What’s so special about these stamps?

Issued in 1966 by Denmark as Red Cross and Red Crescent charity stamps, they have the title in Latin “PER HUMANITATEM AD PACEM” (Through Humanity Towards Peace), the motto of the organisation, which was founded in 1919. Nowadays the slogan “Protecting Human Dignity” has been adopted and is more commonly used.

But the unique fact about the stamps is that they are inscribed with the name of the organisation in 32 tongues – the most languages ever printed on a postage stamp.

They are, in order of appearance: Danish, French, Icelandic, Dutch, Hindi, Malay, Russian, Magyar, Amharic, Greek, Armenian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Romanian, Thai, Czech, Albanian, Farsi, Polish, Finnish, (if you are still with me, congratulations), Arabic, Serbo-Croat, Turkish, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Gaelic, Punjabi, German, English, Italian and Swedish.