The theatrical group Stage Commandos was born during World War II within the dockyards in Malta’s Cottonera locality. This theatrical group was formed purely to entertain the dock workers, keeping their morale high and positive. The workers themselves built a stage out of wooden boxes and soon the performances attracted audiences from the areas around the docks.
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This article features four Norwegian rock music performers well known in Scandinavia but possibly not so well known in other parts of the world. In 2009 Norway issued a set of four stamps honouring their musical achievements. On the stamp above is rock singer and musician Jan Rohde, who was born on July 4 (US Independence Day), 1942 in New York, to Norwegian parents. At the age of 13, Rohde moved with his parents to Norway. From the age of 16 he performed with various bands, such as The Cool Cats. He toured Europe with the girl group The Melody Sisters. Later the group The Adventurers was formed – they were later renamed The Wild Ones. The group consisted mainly of Norwegian and Swedish musicians, but also made it big in Finland. Rohde died on October 9, 2005 in Hägersten, Stockholm.
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PostBeeld has recently acquired a large amount of Europa stamps and we feature here a selection with the theme History, all from the year 1982. The first is from Portugal, showing King Emanuel I (1469-1521) on his way to meet Pope Leo X in the year 1514.
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The American Apollo 11 lunar mission took place in July 1969. It is remembered as one of the world’s most significant historical events, the impact of which has affected the lives of the world’s population, and continues as a source of inspiration to this day. 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of what was the first moon landing.
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Austria 2018, woven textile stamp with Tyrolean hat.
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I’ve long been fascinated by the incredible feats of the brave and extremely tough men who set off from Europe and Scandinavia in search of fabled lands. It’s possible that those featured in this article were preceded by unknown explorers but here we mention those whose exploits are confirmed in history.
Ferdinand Magellan (born circa 1480 – died 1521) was a Portuguese explorer who organised the Spanish expedition to the East Indies from 1519 to 1522, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the Earth, completed by the Spaniard Juan Sebastian Elcano after Magellan was killed on the island of Mactan (now part of the Philippines). He was also discoverer of what was named the Strait of Magellan, a navigable sea route in southern Chile separating mainland South America to the north and Tierra del Fuego to the south. The Strait is the most important natural passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
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The Spanish Civil War had a dramatic effect on the artist Pablo Picasso’s outlook on life. Not having previously been a man interested in politics, the 1936 Franco uprising in Spain was an event that dragged him out of this disinterest and made him a defender of peace and liberty. After he painted his famous response to the German bombing of the Basque village of Guernica in the north of Spain in 1937, Picasso became a symbol not only of anti-fascism but specifically a symbol of the opposition to fascism by artists and intellectuals.
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In this second part of the story we provide an analysis of the song Bohemian Rhapsody.
Freddie Mercury never really gave a clear explanation about the meaning of the song’s lyrics. The text contains many philosophical and religious elements. According to one of the many theories Bohemian Rhapsody was inspired by the 18th Century book Faust by the German literary writer Goethe in which the main character makes a pact with the devil.
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An extremely popular event is held each year in the period between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day in The Netherlands. A radio station, NPO Radio 2, hosts a week-long programme playing what listeners vote to be the best 2,000 songs of all time.The following article was written by one of the contributors to our Dutch-language ‘Postzegelblog’ website, Randy Koo:
The polling stations are closed. And for the 16th year the six-minute and six-second mini rock opera song Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) by the band Queen is number 1 in the TOP2000. Meanwhile, a film (biopic) with the same title has recently appeared in the cinema. How did Queen come into being and why is Freddie Mercury so important to the music world?
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The stamp depicted on the left was issued by Ascension Island in 1979 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of the great British explorer, cartographer, navigator and Royal Navy Captain, James Cook.In both of the stamp sets below, James Cook’s chronometer appears. It is, specifically, a marine chronometer made by the man who invented the marine chronometer in 1730. He was Englishman John Harrison (1693-1776). This was the first of a series of chronometers that enabled accurate marine navigation.
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