ and the Pharisees
Time was fulfilled. The Messiah came, but Jewish leaders, Pharisees, and Sadducees condemned him to death. But why were the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes offended? Why was it enough for the Samaritan woman to reveal the secret side of her life for her to gladly believe that the traveler standing beside her, weary from the road and asking her for water, was Christ (see John 4:42)? Why did the Pharisees and scribes, who were witnesses to the magnificent miracles performed by Jesus and knew the Scriptures better than anyone else, stubbornly refuse to recognize Christ? Finally, one more question: why did they hate Him, despite the fact that he delivered many people from terrible disease and suffering?
The answer must be sought in the peculiarities and character of the spiritual life of the leaders of Israel. Religious life demands of a person self-attentiveness, moral sensitivity, humility, and pure intentions. Without this, the heart gradually hardens. A change inevitably occurs, the consequences of which are spiritual death.

Already before the beginning of our Savior’s Gospel of the Heavenly Kingdom, the Jews had begun to imagine the Messiah as a powerful earthly king, who would exalt them above all nations and make them wealthy and powerful. This concept of the Messiah corresponded to their spiritual and moral condition.
For a proper understanding of the prophecy inspired by the Holy Spirit, not doctrinal erudition, but pure, uncorrupted faith was necessary.
The consciousness of lawyers and scribes, corrupted by sin, did not notice the parts of the Old Testament in which the spiritual qualities of the promised Messiah are given: "behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zech. 9:9); " Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth" (Isa. 42:1-3; cf.: Matt. 12:20).
Despite all the seemingly multifaceted events preceding the trial of the Savior of the world, there is only one reason for such a grave sin to have been committed—the people were rooted in sin and loved it. They seethed with anger at He who had come to the world to conquer and destroy sin.
After Christ the Messiah, who came to save the world, was slandered, profaned, and put to death, the spiritual death of the chosen people began. The Lord Jesus Christ spoke to the Hebrews directly, "He that hateth me hateth my Father also" (John 15:23). This means that the monotheism of the Hebrew leaders became entirely formalistic.

In literature, Old Testament religion, which ends with the conclusion of the New Testament, and Judaism, are often confused. This association is completely wrong. The expectation of the Messiah, which permeated the centuries-long history of the religion of the descendants of the Prophet Moses, ended. The goals and aspirations of the Hebrews, led by the Pharisees and Sadducees, stayed on Earth. Earthly well-being, wealth, success, and power became core values. In keeping with these, they imagined the anticipated Messiah.
However, the prophets foretold the coming of another Messiah—the Suffering Messiah. The Prophet Isaiah, who is called the "Old Testament Evangelist" (see Saint Jerome, Letter to Paulinus) because of his many prophesies and the precision of their fulfillment in Jesus Christ, speaks about this with impressive clarity and precision.
What then is the true Messiah? "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth… for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand" (Isa. 53:7-10).

Were the Jews familiar with this chapter of the great prophet? Not all of them. Usually during weekly readings at the synagogue this chapter is omitted. Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of Rosa Price, who survived the horrors of several Nazi concentration camps and accepted Jesus Christ. Her daughter became a follower of the Savior Jesus, but she adhered to old misconceptions. "I ran to the rabbi. He would tell me different Scriptures with which to challenge my family. In response, they would give me five more. At the urging of my family, I asked the rabbi about Isaiah 53. He said, “No Jew reads that, especially not a Jewish woman.” So I couldn’t read it. The same for Psalm 22. There are 328 prophecies of the coming of the suffering servant Messiah. I asked the rabbi about almost all of them. Finally, the rabbi told me not to come to the synagogue anymore because I had read him Isaiah 53" (Rosa Price. The Survivor // Sid Roth. They Thought for Themselves. WWP, 2007).

How did the lawyers, who knew many parts of the Old Testament Bible by heart, explain the chapter? In the period of the Talmud's formation, the scribes recognized that the 53rd chapter was a prophecy of the Messiah's coming. However, beginning with the famed Hebrew exegete Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki; 1040 - 1105), rabbis assert that the 53rd chapter speaks of the Jewish people. A simple reference to the text can refute this belief.

• "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows" (Isa. 53:4). Whose grief did the Jewish people take on and whose sorrows did they carry?
• "With his stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5). Who has been healed by the wounds of the Jewish people?
• "For the transgression of my people was he stricken" (Isa. 53:8). If it is speaking of the Jewish people, then who suffered punishment for the transgressions of the Jewish people?
• "And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death" (Isa. 53:9). When and in which grave are the Jewish people buried?

In the holy Old Testament books there are signs of the appearance of Christ (the Messiah) and in it are described his chief characteristics. Of the prophecies on the coming of Christ into the world in the Old Testament, before all else it is necessary to note the vision of the prophet Daniel, foretelling even the year of the Savior's death. “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined" (Dan. 9:24-26). Week (seven) is understood as 7 years, and 70 sevens consists of 490 years. It is the timeframe for the "end of sin." Here, we are talking about Christ the Savior's atonement for people who have violated the will of God and fallen from grace. In the prophecy, the Messiah is directly indicated ("to anoint the most Holy"). To calculate the amount of time given here, one must turn to historical sources, noting the reconstruction of the city of Jerusalem, which fell as a result of the Babylonian destruction in 586. The count of seventy sevens begins from the date of the reconstruction of Jerusalem. The decree for the restoration was given by Artaxerxes Longimanus in the 20th year of his reign. He came to the throne between December 18, 465 and December 18, 464 BC. The seventh year of his reign, from which the countdown of weeks begins, comes in 458 or 457. From this time period to the time of the appearance of Christ our Lord, 69 weeks (483 years) should pass.
The Forerunner of the coming of the Messiah is also mentioned in the Old Testament. "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts" (Mal. 3:1). Dwellers in Palestine knew the Holy Scripture and saw in John, who preached repentance, the Angel of the Covenant predicted by the prophets. Thus, people from all of Jerusalem and all the outskirts of the Jordan came to him (see Mark 1:5).
In the holy books of the Old Testament, there are prophecies of all of the main events in the life of Jesus the Messiah. The prophet Micah identified the place of birth: "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting" (Mic. 5:2).
The Word of God demonstrated the great spiritual gifts of the future Anointed One. "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" (Isa. 11:1-2). All of this was fulfilled by Jesus: "... the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (Matt. 7:28-29).
Through the prophets, the Holy Spirit indicated a special distinguishing feature of the Messiah, the extraordinary power of wonderworking: "He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert" (Isa. 35:4-6). When the two men came to Jesus from John the Baptist to ask, "Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?" (Luke 7:20), the Lord before all else points to the miracles he has performed: "The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me" (Luke 7:22-23). The people knew that the Messiah would be characterized by the miracles he performed. "Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David?” (Matt. 12:22-23).
A mind corrupted by sin could not notice the parts of the Old Testament in which the spiritual qualities of the promised Messiah are given: "Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass" (Zech. 9:9).

1. The Jews, having rejected the Messiah as the incarnate Son of God, could not remain in the scope of the Revelation given in the Old Testament. Gradually, to the Law given by God, the Pharisees and scribes added 613 commandments: 365 positive commandments and 248 negative commandments.

