5 Dollars - Elizabeth II Johann Sebastian Bach

Issued as part of the wave of Cook Islands commemorative silver struck in the early 1990s — much of it produced by the Pobjoy Mint for foreign distribution rather than local use — this piece honors Bach on the broad anniversary circuit that followed the 1985 tercentenary of his birth. Bach died in Leipzig in 1750, nearly blind from botched eye surgery performed by the itinerant English oculist John Taylor, who also operated on Handel with equally disastrous results.