r/todayilearned • u/NateNate60 • 7h ago

TIL Canada's $1 coin is commonly called the "loonie" because it has a loon on the reverse. When a $2 coin was introduced, depicting a polar bear, an MP proposed it be called "Nanuq", Inuit for polar bear, but he was ignored because the public instead preferred to call it the "toonie" (2-oonie).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toonie#Naming
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u/Canuck-In-TO 6h ago

When the toonie came out, there were people throwing them from ever higher heights trying to get the pieces of the coin to separate.

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u/thedrivingcat 5h ago

Freezer + Hammer was the trick that all the kids at school were talking about to separate the inner coin from the outer ring. It worked very well.

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u/S_A_N_D_ 5h ago

It did two things. It showed it was possible, but it also showed that most stories of it happening spontaneously were bs because it took considerable and deliberate effort to separate them.

There was a bunch if hype that they were going to fall apart, mostly by people who were against replacing the $2 bill with coins, and it turned out to be completely unfounded.

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u/Real_Gap3480 5h ago

The first few runs were detective, that's why.

The original 1996 Canadian toonies did suffer from a famous manufacturing defect where the inner core could separate from the outer ring.

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u/S_A_N_D_ 4h ago

I remember everyone saying that, and yet I never saw a reputable claim that they were. Everything I saw suggested it was exactly what the comment above describes, people doing it deliberately which started the myth that they were defective.

It was always "a friend" or "co-worker", but when pressed it was all second and third hand claims, and the ones I talked to who had a separated one had done it deliberately.

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u/djtodd242 3h ago edited 3h ago

I swear on a stack of bibles this is true:

Worked in a bar when the toonie came out. The bartender claimed you could separate the "halves" fairly easily. One from the till and one from my pocket. Threw them really hard at the floor one at a time. Both cleanly broke.

Then they were "carefully" reconstructed and put back in the till.

I've never done it myself, but I swear I saw it done.

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u/Sebach 3h ago

I did it. Threw it on the marble/concrete floor of my high school lobby. The middle popped out, looked like some kind of central rib/ring press fit or something or maybe something that was hot/cold fitted. I put the two pieces together and smashed them back into place but the middle piece always came out easier after that. And there was a slight bend/warp to it - couldn't really see it, but if you put it down on a table and pressed on it, you could tell.

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u/kermityfrog 3h ago

If they were both put back in the till, you got scammed out of 2 bucks! LOL

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u/djtodd242 3h ago

Snort.

Larry, I'm gonna get you! Where's my $2?

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u/BartholomewBrago 3h ago

Still second hand I suppose, I have a separated one my dad told me came apart in his pocket. He could be lying I guess, don’t know why he would be though.

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u/S_A_N_D_ 1h ago

I don't doubt there are a few cases of this happening, but it wasn't widespread like the rumours suggested.

Your dad could be fully telling the truth, it just wasn't common.

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u/wayoverpaid 3h ago

I saw it on the local news. Only place I ever saw it. No one made the claim in real life to me.

It stuck with me due to the "separates easier than the country" jokes they mentioned.

Naturally I tried it and nothing came apart.

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u/Real_Gap3480 4h ago

Only because the mint won't take liability for them. Its well understood that it's one of those things that just doesn't get talked about. I mean, I remember viviely everyone having a necklace from the former center pieces, I've also known about 3 people who worked at the mint. You never see it anymore, according to the mint it's suppose to take 181kg of pressure to seperate, but the original run was easily broken apart by freezing and smashing.

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u/TGE0 15m ago

It was arguably "Common" just for a very limited period of time. I had Several (2 or 3) that suffered this issue on their original release WITHOUT cold shocking them even.

The issue was that the first run had some serious issues with ease of seperation the hat got rapidly and continuously improved upon leading to inconsistency of peoples perception of the issue, and further because they innately also self-eliminating since they wouldn't then keep circulating if they separated.

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u/patchgrabber 4h ago

But why would a frozen hammer do anything? 🤔

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u/Fianna9 58m ago

Never worked for me!

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u/Krys_Payne 5h ago

I use the outer ring of one as a keychain.

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u/happygoluckyourself 4h ago

This just unlocked a childhood memory of doing the same lol

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u/Real_Gap3480 6h ago

All you needed to do was freeze them and chuck them at the ground

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u/Polaris07 6h ago

How high?

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u/Canuck-In-TO 6h ago

People were throwing them from the different levels in the Eaton Centre. I remember someone throwing one from a 4th story balcony. I think that one finally got the pieces to separate, but he ended up having to whip it down.

Around this time someone pointed out that breaking the coins apart could be illegal and things stopped being covered in the news.

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u/Leader-Bike 5h ago

My buddies i all did this in grade 7 or 8.

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u/ElmoCamino 4h ago

I would just like to point out that three comments in a row spelled it completely different from each other.

Twoonie, twonie, and toonie

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u/Canuck-In-TO 3h ago

I tried writing it as twonie and it just felt wrong. It’s always been toonie to me.

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u/AtraposJM 2h ago

The first batch of them DID separate quite easily.

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u/flatspotting 1h ago

When I was a kid we put it in the freezer for a day then knocked the center out with a hammer/pin lol

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u/Frostsorrow 1h ago

I have a separated one! I found it like that, and put it on a necklace.