The Lord rebukes the Hebrew teachers of the law. "For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men" (Mark 7:8). Faith in God as a real, absolute Person—this is monotheism—is replaced by ritualism. In Judaism, the authority of the Talmud is greater than the Torah (Pentateuch). The famed rabbi Adin Steinsaltz writes, "If the Torah is the foundation of Judaism, then the Talmud is the central pillar supporting the entire spiritual and philosophical edifice. In many ways, the Talmud is the most important book in Jewish culture, the backbone of creativity and of national life. No other work has had a comparable influence on the theory and practice of Jewish life. The Jews always recognized that as a people, their preservation and development depends on the study of the Talmud" ("What is the Talmud?").
What is this "central pillar" of Judaism? I will introduce an excerpt from the Tract Sabbath, with commentary from Rabbi Pinchas Kehati: "The cripple may go out with his wooden leg; such is the decree of Rabbi Meir, but Rabbi Jose prohibits it. If the wooden leg has a receptacle for pads, it is subject to defilement. Crutches are subject to defilement by being sat or trodden upon; but one may go out with them on Sabbath and enter the outer court (of the Temple). The chair and crutches of a paralytic are subject to defilement, and one must not go out with them on the Sabbath nor enter the outer court (of the Temple). Stilts are not subject to defilement, but nevertheless one must not go out with them on Sabbath."
Commentary: "The cripple, a man with one amputated leg, may go out on the Sabbath on his wooden leg, an artificial leg, made according to the size of his shin. Such is the decree of Rabbi Meir, who believes that an artificial leg corresponds to footwear, while Rabbi Jose forbids the cripple from going out with his wooden leg on the Sabbath. According to him, it does not correspond to footwear because the cripple stands primarily with his hands on a cane, while the artificial leg is only for appearance's sake so that his physical handicap would go unnoticed. Thus, the artificial leg on Sabbath is seen as an unnecessary load, and it is prohibited to enter with it. According to the other point of view, Rabbi Jose agrees that the artificial leg equates to footwear, however he is afraid that the man will detach it and will carry over 4 cubits into the public domain, but Rabbi Meir does not have this fear.”
I risk fatiguing the reader, but I will introduce one more place from the Talmud to fully portray the spiritual deadness of ritualism. “There are two acts constituting the transfer (of things which are prohibited) on the Sabbath, which are in turn subdivided into four for a man who finds himself inside a private domain (reshut hayachid). The two acts are, however, increased to four for a man who finds himself outside in the public domain (reshut harabim). How so? For example, a mendicant stands outside (in reshut harabim) and the master of a house inside (in reshut hayachid). The mendicant passes his hand into the house (through for example a window) and puts something into the hand of the master (let's say a basket, so that he might give him a piece of bread), or (another variation) the mendicant reaches out and takes something from the master's hand (a piece of bread). In these two cases, the mendicant is breaking the law of the Sabbath, but the host is not. Or, if the master of the house (being inside) passes his hand through a window and puts, say, a piece of bread, into the hand of the mendicant, or, having put out his hand, he takes an object (a basket) from the hands of the mendicant, who is standing outside on the street, and brings it into the house, the master of the house would have broken the law of the Sabbath, but not the mendicant. This is the first part of the Mishna, which has demonstrated to us what the “two acts” of transferring objects mean, from the position of one who is inside, and from the position of one who finds himself outside. Carrying out any of these acts on the Sabbath is prohibited" (Tract Sabbath).[1]
Instead of a living faith in a merciful God and love towards one’s fellow man, entire volumes of the Talmud are filled with the sophistic disputes of various rabbinical schools over what to do with an egg laid by a chicken on the Sabbath, or about a host giving bread to a beggar, so that he does not break the Sabbath.
What a huge spiritual distance there was between the prophets and the scribes! The first to shine in the faith were those who participated in the source of heavenly wisdom, while others directed their extraordinary erudition to "solving" questions irrelevant to life. The lawyers occasionally thrashed out whether one may move a ladder from one dovecote to another on feast days.
It is obvious that religious life, in which ritualism is the determining principle, will become formalistic. "Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men" (Isa. 29:13).
Falling away from the living source of Truth will inevitably lead to dissolution and barrenness. In medieval European church art, the contrast between Christianity and Judaism was allegorically represented in the form of two female figures: the Church and the Synagogue. The south portal of the transept (cross aisle) of the cathedral in Strasbourg (approx. 1230) is decorated with such sculptures. The woman representing the Church, clearly and confidently carries a cross in her right hand as if resting on it. The straight folds of her cloak, flowing down to the ground, make her figure solid and firm. Her head is crowned. Her gaze is cast into the distance. The figure of the synagogue holds to her body a spear broken in several places. The bend of the figure repeats the broken line. Scrolls fall out of her left hand. Her head is downcast. Her eyes are blindfolded, a symbol of spiritual darkness.

1. The next phase of Judaism's retreat from Biblical monotheism was the rise and expansion among the Jews of Kabbalah (in Hebrew qabbalah means acceptance or tradition) of mystical teachings and practices. This esoteric theosophical teaching is in spirit and letter absolutely foreign to the Holy Scripture. Two books initiate an exposition of Kabbalah: Sefer Yetzirah (the Book of Creation) and Zohar (Splendor of Radiance). The former was likely written in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. Confirmation by the Kabbalists themselves of the existence of Sefer Yetzirah already during the time of patriarch Abraham is absolutely mythical and has no evidence. On the contrary, the presence in these books of philosophical ideas of late antiquity, such as Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and others, completely refutes this view. The author of Zohar is believed to be the Spanish Kabbalist Moshe (Moses) de Leon. It was written in approximately 1300 A.D. The desire of modern Kabbalists to make the author of Zohar the disciple of rabbi Akiva Shimon Bar Yochai (Laitman, M. The Book of Zohar. M., 2003. p. 185)[2] , who lived in the second century A.D., contradicts the view of experts. "The Aramaic language of all eighteen of these sections is throughout the same, and throughout it displays the same individual peculiarities. This is all the more important because it is not in any sense a living language which Simeon ben Yohai and his colleagues in the first half of the second century A.D. in Palestine might have conceivably spoken. The Aramaic of the Zohar is a purely artificial affair, a literary language employed by a writer who obviously knew no other Aramaic than that of certain Jewish literary documents, and who fashioned his own style in accordance with definite subjective criteria. The expectation expressed by some scholars that philological investigation would reveal the older strata of the Zohar has not been borne out by actual research. Throughout these writings, the spirit of mediaeval Hebrew, specifically the Hebrew of the thirteenth century, is transparent behind the Aramaic facade" (Scholem, G. (1954). Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. p. 163).[3]

Kabbalah is divided into the contemplative (Kabbalah Iyunit) and practical (Kabbalah Maasit). The central aspect of the Kabbalah is Ein Sof (The Infinite). In contrast to the God of the Holy Scriptures, Ein Sof has no name because he is without person, unknowable, and incomprehensible. No attributes can be ascribed to him. Ein Sof makes himself known in his manifestations (not to all, but to Jewish mystics). Ein Sof's chief manifestation is the original man, Adam Kadmon. Through his emanations (flows) the ten sefirot come into being, which are the attributes of God. Ten sefirot represent the mystical body of Adam Kadmon (heavenly Adam). He appears as a result of emanation and has no image or form. The earthly Adam was created in the image of heavenly Adam. The tenth sefirot is called "the Kingdom" or Malkuth. It unites all ten sefirot. In Zohar, Malkuth—or Kingdom—denotes how the Knesset (assembly) of Israel is a mystical prototype of the House of Israel (Shekhinah). In The Dialectics of Myth (XIV. 3), Aleksei Losev writes, “As a very well-educated Jew and great expert of Kabbalistic and Talmudic literature (from which I, with the nasty habits of a European observer, sought to learn exclusively about the Neoplatonic influences in Kabbalah) told me, the essence of all Kabbalah does not at all consist in pantheism, as liberal scholars think, who compare the doctrine of Ein Sof and the Sephirot with Neo-Platonism, but rather with pan-Israelitism: the Kabbalistic God needs Israel for His own salvation, He was incarnated in Israel and became it. Therefore the myth of the world domination by a deified Israel, which is forever contained in God.”
Kabbalists have established a correspondence among the different sefirot with parts of the human body. Becoming familiar with this primitive mythological arrangement of the structure of the universe, it becomes difficult to ignore the question that Kabbalists themselves do not ask: What is the source of this "knowledge"? How does one manage to conclude that the sefirot of the Crown (Keter) is the brow, the Tiferet is the chest, Victory (Netzach) and Majesty (Hod) is man's hip?
The esoteric teachings of Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar are fundamentally incompatible with the biblical teaching on God, the world, man, and humanity's path to salvation. Contemplative Kabbalah represents a combination of elements of Gnosticism of the second and third centuries A.D. and Neo-Platonism. From the Gnostics, it borrows the teaching of the 10 eons, which comprise the pleroma (universal fullness). Dualism is the link between Gnostics and Kabbalists; the idea of eternal enmity began with good (light) and evil (darkness). Kabbalah's dualistic world view finds a direct expression in Sefer Yetzirah: "Also Elohim made every object, one opposite the other: good opposite evil, evil opposite good, good from good, evil from evil, the good delineates the evil and the evil delineates the good, good is kept for the good and evil is kept for the evil.” It is evident that the teaching, which ascribes evil an ontological status, leads to the justification of evil. In contrast, according to the Holy Scripture, evil was not created by God, but arose as a result of the abuse of the gift of freedom given by God to his creatures, Angels and mankind.
Kabbalistic teaching is an obvious expression of pantheism, a complete retreat from monotheism. God and the world are understood as one complete whole. The world is only a manifestation of God. Pantheism is fraught with internal contradictions. Its logical consequence is inevitably first the derogation of God, and next, denial of him, because all of the world's imperfections are attributed to him.
Kabbalists divide the world into male and female elements. The right and left spheres are respectively male and female. The world is presented as a loving union, as the unification of male and female elements. The relationship between the spheres is interpreted with the help of gender symbolism.
Kabbalah presents itself as a fantastical mix of esoteric occultism, blended with pagan religious and philosophical ideas. It attests to a complete regression from the great and saving teachings of the Bible with its deep and sustained monotheism.
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)
[1] This appears not to be a direct quote from Tract Sabbath, but commentary based on Tract Sabbath: http://www.evrey.com/sitep/talm/index.php3?trkt=shabbat&menu=19. —Trans.
[2] This cite may not be accurate to the English version. —Trans.
[3] Page number may not be accurate to English version.—Trans.

Thank you to everyone for your helpful posts. I've learned a ton over the past couple days of reading (and still have a long ways to go!) Appreciate any thoughts on the below:
Dealer name: Geek Time
Factory name: Clean
Model: Oyster Perpetual 124300 41mm 904L VR3230
Price: $488usd + shipping
Index alignment: good
Dial printing: good
Date wheel alignment/printing: n/a
Hand alignment: good
Bezel: good (hard to tell at the bottom if the crown symbol and "MADE" look right)
Solid End Links: good
Timegrapher Numbers: +2s/d, AMP. 271°, ERR. 0.1m/s
Anything else you notice: (1) lettering on clasp for "GENEVA" and "STEELINOX" look misaligned (not a deal breaker but annoying) (2) side view of left side of watch case has some sort of black stain. Is that from the sticker?

