Elisabeth of Austria died on September 10, 1898, stabbed with a sharpened needle file by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni on the shores of Lake Geneva — a killing so improbable that she initially didn't realize she had been fatally wounded and walked back to her steamship unassisted. Austria issued this coin for the centenary of that death, not her birth, which gives the commemorative an unusually somber premise by any standard.
Elisabeth of Austria died on September 10, 1898, stabbed with a sharpened needle file by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni on the shores of Lake Geneva — a killing so improbable that she initially didn't realize she had been fatally wounded and walked back to her steamship unassisted. Austria issued this coin for the centenary of that death, not her birth, which gives the commemorative an unusually somber premise by any standard.