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Message:: [QUOTE="JeffC, post: 6193836, member: 90913"]Have you ever accepted something you read or learned as true, only to find out years later that it wasn't so? One of the first things I learned about the Morgan Dollar concerned its tail feathers.  When the Mint released the first Morgans in 1878, the eagle shown had 8 tail feathers. Supposedly, prompted by ornithologists who complained that bald eagles should have an odd number of tail feathers, the Mint then changed the design to 7 tail feathers.  This resulted in the 7/8 (7 over 8) variety.  I guess most of you already know this story. [ATTACH=full]1245769[/ATTACH]But something I didn't know came next.  Over the weekend, I decided to count the tail feathers on the reverse of a 2020 Silver Eagle, expecting an odd number. [ATTACH=full]1245770[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]1245774[/ATTACH] To my surprise, I counted 12! Didn't they care about the odd number? So I read up a bit more and found out that a bald eagle actually has 12 tail feathers.  I've always assumed (from my "Morgan Lessons") that bald eagles have an odd number of tail feathers.  That, in fact, is not true.  They have 12, as correctly depicted by John Mercanti. Perhaps many numismatists already know this.  I didn't, until this past weekend, and would like to share it here with others who might have been similarly misled by the Morgan tail feather story.[/QUOTE]