The arrival of a newborn is a momentous occasion, a chapter filled with wonder, exhaustion, and endless love. It's a time capsule of firsts – the first smile, the first giggle, those tiny, perfect fingers wrapped around yours. In the whirlwind of emotions, keepsakes and baby announcements become vessels that capture these fleeting moments, transforming them into tangible memories to cherish for a lifetime.
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https://preview.redd.it/vejigaxwe51d1.png?width=451&format=png&auto=webp&s=9d850c1a9dcc9b85d725466d2a7b97c819ebb3b9
The Power of Keepsakes: Preserving a Legacy of Love
A survey revealed that 82% of parents consider keepsakes to be extremely or very important. These treasured items hold the power to transport us back to a specific time and place, evoking a kaleidoscope of emotions. A hand-knitted baby blanket, a lock of hair, or a personalized photo album become tangible reminders of a child's growth and development.
Keepsakes Come in All Shapes and Sizes:
Keepsakes transcend mere objects; they transform into tangible expressions of love and dedication. Here's a closer look at the treasure trove of keepsakes that capture a child's journey:
Handmade Treasures: A Labor of Love: Imagine snuggling your child in a hand-knitted sweater, the stitches whispering stories of countless evenings spent crafting it with love. A meticulously crafted scrapbook, filled with handwritten notes, pressed flowers, and tiny keepsakes, becomes a personalized time capsule, brimming with sentimentality. These handmade treasures hold a unique power – they are imbued with the love and care poured into their creation, making them irreplaceable heirlooms.
Firsts Galore: Celebrating Milestones: Those precious "firsts" – the gummy grin of a first smile, the wonder in their eyes during their first haircut – are fleeting moments we desperately want to hold onto. Keepsakes dedicated to these milestones help us do just that. A "first smile" frame adorned with a photo captures that radiant grin forever. A "first haircut" certificate, complete with a lock of hair and the date, becomes a sweet reminder of a momentous occasion. These keepsakes serve as stepping stones on a child's growth journey, allowing us to relive these special moments with a surge of fondness.
Personalized Touches: Uniquely You: Sometimes, a simple touch can elevate a keepsake to a whole new level. Engraved jewelry, a locket with a sonogram etched on the inside or a birthstone, becomes a personalized treasure that a child can carry close to their heart. Personalized growth charts document a child's physical development, but can also be adorned with photos, milestones, and handwritten messages, transforming them into cherished keepsakes.
Custom-designed baby books allow you to curate a one-of-a-kind narrative of your child's life, filled with photos, stories, and personalized embellishments. These personalized keepsakes reflect the unique bond between parent and child, making them even more special.
Digital Keepsakes: Embracing the Modern World: The digital age offers a plethora of options to preserve memories in new and exciting ways. Create a digital scrapbook using online platforms, where you can compile photos, videos, and even voice recordings, weaving a multimedia tapestry of your child's life. Imagine the joy of revisiting these digital keepsakes years down the line, with the ability to relive precious moments through sight and sound.
Record a heartfelt message to your child, expressing your hopes and dreams for them. Schedule it to be delivered on their 18th birthday, a time capsule of love and guidance to navigate their next chapter. Digital keepsakes, while not tangible in the traditional sense, offer a unique way to preserve memories in a constantly evolving world.
Keepsakes Foster Connection:
Keepsakes aren't just for parents. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cherished friends can all curate their own collections, fostering a sense of connection and shared history with the child. Imagine the joy on your grandmother's face as she pulls out a hand-stitched baby quilt you made as a child. Keepsakes become a bridge across generations, weaving a tapestry of love and family.
Imagine the delight on your aunt's face when she unwraps a hand-drawn portrait you created as a little one, or the warmth that fills your uncle's heart as he reads a first birthday card signed by his tiny niece. These cherished items become more than just objects; they transform into tangible reminders of love, milestones, and the unbreakable bond between generations.
Here's how keepsakes act as a bridge across generations:
· Building Connections: A hand-knitted sweater from Grandma, a first rattle passed down from a cherished family friend - these keepsakes represent the love and care poured into the child by those beyond the immediate parents.
· Shared History: Keepsakes become conversation starters, sparking memories and stories. Looking at a framed photo from a baby's first trip to the zoo can lead to discussions about family adventures and traditions.
· Sense of Belonging: Having personalized keepsakes allows a child to feel connected to their family history and heritage. A baby book filled with handwritten messages from aunts, uncles, and grandparents provides a tangible reminder of their place within the family tapestry.
· Treasured Memories: As time passes, these keepsakes become even more valuable. A child who may not remember their first birthday can still experience the joy of the occasion by viewing a framed photo or a video message from a loved one.
Creating Keepsakes for Grandparents and Beyond:
Here are some ideas for keepsakes that families can create together, fostering a sense of connection across generations:
· Time Capsule: Fill a box with small items that represent the current year, the child's personality, and messages from loved ones. Bury it or store it safely to be opened on a significant birthday or milestone.
· Handwritten Letters: Encourage grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cherished friends to write letters to the child, sharing their hopes and dreams for them. These can be included in a baby book or saved as keepsakes.
· Collaborative Art Projects: Plan a family gathering where everyone contributes to a piece of art, quilt, or scrapbook dedicated to the child.
· Digital Keepsakes: Create a shared online album or digital story that documents the child's growth and milestones. Include photos, videos, and messages from various family members.
By encouraging the creation and sharing of keepsakes, families can build a bridge of love and shared history that connects children to the broader circle of people who adore them. These cherished items become more than just objects; they weave a beautiful tapestry of love and family, reminding everyone of the special bond that transcends generations.
The Enchantment of Baby Announcements: Spreading the Joy
Baby announcements are the joyous declarations of a new life entering the world. They serve a multitude of purposes:
· Sharing the News: With a 37% increase in social media baby announcements in the past 5 years, these digital declarations are a quick and easy way to share the happy news with a wider circle.
· Setting the Tone: Whether it's a whimsical photo shoot or a heartfelt message, baby announcements set the tone for the child's arrival, reflecting the parents' personalities and their excitement for parenthood.
· Creating a Community: Baby announcements can spark a wave of love and support from loved ones near and far. The outpouring of congratulations and well-wishes from friends and family helps build a network of support around the new parents.
Beyond the Paper Trail: Creative Announcement Ideas:
Themed Photoshoot: Embrace your creativity with a whimsical baby announcement photoshoot. Capture the magic with a superhero theme, a fairytale setting, or a heartwarming family portrait.
Whimsical Baby Announcement Photoshoot Ideas:
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1. Superhero Theme:
· Concept: Celebrate your little one's arrival as a tiny superhero, ready to take on the world!
· Props:
o Tiny cape (imagine a knitted one for a newborn) with a symbol of your choice (pacifier, heart, letter)
o Mask (soft fabric mask with eye holes big enough for them to see)
o Superhero onesie or sleeper
o Comic book-style backdrop (you can create one yourself with construction paper!)
· Poses: Swaddle your baby in the superhero outfit and have them "soar" through the air (supported by your hand, of course). Capture them holding a tiny bottle as if it's their superpower fuel.
2. Fairytale Setting:
· Concept: Transform your home into a whimsical fairytale land.
· Props:
o Soft, flowy fabrics draped around furniture to create a canopy effect
o Crowns, tiaras, or flower halos for your baby
o Stuffed animals or woodland creature figurines
o Baskets filled with colorful blankets or flowers
· Poses: Nestle your baby in a basket surrounded by stuffed animals or have them "sleeping" on a bed of flowers. You and your partner can dress up as fairytale characters for a truly enchanting scene.
3. Heartwarming Family Portrait:
· Concept: Capture the pure love and joy of welcoming your new family member.
· Props: Blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals to create a cozy atmosphere
· Poses: Cuddle up together on a bed or couch with your baby. Let siblings gently touch or hold the baby (with adult supervision, of course). Candid moments of parents gazing at their baby are always heartwarming.
A Touch of Humor: Inject a dose of laughter with a funny announcement. Capture your pet "announcing" the arrival or stage a photo of the nursery overflowing with baby gear.
The Power of Video: Create a short video announcement. Capture heartwarming moments from the pregnancy journey, culminating in the baby's arrival.
Keepsakes and Baby Announcements: A Lasting Legacy
In a world that cherishes the fleeting moment, keepsakes and baby announcements become anchors to the past. They are tangible expressions of love, joy, and the sheer wonder of new life. These cherished items serve as a bridge between generations, forging a connection that transcends time. So, embrace the magic of keepsakes and baby announcements, for they are not just mementos, but stepping stones on a journey filled with love, laughter, and a lifetime of memories.
Looking for keepsakes or baby announcement inspiration? Look no further than TrueGether, the ultimate online destination for all things baby! TrueGether boasts a vibrant marketplace filled with unique and affordable keepsakes and baby announcements, offering a fantastic alternative to sites like eBay.
With prices starting at just $9.49, TrueGether caters to every budget. Explore a diverse selection encompassing baby books and albums to meticulously record your child's milestones, adorable handprint kits to capture those tiny fingers and toes, and a treasure trove of other keepsakes that will become cherished reminders of this special time. TrueGether empowers you to find the perfect keepsakes and baby announcements to weave a narrative of your child's precious journey.

