A new, annual National Stamp Celebration Day, held in association with The Philatelic Traders’ Society, is being launched this year to celebrate and promote philately. The celebration will be held today, the 4th of May, to commemorate the world’s first ever adhesive postage stamp, the Penny Black, which was issued on 1 May 1840 but officially used from 6 May.
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One can only imagine the horror of experiencing an earthquake. And millions of people live in areas where the possibility of having that experience is great.
The recent ‘quakes in New Zealand prompted us to seek out stamps on the subject.
Let us not forget that the city of Christchurch, in the region of Canterbury on New Zealand’s South Island, was devastated by an earthquake which killed 185 people in February 2011. The stamp sheet below depicts a cathedral ruined by the event. Incredibly, 4,558 earthquakes were recorded in the Canterbury region above magnitude 3.0 on the Richter measuring scale, from 4 September 2010 to 3 September 2014!
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…… was the title of a 1974 book and 1977 film, the main subject of which was the failed Second World War allied military campaign ‘Operation Market Garden’. September 17th is the 62nd anniversary of that operation, which is remembered annually in Arnhem – the Dutch city where the attack took place.
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The 50-stamp mint sheet we’re about to discuss, issued by the United States on February 23, 1976, includes the flag of each state on separate stamps.
The flags are arranged in the order of the state’s admission to the union. Each stamp includes the inscription “Bicentennial Era 1776 – 1976”
and the U.S. Bicentennial emblem.
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Great Britain’s Royal Mail has issued commemorative stamps to mark 50 years of one of the world’s most popular bands, Pink Floyd.
The set of 10 stamps features album covers and live performance photos to mark 1966 – the year the band went professional, having formed in 1965.
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The English Channel island of Guernsey will, on May 6th, issue the beautifully-illustrated stamp set shown below, featuring scenes taken from a book written by a famous author and political exile 150 years ago.
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Stamps have proven to be a wonderful outlet to celebrate the spectacular nature existing in the World. Here we have a selection of stamps that not only feature people and discoveries, but also things that were the largest, fastest or most valuable at their time of issue.
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You probably know by now that Freestampmagazine comes under the umbrella of PostBeeld, along with our other freely-offered service for stamp collectors, Freestampcatalogue. Accordingly, now and then we like to inform our readers of items recently added to PostBeeld’s already enormous and extremely varied stock.
Among recent additions is a large collection of first day covers and prestige booklets from The Netherlands.
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Well, it’s only 2,500 miles!!
It is now almost 158 years ago that one man’s dedication and perseverance bore fruit.
Cyrus W. Field, a retired American paper merchant, formed a company in 1854 with the intention of improving and speeding up communication between North America and Britain. The idea was to transmit telecommunication signals between those lands.
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This year was the 175th anniversary of the first issue by Breat Britain of the now-famous Penny Black postage stamp. This is the second part of an article previously published that looks back to 1990, the 150th annniversary, and some stamps issued that year in commemoration.
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