The stamps in this 2020 Australia Post issue show six species of bird that have been officially proclaimed as emblems of an Australian state or territory. Featured in the designs are artworks from British ornithologist John Gould’s seven-volume “The Birds of Australia”, published in 1848.
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To commemorate the eclipse of the sun on 21 August 2017, Alderney Post in that year issued six special thermochromic stamps featuring six coastal locations in the world which experienced a partial eclipse.
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A recent issue by Swiss Post shows two images not visible to the naked eye that relate to common garden flowers. A microscopic factor of nearly 3,000x was necessary to display the invisible scenery on this stamp.
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Quite often when browsing stamps I come across items regarding certain people or subjects of which I previously had no knowledge. But that’s part of the fascination of stamp collecting as a hobby – it can be both intriguing and educational at the same time. This is a continuation of articles featuring the U.S.A. stamp series entitled “Black Heritage”. I thoroughly recommend further research of the lives of the persons featured in this series of articles.
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) was an American artist and the first African-American painter to gain international acclaim.
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Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers is the title of a painting by Edgar Degas shown on a stamp in a series featuring famous composers with artwork by Degas, issued by Paraguay in 1980.
But some things were not quite right with the stamp! In the top right hand corner is an image of a bewigged gentleman. The caption declares him to be Juan Sebastian Bach. So one mistake is the translation of the name of the famous composer ‘Johann’ to the Spanish-language version ‘Juan’.
But sometimes sons can be mistaken for their fathers and there lies the biggest mistake!
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The railway has played an incredibly important part in the lives of billions of people over the years. The first public railway which used only steam locomotives all the time, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, designed and built by George Stephenson, was opened in 1830 in the United Kingdom. Great Britain produced a lovely portrayal of the railway over a set of five stamps to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first journey on that line.
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Rookworst (smoked sausage), wortelen (carrots), hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles)? These and other typically Dutch cuisinal ingredients are almost even more anchored in the culture of the Netherlands than tulips and windmills. A good reason for PostNL to publish a series of stamp sheets about traditional Dutch customs, products and dishes. How could the series’ title be other than “Typically Dutch”?
975 total views, 2 views today
Quite often when browsing stamps I come across items regarding certain people or subjects of which I previously had no knowledge. But that’s part of the fascination of stamp collecting as a hobby – it can be both intriguing and educational at the same time. This is a continuation of articles featuring the U.S.A. stamp series entitled “Black Heritage”.
7,976 total views, 16 views today
A pair of stamps issued by the Republic of Chad in 1969 commemorated the travels of two German explorers of the continent of Africa.
The right-hand stamp has a portrait of 19th century German explorer Heinrich Barth (1821-1865) next to Lake Chad. Barth was one of the first Europeans to recognise the significance and richness of African history and culture. Travelling under the Arabic name Abd el Kerim, he crossed the Sahara desert and over the Air mountains into Central Africa.
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The Deutsche Post (DP) was the state-owned postal and telecommunications monopoly of what was – from 1949 until the reunification of Germany on the 3rd of October 1990 – the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). DP issued the above stamps in 1981. From left to right they show the 1892-built Dabel windmill in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the mill (built 1889) at Pahrenz in Saxony, also in Saxony the Dresden-Gohlis windmill (1828) and the mill at Ballstadt in the state of Thuringia.
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