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Charles Edward Merriam, the 37th President of the United States, Official Presidential Portrait
The Poisoned Chalice
Upon taking the presidential oath of office after the resignation of President Alvin York, Charles Edward Merriam found himself at the helm of a rudderless ship. Civil unrest was at an all-time high due to mass protests against York’s preemptive nuclear strike and large-scale labor strikes, much of the cabinet had been left vacant by a wave of resignations following York’s controversial decision not to consult his own advisors on the decision, and an already uneasy economy had been thrown into chaos by the total obliteration of a major trading partner. Even the sky itself had visibly darkened while global temperatures dropped, bringing about cries of the end times being visited upon Earth for man’s folly. In this moment of national crisis, Merriam took to the airwaves with a radio address to the American people asking them to unite with him in a national effort for the first 100 days of his presidency to right the course of the country amidst the national crisis.
Moving with alacrity to fill the vacancies within his cabinet and bring his administration into full gear, Merriam leaned upon his network of academic contacts to appoint a ring of economic, industrial, and social science experts — Jacob Viner, Bessie Louise Pierce, George W. Taylor, and Leo Wolman — into several key cabinet positions. Similarly, rather than appoint a political operative as his Secretary of State or War, he instead chose to elevate career diplomat and acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew into his position permanently while promoting War Department General Counsel William Marbury Jr. to be Secretary of War. Finding both Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal and Secretary of Agriculture John Marvin Jones to be highly competent and sufficiently disentangled from the chaos of the York administration, Merriam requested that the pair remain in their positions. However, Postmaster General Thomas Perkins Henderson would not be so lucky, as Merriam distrusted his close ties to President York and felt the office was wracked by cronyism, thus requesting his immediate resignation to be replaced with former Louisiana Governor and highly regarded reformist Sam H. Jones. To round out his cabinet, Merriam appointed California Governor Earl Warren as his Attorney General due to Warren’s wealth of experience in suppressing syndicalist insurrectionists in his home state, as well as Delaware Senator and businessman J. Allen Frear to manage the Department of the Interior with an eye towards economizing a bloated department.
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Secretary of State Joseph Grew, a defining member of the Merriam administration with his foreign policy expertise during the world’s darkest hour.
Calming a Roiling Sea
Believing that anxiety surrounding a national economy plagued by boundless problems was at the root of the national malaise that might yet inspire a resurgence of syndicalism, Merriam quickly moved to restore confidence for both consumers and businesses. As a first step to move past the combative relationships that President Hughes and York held with organized labor, Merriam invited newly minted American Federation of Labor President George Meany for a symbolic meeting to discuss labor issues and establish an informal political alliance to raise wages and working standards as a means to settle the persistent labor unrest. Thus, President Merriam and his Secretary of Labor George W. Taylor began applying the National Labor Arbitration Act to settle hundreds of strikes across the country resulting in a moderate nationwide increase in wage levels and the proliferation of employer-provided healthcare as a commonly provided benefit. Taylor even proved successful in earning the begrudging respect of Congress of Industrial Organizations President Walter Reuther’s respect despite the organization’s more explicitly confrontational approach to industrial relations.
Despite this success in the application of labor arbitration, Merriam’s ambition of comprehensive legislation to establish a formal system of corporatist economic structures was repeatedly frustrated by the inability to secure enough bipartisan support in the House of Representatives to pass several successive iterations of his proposals. Yet as a longtime proponent of executive power, Merriam was not entirely thwarted by this setback and notably issued an Executive Order forming the Office of National Research headed by MIT President Karl T. Compton and complemented by a number of figures in both the natural and social sciences to direct national research efforts towards answering pressing questions of the new atomic age. Perhaps the most significant of its achievements were the pioneering of new sanitation, public health, and antibiotic techniques to finally stamp out the bubonic plague epidemic that had persisted since the initial Japanese bioweapon attack. Furthermore, Speaker of the House Wright Patman was successful in passing a budget through the House substantially scaling back wartime spending and taxation in light of the transition of the United States military from a combat force to an occupation force abroad. Anticipating a corresponding decrease in inflation, Merriam worked with his Secretary of Commerce Leo Wolman to begin the process of relieving wartime price controls that had remained in place throughout the York administration while encouraging the development of private industrial codes of conduct for businesses to self-regulate prices.
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A wartime propaganda poster supporting labor arbitration that continued distribution under the Merriam presidency.
Sewing A Tattered World
America was not the only country suffering in the aftermath of the Second World War. The decade-long war had wreaked havoc upon the entire world and left entire nations virtually leveled by bombs and depleted of their resources. American efforts at international reconstruction had been haphazard and largely left in the hands of private charities during the York administration, much to the consternation of its allies and the occupied peoples. Thus, out of a mixture of humanitarian reasons, a desire to restore America’s international reputation, and a calculation that such destruction could breed communist movements such as the syndicalist revolt that had embroiled the United States, Secretary of State Joseph Grew proposed a much more ambitious plan that would soon bear his name. With the strong support of President Merriam, Congress earmarked a staggering $15 billion with wide bipartisan support to be distributed to European governments for necessary imports of food and basic materials from the United States as well as for industrial investments to rebuild the European economy. An ancillary fund was likewise also established to support the reconstruction of China, which had been ravaged by brutal warfare with Imperial Japan. As a committed supporter of free trade, President Merriam also used the leverage of the Grew Plan to compel the recipients of the funding to lower trade barriers between one another and with the United States in order to stimulate international trade. The sole major holdout would be the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Aneurin Bevan remained committed to an autarkic system of steep trade barriers outside the Imperial system since the country had suffered far less damage than its peers in the Second World War.
Another guiding principle of President Merriam’s approach to international reconstruction would be a wide-ranging program of technical assistance. With the country’s decades-long commitment to widely available public education and a sophisticated network of universities engaged in industrial research, the American economy had come to be regarded as the most technologically advanced in the entire world. Already under President Dewey, the United States had begun programs of sharing its technical expertise in production methods and industrial organization to China and the countries of Latin America. Thus, Merriam’s formalization of an Office for Technical Assistance under the Department of State was an extension of an already well-established practice. With support from personnel and agencies in the Departments of Labor and Commerce, the Office of Technical Assistance undertook a wide-ranging and sophisticated statistical analysis of European industries to identify weaknesses in productivity while arranging for large-scale observation visits by European industrial leaders as well as the collation and distribution of technical literature in order to disseminate best practices across continents. Following the initial success of the program in Europe over the first months of his term, Merriam proceeded with an extension of the program to developing nations in the Middle East and South Asia in order to modernize their economies as well.
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A meeting of Grew Plan information chiefs in the American Embassy in France.
Year Without Summer
While atomic weapons had been deployed several times throughout the Second World War to destroy French, Russian, and Japanese cities, they had never been used on the scale ordered by President Alvin York to destroy the German Empire. As a result of the simultaneous destruction of dozens of German cities in fiery infernos, the atmosphere of the planet itself became choked by a layer of ash and soot that demonstrably lowered global temperatures in the following months. With the effect coined as a “nuclear winter” by British chemist Samuel Glasstone, a world food supply already challenged by the disruptions of war experienced a dramatic shortfall in agricultural production sending many war-ravaged areas teetering into famine. However, this presented a unique opportunity for the United States, which had for decades struggled with chronic overproduction of agricultural products causing dim economic prospects for the nation’s farmers. Now, there was a ready market for the surplus in the United States that persisted even through the nuclear winter.
Though European governments were already using their Grew Plan funds to import American food products in large amounts, Secretary of Agriculture John Marvin Jones was determined to employ the powers of the federal government in assistance of this shift. Backed by a series of executive orders from President Merriam, Jones vastly expanded the neglected Populist-era Sub-Treasury system to grant easy credit and storage solutions to farmers who lacked sufficient capital to take advantage of the vastly increased demand for their product while also using wartime legislation to purchase eroded land for its rehabilitation and resale for food production by government experts. Much like the rest of the executive branch, at Merriam’s direction the Department of Agriculture also leaned into partnerships with dozens of agricultural colleges spread throughout the United States to collect and publish a corpus of literature on improved farming practices and fertilizer production techniques to further stimulate production.
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Electrical lines going up on a rural farm as part of a program pioneered by Secretary of Agriculture John Marvin Jones to further develop American agriculture.
New World Order
Having earned widespread popularity among the American public for his statesmanship at home and thus leaving the November elections with a decisive popular mandate, Merriam turned to the pressing issue of foreign affairs in the latter half of his term. In the chaos of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath, the powers of the Grand Alliance had failed to conclusively agree on the structures of the post-war world. Even after the destruction of the German Empire, which had been the largest obstacle in the effort to conclude new international agreements, debate raged on what form these would take as the world federalist movement took root across the globe. In order to lay the foundation of future global cooperation, Merriam began by reviving the institutions of the Hague Treaty that had been rendered inoperative by the withdrawal of participation by several countries and subsequent outbreak of the Second World War. While the Permanent Court of International Arbitration would be restored largely unchanged from its original construction, the International Monetary Fund would be greatly transformed due to President Merriam’s influential support for John Maynard Keynes’s proposal to formulate a supranational currency called “bancor” to be the unit of account for an International Clearing Union tasked with regulating international trade.
While many nationalists and isolationists decried Merriam’s move towards the internationalization of monetary policy, the circle of Atlanticists within the party led by Vice President Edward J. Meeman was urging him to go even further towards world government. Compelled by a promise made to the Atlanticist faction during his party’s National Convention, President Merriam authorized the summoning of an international conference to discuss the concept of an Atlantic Union between the western democratic countries of the world. However, where many expected that Merriam might appoint a coterie of apathetic diplomats to undermine the movement, the President instead shockingly sent a delegation filled with committed Atlanticists led by New York Senator Grenville Clark, Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, and the proposal’s first author Clarence Streit to Brussels for the conference, much to the outrage of opponents of world federalism within his party. After weeks spent deliberating the minutiae of the Atlantic Union, the conference emerged just before the holiday season with a proposed constitution and hundreds of pages of documentation surrounding the historical precedents and contemporary reasoning behind the proposal to electrify the debate surrounding a world government.
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A Time Magazine feature of Clarence Streit, one of the leading theorists behind the Atlantic Union proposal.
God’s Instrument or War Criminal?
The most controversial question hanging over the term of President Charles Edward Merriam was the fate of former President Alvin York. To many Americans, York had committed a crime against humanity comparable to those against which they had fought against for a decade and the incident ignited a debate surrounding presidential authority to deploy nuclear weapons. Throughout the initial months of his presidency, Merriam dodged questions surrounding the President and declined to make substantial public comment aside from occasional suggestions that the President had sole command over the United States military. At Merriam’s private urging, Speaker of the House Wright Patman also squashed suggestions that a President could still be impeached after leaving office. Likewise, Merriam directed the Justice Department not to open a federal prosecution against York and thus leaving the ailing former President’s case in legal limbo. Speaking out more strongly after his successful reelection campaign, Merriam clarified that while he found the act personally abhorrent it remained a legal exercise of the President’s powers as commander-in-chief and that as the victims were nationals of another country there was no basis for either a prosecution or a pardon in the name of crimes against the United States.
Beyond just the conduct of the President himself, the atomic bombing of Germany brought with it new concern around the governance of nuclear weapons. Believing that tight-lipped military control over nuclear weapons under wartime authority was a large factor in York’s ability to unilaterally strike Germany, the Senate’s sole independent Brien McMahon led the charge to place nuclear weapons and energy development under the control of an independent civilian commission appointed by both the President and the legislative officers. Though his bill died in committee, it inspired the Federalist Reform Party to counter with their own bill introduced by Kentucky Senator Andrew J. May replacing McMahon’s proposed commission with a board to be dominated by military officers exclusively appointed by the President. While the Federalist Reform majority in the Senate quickly passed the May bill over an attempted filibuster by McMahon, the bill came to a screeching halt in the House of Representatives where the opposition parties unified to fiercely oppose its passage. With Congress at an impasse, President Merriam issued executive orders continuing the status quo of the wartime project board that had been initiated by President Howard Hughes.
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Independent Connecticut Senator Brien McMahon, who took leadership of the fight for civilian control over nuclear energy
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Note: Not strictly bound by Merriam’s term, the following sections are meant to summarize the state of the world after the conclusion of the Second World War.
The Red Stars of Europe
Throughout the decade-spanning Second World War, the United Kingdom had been under the leadership of Conservative Prime Minister Duff Cooper. In order to maintain control against the irascible anti-war opposition led by Labour’s Oswald Mosley, Cooper had resorted to the royal authority of King Edward VIII to unilaterally bring the country into the war and cancel elections throughout its duration. While he had been successful in prosecuting the war to victory and securing the downfall of Mosley’s control over the Labour Party, when Cooper was finally forced to call elections at the war’s end he found voters profoundly unsympathetic to his accomplishments and his Tory government was defeated in a staggering landslide by the Labour Party. Thus, King Edward was reluctantly forced to appoint the Labour Party leader, Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, as the Prime Minister of the country. As an ally to former party leader Oswald Mosley, Bevan quickly embarked on the domestic implementation of the “Mosley Memorandum” to nationalize wide stretches of the British economy while also pursuing a massive expansion of the British welfare state. Following the atomic bombing of the German Empire, Bevan forcefully attacked the wanton use of weapons of mass destruction in a surprise attack and relations remained frosty even after York’s resignation as President Merriam cut off the United Kingdom from any knowledge sharing regarding nuclear power and weaponry.
