10 Baht - Rama IX 200th Anniversary of Rama IV

Rama IV — known in the West primarily through the heavily fictionalized *The King and I* — was a scholar-king who spent 27 years as a Buddhist monk before ascending the throne in 1851, using that time to teach himself Latin and English and to correspond directly with Western scientists. His 1868 astronomical expedition to observe a solar eclipse, from which he calculated the path of totality himself, ended in his death from malaria contracted at the observation site.

The bicentennial fell under the reign of Bhumibol Adulyadej, himself the longest-reigning Thai monarch in recorded history at the time of this issue.