A stamp issue from the South Arabian postal administration of Aden in 1968 was dedicated to the old and, what might have been considered by its designers in 1968, new wonders of the world. The stamp sheet has two triangular airmail stamps each with the value of 200 Yemeni fils.
The stamps show two of the most famous large historic statues. One has the Statue of Liberty at the entrance to the harbour of New York, erected as a symbol of freedom. With a figure 46 metres high on a base 47 of metres, it was a work by the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and installed as a gift from France to America in 1886. In 1903, a plaque bearing the words “The New Colossus” was placed in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island. The second stamp features the Colossus of Rhodes, a bronze statue erected at the Greek island’s port Mandraki in honour of the sun god Helios. It reached a height of 32 metres, took 12 years to build and stood above the port entrance. The colossus was destroyed by an earthquake in 223 BC.
The mistake with the stamps was that the inscriptions were transposed. Under the Statue of Liberty it says ‘The Colossus of Rhodes’ and under the Colossus are the words ‘The Statue of Liberty’.