Yet even the radicalism of Nye Bevan paled in comparison to that of the Spanish Republic, where a blossoming social and economic revolution was years underway. Following the victory of the leftist Republic against Nationalist forces in the country’s civil war, thanks in no small part to the decisive support of President Frank J. Hayes, agriculture was rapidly collectivized by the Spanish government while a combination of state support and syndicalist initiative led to over 75% of the industrial economy being brought under worker control. Taking inspiration from the writings and political efforts of American President John Dewey, the Spanish also imported many of his principles of progressive child-centric education while undertaking the community construction of centers of adult learning woven into forums of political debate. However, standing in stark contrast to the system of government on the mainland would be the so-called “Spanish State” existing in Spain’s African colonies. With their heavy conservative military presence, the colonies had formed a powerbase for the Spanish Nationalists and thus served as a natural place of refuge after their defeat in the war, while the socialist Republican government held little interest in reconquering a system of colonies that it found morally repugnant. Thus, the colonies became the host of a rival government and ruthless colonial state that came under the leadership of Falangist Agustin Aznar after he successfully orchestrated the murder of his political rivals to become the Jefe Nacional.
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Prime Minister Aneurin Bevan of the United Kingdom, the sole power offering a serious challenge to American hegemony over the post-war world.
Integralism Lives?
After the surrenders of the Kingdoms of France and Italy during the Second World War, the Allied powers were too pressed for manpower in their colossal struggle against Russia and Japan in the East to administer a full military occupation. Thus, instead the administration of Howard Hughes accepted the continuation of their governments so long as they cooperated with American occupation authorities. As a result, Italian Integralism and its monarchy would continue under the auspices of General Pietro Badoglio who was vested by King Victor Emmanuel III and the Grand Council of Fascism as Italy’s new prime minister after the downfall of Benito Mussolini. However, Badoglio’s position would become increasingly unstable after the large-scale effort of the German Empire to fund and arm leftist Italian insurgents and increasingly dependent upon the United States occupation forces for support to avert their overthrow. While France would likewise retain its newly crowned King Henri VI, his political strategy would be markedly different from that of the Italians. Believing that the monarchist right would have no choice but to support him, Henri appointed socialist Vincent Auriol as his Prime Minister and issued a new liberal constitution to endear the political left to him as well. Final peace treaties with both countries, forced to be renegotiated after the destruction of the German Empire, would not yet be concluded by the end of President Merriam’s first term though the recognition of separatist movements in Brittany and Corsica was viewed as an implicit precondition by the American government.
As the political and military leadership of the German Empire had been devastated by the atomic bombings, the continuance of the Kaiserreich was not only seen as undesirable by President Alvin York but also simply impractical. Although York would not be able to oversee the country past its initial occupation, President Merriam held much the same opinion and negotiated the de jure abolition of the German Empire alongside the British and divided the country into two zones of occupation. Though relying on the expertise of the limited number of German experts who were both still alive and willing to cooperate with the occupation authorities, much of the day-to-day administration of the occupation zones would be carried out by the military forces of the occupying powers. Yet while the occupying forces made great strides in repairing the utterly destroyed nations and stabilizing its food supply, the occupation faced never before seen challenges with enormous incidence rates of cancer and a newly identified “atomic bomb disease” with poorly understood symptoms and little understanding of its treatment.
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King Henri and Queen Isabelle of France, wearing a more austere style in an appeal to the French working class.
Blood Tide of the East
After Russia’s humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1934-1935, the country slipped into a dark period of brutal dictatorship at the hands of Anastasy Vonsyatsky and Ivan Solonevich. Yet few could have imagined that the horror could grow worse. The employment of strategic bombing against its crucial oil supply, the nuclear bombing of several of its cities, and worst of all an enormous anthrax attack targeted at its food supply caused the disintegration of Russia into famine and anarchy. As the powers of the Grand Alliance had declared victory and withdrew their troops from active fighting upon the surrender of Andrew Vlasov’s warlord band to western forces, the turmoil in Russia remained raging throughout President Merriam’s term with little outside intervention. Forces ranged from the claimed Romanov regent Mikhail Drozdovsky to the classical Integralist Boris Savinkov to the bloodthirsty racialist Bronislav Kaminski and dozens more in between fighting for the desiccated scraps of the once mighty country.
Ever vigilant on the frontier of this anarchy was the Reichskommissariat Muskowien, the former German puppet state instated by the Kaiser to facilitate the colonization of occupied Russian lands by German settlers. After its Reichskommissar was killed during the nuclear attack while visiting Berlin, his secretary Erich Koch seized control alongside a junta of military officers proclaiming the Reichskommissariat as a haven for the German people and embarking on a program of ethnic cleansing of the local Slavic population. Fearing that a military response would not only require another costly and unpopular war in Europe but also embroil the United States in the Russian frontier, President Merriam opted to continue the York administration’s position of withholding recognition from the Reichskommissariat while instead extending American influence in Eastern Europe under the auspices of his newly formed Office of Strategic Services.
With the German puppet governments in the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine deeply unpopular and dependent on German support, their governments quickly collapsed under American and British influence leading to the establishment of new governments in each of the nations. Taking inspiration from the British program to unify the three Baltic nations under a single Baltic Union, President Merriam undertook a nation-building program of his own to attempt to unify Poland, Ukraine, and Romania into a single federation. However, the project remained stalled throughout his term due to a lack of enthusiasm from the member countries. Meanwhile, in an accord with the countries of the Grand Alliance, President Merriam and Secretary of State Joseph Grew took to settling the geopolitical situation of the Balkans. With the restoration of the Tsardom of Bulgaria already settled and Greece still preoccupied by civil war, the chief question would be the status of the former Triune. Striving for a balance between the competing claims of Austria and Hungary which had spiraled the world into war ten long years before, Grew negotiated the formation of a Danubian Confederation to replace the former Triune with substantial autonomy granted to the Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Hungarian, Croatian, Triestine, and Austrian states composing it but unifying them with a common citizenship and foreign policy.
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The ruins of what was once a Russian home, a testament to the country’s seemingly interminable anarchy.
Self-Determination For Whom?
Over the course of the Second World War, British and American forces had come to occupy virtually all of the vast continent of Africa and with the end of the war it fell upon them to oversee its fate. With the recent independence of the United States of the Congo under President Alvin York serving as an example, both President Charles Edward Merriam and British Prime Minister Aneurin Bevan were committed to the eventual decolonization of the African continent but they also agreed that the bulk of the diverse African peoples needed further “instruction” on democratic governance and western culture before being granted independence. Thus, the colonial system of rule remained largely unchanged on the continent, though German colonies would be transferred to the United Kingdom as trust territories and French and Italian colonies remained occupied until the settlement of a final peace treaty. The sole exception came in the German colony of Tanganyika, where former German Ambassador to the United Kingdom Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck escaped the destruction of his home in Bremen through a chance visit to his former Askari soldiers and worked with a group of veterans to proclaim a biracial Republic of Tanganyika in the aftermath of the German Empire’s destruction. Recalling Lettow-Vorbeck’s famous guerilla warfare campaign in the First World War, both the United Kingdom and the United States begrudgingly recognized this new African Republic.
Though the British were slow to release their colonies in Africa, the immense pressure building up within India could not be contained any longer as the Indian National Congress refused to tolerate the continuation of the home rule status quo. Thanks in large part to the close personal relationship of Prime Minister Bevan and Indian nationalist leader Jawaharlal Nehru, negotiations proceeded smoothly albeit without significant consultation of Muslim authorities that Nehru had clashed with previously. In the final agreement, India was granted independent Dominion status within the British Empire as a united polity and quickly forced the remaining princely states to comply. Under pressure of a possibly violent revolt in Burma, Bevan also pressed for an act to give independence to the Union of Burma soon thereafter. Even less consent from the colonizing power was required for the Indochinese Federation under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, which had already successfully cast off both French rule and a later Japanese invasion. Though cautious of Ho Chi Minh’s socialist principles, President Merriam and Secretary Grew remained concerned about the more dangerous Marxist-Hansenist opposition in the country and decided to recognize his leadership to bolster his position against the radicals. This anti-colonialist streak would also extend itself to Indonesia, where American troops were instructed not to turn the country over to the former Dutch colonial administrators and instead support the independence movement to foster a loyal American ally in Southeast Asia.
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An independence procession in the newly formed Dominion of India.
Democracy in the Far East
Ever since the fateful day in 1939 when the United States declared war upon Japan, the Tiger of the East had become entrenched in the minds of the American people as their mortal enemy. Yet even despite cries for the execution of Emperor Hirohito and the visitation of revenge upon the Japanese people among the public, cooler heads prevailed in the State Department. The initial stages of Japan’s occupation were overseen by President Alvin York, who magnanimously saw Japan as a country that ought to be reformed rather than punished. Pressing for the shattering of its culture of militarism, the installation of structures of democracy, and even the Christianization of the nation, York’s program for the occupation proved massively influential for the future state of the country. Yet it would be President Charles Edward Merriam, eager to draw down United States military commitments, who would finish the process and finalize the treaty with Japan. Among the provisions of the treaty were the independence of Hawaii as a republic under American influence, the annexation of several Pacific islands including the Ryukyu Islands to serve as American naval installations, the placement of the remaining Pacific islands into trust territories, and the total demilitarization of Japan under a democratic system.
The presidency of Tasker H. Bliss had ushered in a special relationship between the United States and China that had persisted for the next twenty years. Yet under President Charles Edward Merriam, it had begun to fray. Upon hearing reports of American aid dollars being embezzled by the Chiang Kai-Shek administration for lavish personal corruption and believing Chiang to be a fundamentally self-interested and unreliable ally, Merriam quickly soured upon the Chinese Premier. Yet with the death of Vice Premier Feng Yuxiang, the opposition to Chiang remained too scattered for there to be any viable alternative. Thus, Merriam began maneuvering to install a set of new East Asian allies to reduce the monolithic power of China in the region. Chief among these was the Republic of Manchuria, which had been declared by a multi-ethnic group of local leaders seeking to avoid Chinese domination and given patronage by both Presidents York and Merriam. A further spite to Chiang would come with President Merriam’s support of the declaration of Taiwanese independence by Lei Chen, as the island had remained occupied by United States Marines after the end of the war. Despite these affronts, tensions between China and the United States were somewhat assuaged by American support for the return of French Yunnan, British Canton, Japanese Fujian, and Japanese Shandong to the Chinese Republic.
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A woman voting in Japan’s first free and fair elections in decades.
World Revolution, of Two Sorts
During the Great Depression, the Dominion of Newfoundland found itself in total collapse and was forced to surrender its independence back to its colonial overlord in the United Kingdom. Yet the war years remained hard for the Dominion and its people remained deeply unsatisfied with its governmental arrangement. As the concept of the Atlantic Union spread through the world with the impending end of the Second World War, a local movement under the leadership of Chesley Crosbie began preaching for a declaration of independence and subsequent application for United States statehood as a demonstration of support for the Atlanticist concept. Though initially dismissed as a fringe movement, a rapid growth of support led the Atlantic Union Party to carry independence to victory in a 1948 referendum. A subsequent victory in the first elections of the Dominion brought the Atlantic Union Party into power and it made its application for American statehood shortly thereafter. Once again angering the anti-Atlanticist section of the party, President Merriam urged that statehood be introduced as a joint resolution of the House and Senate, which ensured its passage even despite the opposition of a critical bloc of Senators who may have made a regular treaty ratification impossible. Yet a similar attempt at statehood for the island of Sicily would be blocked by Merriam, who argued that the referendum used for its justification was illegitimate due to an opposition boycott.
Long suffering under the neo-colonialism of their former colonial masters in France and a newer clique of German elites dominating the local economy, the nation of Haiti became a hotbed for the ideology of Marxism-Hansenism, which preached a violent and permanent world revolution to secure control of the means of production under the democratic management of the workers. After succeeding in its own revolution to overthrow the capitalist class, Haiti became a haven for Hansenists across the Americas seeking to plot their own revolutions by supporting them with revolutionary praxis, arms, and propaganda. After the outbreak of a revolution in Cuba, President Merriam recognized the threat that Haiti posed to the stability of the Americas and ordered the imposition of trade sanctions to strangle the suspected flow of funds and materiel from American Hansenists to the island. Furthermore, Secretary of State Joseph Grew orchestrated a vote in the International Association of American States to expel revolutionary Haiti from the organization due to its support for world revolution and undermining the government of other member states.
​
Map of the world by the end of President Charles Edward Merriam’s first term in 1949. Credit and many thanks to Some_Pole for helping create the map!
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527 New Releases in 2024 To Date
With another week in 2024 consigned to the history books, it’s that time when I bring you up to date with the new casino games released in the previous week. Although slightly fewer than in recent weeks, 25 new slot games were launched throughout the past seven days. Added to the total figure for the year, which we’ve been keeping track of, that means we’ve now witnessed at least 527 new casino games launched in 2024 so far.

