Mercury dimes were designed to honor the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Lincoln's assassination occurred in April 1865, and there was a growing movement in the early part of the 20th Century to memorialize him. There was also a call for a new dime design from the coin-collecting community because the dime in use at the time had been in production since 1892 and was considered out-of-date. The Mercury dime, which featured the bust of the Roman god Mercury on the obverse, went into production in 1916 and circulated until 1945.