Under that law, President Lyndon B. Johnson was guilty of a capital offense.

Fifty years ago today, Johnson signed the Coinage Act of 1965, setting into motion five decades of currency debasement that continues today. Under the law, silver dimes and quarters would no longer contain silver. Instead, the Treasury would mint coins made of "composites, with faces of the same alloy used in our 5-cent piece that is bonded to a core of pure copper."

Today, we call pre-1965 dimes and quarters "junk silver," but we really should be calling the modern coins junk, because that's what they're worth.

Johnson promised removing silver would have no impact on the value of US coinage. "[The] Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be, and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin," he said.