What’s in this week’s update?

After plenty of deliberation and a vote, the team here at Casinoplusbonus has determined our top 5 new slot games of the week. We each had a session on all new slots launched and placed our votes, with the slots that received the most, making our top 5. Below, we’ve reviewed each game and given you a rundown of their features. At the very bottom of this update, you can check out the full list of casino games that hit the online casinos in the previous week.

Top 5 Slots Releases 7 May- 13 May 2024

(Rated by the Casinoplusbonus team)
The quality on display throughout all the slot games launched since our last update has been very high, so it wasn’t easy for us to whittle down to our best five. However, votes never lie, and the results are in. The online slots that received the most are Epic Dreams (Relax Gaming), Area Link™ Dragon (AreaVegas Games / Games Global), Bang Bang Reloaded (Booming Games), Riptide Pirates™ (Nailed It! Games), and Dazzling Crown (Endorphina). Once you’ve worked through those, check out the complete list of new games at the end of this report. We’re confident you’ll find many other top games to enjoy!

• Bang Bang Reload (Booming Games)

Giddy up in the latest video slot from Booming Games. Bang Bang Reload takes us to the wild wild west and boasts a max win of 5,200x your stake. On top of that, it has some features that will keep you on your toes.

Bang Bang Reloaded Features Explained

Let’s check Booming Game’s newest slot features:

• Wild Symbol: Can transform in all other symbols except for Scatter, which can only land on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th reel. You increase your chances of triggering the Big SHot WHeel feature the more wilds you collect during a spin.
• Scatter Symbol: It appears only on the 1st, 3rd and 5th reel.
• Cascading Reels: The symbols fall into position, instead of spinning. Each win will start the cascading reels, remove the winning combo, and the remaining symbols fall to the bottom. The new cascade fills empty positions, raising the win multiplier until the maximum multiplier is reached. Once there, it will provide additional cascades until no more wins occur. If there are no wins, the multiplier is reset. Here are the multiplier values:
  • In the base game: 1x, 2x, 3x, 5x.
  • In the Free Spins: 3x, 6x, 9x, 15x.

The multipliers are applied to all wins except for Scatter payouts.

• Big Shot Wheel Feature: The more wilds you collect during a spin, the bigger your chances to trigger the Big Shot Wheel. Once the cascade feature is done, you can trigger the Big Shot Wheel Feature. When it’s triggered, you win one of the following prizes: Minor (15x), Major(100x), or Grand(5,000x). Once the feature is over, the chances for a new one are back to zero, and you have to collect wilds again in order to trigger it. Moreover, having 3 scatters on the reels stops it from activating.
• Free Spins: You can trigger 10 Free Spins by landing 3 Scatters on the reels. You can activate 5 additional Free Spins if you land another 3 Scatters during the Free Spins. There’s also a Free Spins win multiplier (3x, 6x, 9x, 15x) which increases with each subsequent cascade. The win multipliers get reset when no paying commons are on the reels. Scatter (1x) 3 max
• Buy Bonus: You can purchase the Bonus feature for 70x your stake

Booming Games is putting us back in the saddle with their newest western video slot, Bang Bang Reloaded. The slot prides itself on a max win of 5,200x your stake, cascading reels, and some interesting features. Overall, a pleasant throwback to the classical Western slot, with modern visuals and flawless gameplay experience.

