Let us begin another week of hastily paraphrasing Wikipedia entries by meeting Luis Alves de Lima e Silva, aka the Duke of Caxias. Also a Baron, a Viscount, a Count, and a Marquis, but who’s counting? A war hero in the various great battles of the 19th century, his birthday was declared “Soldier’s Day” in 1923. He spent time in government as the Minister of WAR as well, and serves as the patron saint of the Brazilian Army, as far as I can tell.
The note is good for two cruzeiros, a unit of money that suffered a run of bad publicity after a run of ruinous inflation; the cruzeiro would be retired in the mid 80s and replaced with Cruzados Novos – a bit like “dollars” giving way to “New Dollarinos,” I imagine.
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