World's Largest Penny

A 15-foot concrete penny in a small Wisconsin town marks a school project that set out to collect a million pennies for a hospital.

According to the Greater Minocqua Area Visitors Bureau, Dr. Kate Pelham Newcomb was a physician who covered a large part of the Northwoods, driving long distances and using snowshoes to reach remote patients; the nearest hospital was 35 miles away. In 1952 Woodruff geometry teacher Otto Burich asked his seniors to picture a million of something, and the Million Penny Parade began. Students wrote letters, graphed donations and mapped donors. The visitors bureau reports at least 60,000 donors from every state and 23 countries, and a pile of pennies shown at the school gym in late May 1953. The museum says more than 10,000 people packed the gym that day.