Bang Bang Reloaded Online Slot Features

• 5×4 Reels with 40 paylines
• 95.8% Theoretical RTP
• High ‘Variance/Volatility’
• Wild/Scatter Symbols
• Multipliers
• Cascading Reels
• Prize Wheel
• Free Spins
• Min-Max Bets: 0.40 to 400.00
• MaxWin: 5,200x

Casinoplusbonus Rating: 89% (Great)

• Riptide Pirates™ (Nailed it! Games)

Ahoy, Nailed it! Games just dropped a jaw-dropping pirate-themed video slot, Riptide Pirates™. This pirate adventure sounds like fun and offers a max win of 5,000x, special features, and multipliers. Keep reading to find out more.

Riptide Pirates™ Features Explained

Let’s check it out:

• Wild symbols: Replaces all other symbols except Riptide and Pirates Bonus symbols.
• Riptide: Each reel of the slot has a Riptide collection, all the Riptide symbols landing on the reels are added to the collection of that specific reel. You’ll get a free Riptide collections boost when you begin the game for the first time. When a Riptide collection is full, it triggers a Riptide Wild Stack on the following spin. Each Riptide Wild Stack moves one reel to the left with each round. You can win a new Riptide Wild Stack, even when you already have another stack on the reel. In turn, a 2x multiplier is added to the stack or it can increase the existing stack with 1x.
• Pirates Bonus: You can trigger it by landing 3 Pirate Bonus Symbols. The feature begins with up to 4 active cannons, each having 3 chances to hit a target. If successful, the cannon chance counter is reset back to 3. To win its prize, you need to sink a boat or ship. Even hitting a chest grants you a hidden bonus. To sink bigger ships, you must hit all the ship sections.
• Bonus Booster: To unlock up to 4 cannons, you need to fill the bar with the help of Pirate Bonus symbols (they add 1 point to the Bonus Booster). At least one cannon is guaranteed, and the Pirate Bonus starts with the number of active cannons in the booster.
• Pirates Bonus Awards: Ships with the following multipliers (5,000x) and 200x, 50x and 15x. Boats: They award the following prizes: 2x, 3x, 5x or 10x your stake. The bonuses can be increased by Extra Prize, Fortune, or Double. Chests: If you hit a chest you can receive:
  • Instant prizes: 10x, 20x, 50x, or 100x your stake
  • Extra prizes: 2x, 3x, or 10x are added to all boats (Instant prizes of 2x, 3x, or 5x the bet.)
  • Fortune: On every turn, 2x, 3x, or 5x will be added to all boats. (Instant prizes of 2x, 3x, or 5x the bet.)
  • Hunter: this one hits one section of each big ship
  • Reinforcements: an additional 7 boats are being added to the map
  • Double: Doubles the prizes on boats.

Riptide Pirates™ by Nailed it! Games is a splashy adventure with tons of winning opportunities and fun. The 5,000x max win is a great payout, and the fun is guaranteed. One of our favourite video slot releases of the week.

Riptide Pirates™ Online Slot Features

• 5×4 Reels with 25 paylines
• 96.14% Theoretical RTP
• High ‘Variance/Volatility’
• Wild Symbol
• Multipliers
• Riptide
• Pirate Bonus
• Bonus Booster
• Pirates Bonus Awards
• Min-Max Bets: 0.20 to 40.00
• MaxWin: 5,000x

Casinoplusbonus Rating: 88% (Great)

• Area Link™ Dragon (Area Vegas/Games Global)

These game providers have created innovative and exciting gameplay in one fresh slot release – Area Link™ Dragon. Boasting a max win of 5,000x, special features, and interesting gameplay, this slot keeps us intrigued from the get-go. Check it out.

Area Link™ Dragon Features Explained

Let’s see what’s hiding inside this dragon’s nest:

• Wild symbol: It replaces all other symbols except for Fireball symbols and they are stacked on all reels.
• Area Link™ Feature: You can trigger it when at least one Fireball lands on the reels. The Fireball is added to the collection of eggs of the same color (above the reels). The combination of FIreballs collected determines the Dragon Upgrades during this feature. Once triggered, you get 3 Free Spins and all Fireball symbols are locked in place, any additional Fireball symbols reset the number of Free Spins back to 3. Each Fireball symbol grants a cash prize or a jackpot at the end of the feature. The feature stops when all positions get occupied (You could also win the Grand jackpot.) or when the respins are over.
• Green Dragon Upgrade: This one offers a random multiplier (2x, 3x, or 5x) on every spin. The Yellow Fireball symbols get multiplied once when they first get locked into place.
• Purple Dragon Upgrade: You win a second Area Link™ feature array. Each feature array operates independently from the other array. It ends when each array has completed all of its spins or has filled all positions.
• Red Dragon Upgrade: During this feature, you will see Red Fireballs that instantly collect all Yellow Fireballs. Once it’s over, a Yellow Fireball appears in its place.
• Blue Dragon Upgrade: During this feature, Blue Fireballs appear, and their value is added to a random number of Yellow Fireballs. The same Yellow Fireballs can receive a single Blue Fireball feature multiple times. Once the Blue Fireball feature is finished, it is replaced by a Yellow Fireball.
• Multiple Dragon Upgrade: All Dragon Upgrade features triggered on a single base spin are played alongside Area Link™. Here’s what you can expect:
  • If a Green Dragon Upgrade is activated with a Purple Dragon Upgrade – the multiplier is used on all new Yellow Fireballs on both arrays.
  • If a Green Dragon Upgrade is activated with a Red Dragon Upgrade – after the Red Fireball feature, the multiplier will be applied to the Yellow Fireball.
  • If a Green Dragon Upgrade is activated with a Blue Dragon Upgrade – the multiplier is applied before the Blue Fireball feature.
  • If a Red Dragon Upgrade is activated with a Purple Dragon Upgrade – the Red Fireball collects only the values belonging to its array.
  • If a Red Dragon Upgrade is activated with a Blue Dragon Upgrade – all the Blue Fireball features will play out before the Red Fireball features.
  • If a Blue Dragon Upgrade is activated with a Purple Dragon Upgrade – the Blue Fireball adds to Yellow Fireballs within its array.

The video slot from Area Vegas and Games Global brings us a very interesting and fresh take on the dragon theme. Everything from the features, graphics, and sounds immerse you in the gameplay. One of my personal favourite fresh releases this week, and with a max win of 5,000x, this game really knocks it out of the park.

Area Link™ Dragon Online Slot Features

• 5×3 Reels with 20 paylines
• 96.50% Theoretical RTP
• High ‘Variance/Volatility’
• Wild Symbol
• Area Link™ feature
• Free Spins
• Dragon Upgrades
• Multipliers
• Min-Max Bets: 0.20 to 50.00
• MaxWin: 5,000x

Casinoplusbonus Rating: 88% (Great)

• Dazzling Crown (Endorphina)

The latest Endorphina release brings back the classic slot with a slightly modern twist. With a max win of 1,500x your stake, tumble feature and so much more, Dazzling Crown looks zesty. Let’s check it out.

Dazzling Crown Features Explained.

Keep reading to find out what Endorphina has been preparing in their latest video slot, Dazzling Crown:

• Wild Symbol: The Wild Symbol can replace all symbols except Scatter. It appears only on reels 2, 3, and 4, and it expands vertically to complete combinations.
• Scatter: Represented by 2 different symbols:
  • The Diamond Scatter which appears on all reels
  • The Star Scatter which only appears on reels 1, 3 and 5
• Risk Game: Take your chance with the dealer, beat his hand and your win is doubled. You can double your win up to 10 times. You can try again if there’s a draw and both of you have the same value card. You can opt out of this feature if you don’t want to risk losing your win.

It’s always great to revisit the classic slot format, especially when the interface has a modern look and feel. All in all, the 1,500x max win is a decent payout, and although the video slot is not rich in many features, its simplicity is a nostalgic reminder of old slots.

Dazzling Crown Online Slot Features

• 5×3 Reels with 10 paylines
• 96.05% Theoretical RTP
• High ‘Variance/Volatility’
• Tumble Feature
• Expanding Wild/Scatter Symbols
• Risk Game (Gamble Feature)
• Min-Max Bets: 0.10 to 160.00
• Max Win: 1,500x

Casinoplusbonus Rating: 85% (Good)

• Epic Dreams (Relax Gaming)

The newest video slot from Relax Gaming offers a max win of 5,000x your stake and adventurous features inside a sloth’s Epic Dreams.

Epic Dreams Features Explained

Let’s check them out:

• Wild Symbols: It can substitute all other symbols.
• Bonus Pick: This feature gets triggered when all the stone blocks get cleared at the end of the round. If at the bottom of the row, the Super Bonus stone blocks get destroyed, the Super Bonus Pick will be triggered. During any of these bonuses, you’ll have to pick between the Dig Bonus and the Build Bonus (you’ll also have to pick between the super bonuses).
• Dig Bonus: It starts with 5 Free Spins and you can win a +1 Free Spins when every third stone block row gets destroyed to reveal a level row. At the beginning of every spin, all stone block rows that haven’t been destroyed are kept in place. Fresh stone block rows will appear from underneath, this ensures that every free spin starts with 4 stone block rows. During this feature, you have the chance to win the max win if all 50 stone block rows are destroyed and the 5000x your bet stone is revealed. If you land the max win stone, the bonus ends. Moreover, some stone block rows could be hiding Treasure Chest and when they get destroyed you might just activate one of the following features:
  • Coin Add: Offers up to 3 coins to stone blocks.
  • Upgrade: Upgrades the values of up to 3 coins.
  • Wild Add: Introduces a wild into the vacant spots within the 1-3 stone block rows.

