HELENSBURGH TV inventor John Logie Baird failed to win enough online votes in 2010 to be featured on a new £5 coin being issued by the Royal Mint — and was beaten by a Beatle!
He faced stiff competition from Jane Austen, Douglas Bader, Sir Walter Raleigh, Emmeline Pankhurst and John Lennon to become the latest Great Briton on a new coin being struck by the Royal Mint.
The singer won by a landslide from runner-up Jane Austen, with Douglas Bader third and the TV inventor fourth.
The Great Britons Set is considered by the Royal Mint to be one of the most exciting collections that it has ever produced.
With so many Great Britons who have excelled in the political, scientific and literary fields, the Royal Mint carefully chose a selection of some of the greatest men and women in British history to remember and immortalise on the ‘Great Britons’ coinage.
Already in the collection are Sir Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth I, Bobby Moore, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, William Shakespeare, Robert Falcon Scott, Florence Nightingale, Charles Dickens, Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Captain James Cook, Sir Alexander Fleming, Diana Princess of Wales, Sir Edward Elgar, 1st Viscount Montgomery, King Henry VIII, Sir Christopher Wren, Sir Francis Drake, John Constable, Oliver Cromwell, and Sir Alexander Graham Bell.
