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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The thematic collector of mushroom/fungi stamps has an amazing choice of stamps to seek out. It is thought that there are around 10,000 known varieties of mushrooms, with experts predicting possibly thousands more undetected. Here are some fine examples of mushroom stamps:
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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialised agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger.
Its aim is to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. With over 194 member states, FAO works in over 130 countries worldwide. The FAO’s definition of food security is: “food security exists when all human beings have, at all times, physical, economic and social access to sufficient, healthy and nutritious food enabling them to meet their energy needs and food preferences to lead a healthy and active life ”.
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Modelled on America’s “Liberty Bell”, the 10-ton “Bell of Freedom and Peace” featured on those stamps arrived at Schöneberg Town Hall (then in the Western Sector of Berlin) on October 21, 1950, having travelled from the United States via Bremerhaven and the military train station in Lichterfelde-West.
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Climate change, global warming and environmental Issues are, quite rightly, often in the news. I, for one, am more than pleased with the great focus on these subjects nowadays although there are many influential people and organisations that, despite scientific evidence, continue to deny the facts.
I have experienced the terrible winter fogs of 1950s London caused by the effects of widespread coal burning, vehicle emissions and other pollutants which killed thousands and hospitalised hundreds of thousands of people. This experience left me with life-long lung problems.
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According to calculations made by an international team of scientists there are 307 million lakes in the world. That number includes all natural lakes, but not human-made lakes such as reservoirs formed by dams. Most lakes on earth are small, with nine out of ten lakes covering less than one hectare (2.5 acres).
The world’s largest lake is the Caspian Sea, which extends over 378,119 square kilometres (145,993 square miles), an area about the size of the American state of Montana or Germany. No other lake is larger than 100,000 square kilometres in area.
The 1943 French stamp shown above features a mountain lake in France, Lac Lérié and the magnificent Meije glacier. The stamp was designed and engraved by Pierre Gandon after a photo taken by Paul Almásy. The lake is situated 2,450 metres above sea level on a plateau in the department of Hautes-Alpes.
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Coffee is second only to oil as the most-traded commodity in the world.
As mentioned in the previous article, Brazil is the largest coffee producer in the world. Coffee is also an important agricultural product for the economy of many Central and South American countries and various islands in the Caribbean. The Costa Rica definitive stamp set below includes three values – the 45 and 80 Centimos and 10 Colones – showing a female coffee bean picker.
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PostNL issues a ‘Life in the North Sea’ commemorative stamp sheetlet today. This contains illustrations of plants and animals found in the North Sea region, drawn by four scientific illustrators from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden.
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In 1968 the Falklands Islands issued the attractive definitive set of stamps shown below. They featured flowers native to the Islands.Then in 1971, as Great Britain was about to adopt a decimal currency system, the stamps were reissued overprinted with the new value amounts.
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In 2010 the Dutch stamp sheet entitled ‘Lang leve het bos!’was voted the best Netherlands stamp issue of the year. It features nature to be found in woodlands and was designed by Bart de Haas.
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