The Treasure Chests can hide up to 3 Super Orbs, if you collect 3 during the Dig Bonus feature, it upgrades the feature to Super Bonus. Therefore, you’ll get 5 spins and an additional 2 spins (instead of 1, each time a level row is cleared). Once the Treasure Chest awards the final Super Orb, it won’t offer the feature anymore.

• Super Dig Bonus: You get 10 Free Spins, and for every third stone block row destroyed, you’ll see a level row that awards 3 free spins. After the upgrade, no more Super Orbs can show up.
• Build Bonus: You begin with 3 rounds, during which 3 symbols drop-down; if you fill a row with any symbol, you win, and the counter resets back to 3. Each symbol of the winning row pays out as a three-of-a-kind symbol. The symbols descend into random columns, occupying the lowest available position. The Build Bonus’s multiplier ladder begins at 1x and increases by 1 with every row filled. The payout for symbols in the row is increased by their respective multiplier values. The value of Coin symbols will be adjusted to their final multiplied value upon landing. After you fill 50 rows, the top of the multiplier ladder will be reached and you’ll be awarded with the max win of 5,000x your bet! Additionally, there’s the opportunity for Coin Symbols and Treasure Chests to drop instead of regular paying symbols:
  • Coin Symbols – when included in a winning combination, they grant payouts equivalent to the visible value displayed on the coin.
  • Treasure Chests – open immediately and can trigger one of the following:
    • Coin Add: Ensures only Coin Symbols will land on the reels for one drop
    • Filler: Fills up to 3 rows with random symbols and can trigger wins
    • +1 Drop: Enables Future Spins to drop an extra symbol in each subsequent round

The Treasure Chests can contain up to 3 Super Orbs. Collecting all 3 during the Build Bonus upgrades it to Super Bonus and resets the counter to 4 (till the end of the bonus round). Once the upgrade is offered, no more Super Orbs can appear.

• Super Build Bonus: You begin with 4 rounds and when a win occurs, the round counter is reset to 4.
• Buy Bonus: You can buy the Bonus Pick feature (only during the base game) for 50x your bet at 96.50% RTP.
• Buy Super Bonus: You can purchase the Bonus Pick feature (only during the base game) for 250x your bet at 96.50% RTP. You’ll get to pick between the Super Dig Bonus and the Super Build Bonus.

All in all, Epic Dreams by Relax Gaming has an innovative theme paired with entertaining features and a decent max win of 5,000x your stake. We enjoyed giving it a few spins and the features lived up to the hype.

Epic Dreams Online Slot Features

• 6×7 Reels with 117649 ways to win
• 96.10% Theoretical RTP
• High ‘Variance/Volatility’
• Wild Symbols
• Bonus Pick
• Dig Bonus
• Free Spins
• Super Bonus Versions
• Buy and Super Bonus Feature
• Min-Max Bets: 0.10 to 200.00
• Max Win: 5,000x

Casinoplusbonus Rating: 83% (Solid)

All New Casino Games Released 7 May – 13 May 2024

• (1) Fishin’ Bear (3 Oaks Gaming)
• (2) Lion Kingdom (Amigo Gaming)
• (3) Area Link™ Dragon (AreaVegas Games)
• (4) Luck& Magic Scratch (BGaming)
• (5) Sweet Splash (Boldplay)
• (6) Bang Bang Reload (Booming Games)
• (7) Pug Thugs of Nitropolis (Elk Studios)
• (8) Dazzling Crown (Endorphina)
• (9) B-Ball Blitz (Evoplay)
• (10) Silver Lux: Big Win Spinner (Greentube)
• (11) Sienna Steele™ (High Limit Studios)
• (12) Sweet Candy Cash Megaways Deluxe (Iron Dog Studios)
• (13) Riptide Pirates™ (Nailed It! Games)
  
• (14) KENNETH MUST DIE (NoLimit City)
  
• (15) Majestic Wheelshow (OnAir Entertainment)
  
• (16) Gunpowder (Peter & Sons / Yggdrasil)
  
• (17) Mystic Potion (PGSoft)
  
• (18) Wild Survivor (Play’n Go)
  
• (19) Front Runner Odds On (Pragmatic Play)
  
• (20) Dwarf & Dragon (Pragmatic Play)
  
• (21) Game of Chronos Unicorn (R.Franco Digital)
  
• (22) Epic Dreams (Relax Gaming)
  
• (23) Dreams of Cleopatra (Spinomenal)
  
• (24) Midas Golden Touch 2 (Thunderkick)
  
• (25) 30 Coins (Wazdan)
  

7 May – 13 May 2024 Game Releases Preview

That list will satisfy most of you and give you plenty of options the next time you want to play something new at the online casinos. As for what’s coming throughout this week, we’re expecting a similar number of new slots and casino games in time for our update at this time next week.
As a bit of a spoiler, I’ll let you in on a few I already know are set to come off the production line of several software developers:

• Red Tiger Gaming: Fruit Flash (15 May)
• BGaming: Chicken Rush (15 May)
• Pragmatic Play: Rise of Pyramids (16 May)

That’s just for starters, as we know there will be plenty more where they came from. Make sure you come back to check out our new casino games report next week!

This weekend, on Saturday, May 18th, the 149th running of the Preakness Stakes promises to add yet another exciting chapter to Maryland’s rich horse racing legacy. This event not only showcases the speed and beauty of some of the country’s top thoroughbreds but also celebrates Maryland’s enduring love affair with the sport of kings.
Horse racing in Maryland dates back to colonial times. In 1743, Maryland became the first colony to organize the sport with the founding of the Maryland Jockey Club, which President Andrew Jackson joined almost 100 years after its founding in 1831. On May 4th 1745, the first sanctioned thoroughbred race in the colonies took place in Annapolis, where the winner took home the Annapolis Subscription Plate, which is a stunning silver punch bowl that is now in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s collection.
By the time the American Revolution rolled around, Maryland was already famous for its swift racehorses. This reputation only grew in the ensuing years, with the state playing host to numerous legendary races and horses. A particularly illustrious chapter in Maryland’s horse racing history began with the inauguration of the Preakness Stakes in 1873. Named after the first horse to win at the site, Preakness, the race was held at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, which itself had opened just two years earlier, in 1870. Pimlico, affectionately known as “Old Hilltop.”
The Preakness Stakes is the middle jewel of the prestigious Triple Crown, following the Kentucky Derby and preceding the Belmont Stakes. It’s celebrated for its storied traditions, such as the painting of the weather vane in the colors of the winning horse’s owner and the blanket of black-eyed Susans draped over the victor, which symbolize Maryland’s state flower. These traditions contribute to the festive atmosphere that captures the spirit of Maryland and its historic commitment to horse racing.
Thank you, Baltimore Museum of Art, for providing me with the high-resolution photo of the Annapolis Subscription Plate for this post.

Transforming your look with wet and wavy hair weave opens a world of unique styling possibilities. Here’s how to achieve stunning waves that stand out:
https://preview.redd.it/tunj1utbhx0d1.jpg?width=564&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f94ded6fd1bf926ac3cce45bfef4fcfe60fb354
Curated Installation
Custom Blending
Artistic Placement: Work with a skilled stylist to strategically place the wet and wavy hair weave, ensuring it seamlessly integrates with your natural hair.
Innovative Techniques: Explore unconventional installation methods like micro-linking or crochet braiding for a distinctive look.
Wave Activation Ritual
Elemental Activation
Moonlit Infusion: Set your intentions under the moonlight while misting your wet and wavy weave with a blend of spring water and essential oils. This ritual enhances the natural flow of the waves, imbuing them with cosmic energy.
Sunrise Activation: Greet the dawn by submerging your weave in a basin of spring water infused with herbal essences. As the sun rises, bask in its warmth as it energizes your waves, infusing them with vitality.
Styled Enchantment
Elemental Alchemy
Airy Elegance: Embrace the ethereal by styling your waves into intricate braided crowns adorned with delicate crystals or feathers. This celestial-inspired look captures the essence of air, evoking a sense of whimsical beauty.
Oceanic Glamour: Channel the power of the sea with cascading waves accessorized with seashells and pearls. This oceanic-inspired style embodies fluidity and grace, capturing the allure of underwater enchantment.
Empowered Expression
Manifestation Styling
Intentional Elegance: Set your intentions for the day as you style your waves, infusing each movement with purpose and empowerment. Visualize your goals as you shape your hair, manifesting your desires with every curl and twist.
Affirmation Adornment: Adorn your waves with charms or trinkets imbued with affirmations or symbols of strength and resilience. Let your hair serve as a talisman, empowering you to navigate life with grace and confidence.
Celestial Reverie: Elevate your waves with celestial accents such as crescent moon clips or starry hairpins. This celestial fusion style embodies the union of earth and sky, invoking a sense of cosmic harmony and unity.
With these unique approaches, you can elevate your wet and wavy hair weave into a work of art, reflecting your individuality and connection to the elements. Each styling session becomes a ritual of self-expression and empowerment, allowing you to embody the magic within.