E PLURIBUS UNUM

This phrase appears on every U.S. coin…but what does it mean? Don’t think too hard—the answer’s right here.

THE NATIONAL SEAL

Shortly after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Continental Congress created a committee of three—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin—to design an official seal for the United States.

Adams wanted a picture of Hercules standing between two allegorical figures representing Virtue and Sloth; Jefferson wanted a depiction of “The Children of Israel in the Wilderness”; and Franklin suggested a representation of Moses parting the Red Sea. They couldn’t agree, so they hired Swiss-born artist Pierre Eugene du Simitiere to come up with a compromise design. Du Simitiere combined the three themes, then added his own flourishes to the goulash. They hated it.

SEAL OF APPROVAL

Frustrated, they hired a Philadelphia lawyer named William Barton to come up with something better. Barton proposed his mishmash of symbols, including an eagle and crest on one side of the seal and an unfinished pyramid on the other. But that wasn’t right, either. Finally, Secretary of Congress Charles Thomson stripped away everything except the eagle and the pyramid, and added his own symbols, including a shield over the eagle’s chest, an olive branch in one of the eagle’s claws (symbolizing peace), and a bundle of arrows (symbolizing war) in the other. That’s the seal that was finally adopted; you can see it on the $1 bill.

SALAD DAYS

As it turns out, two elements of du Simitiere’s original design did make it into the final seal: the all-seeing eye of Providence, which was placed atop the unfinished pyramid, and the motto E Pluribus Unum: “From Many, One,” which is printed on a banner the eagle holds in its mouth. Where did du Simitiere get the motto? Believe it or not, historians speculate that he borrowed it from the masthead of Gentleman’s Magazine, a popular publication in the late 1700s. The editors of the magazine, in turn, took it from color est e pluribus unus, a line in Virgil’s poem “Moretum” that “refers to the making of a salad.”

NASA’s $5 million “Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill” is named after comedian Stephen Colbert.