History

This Polish stamp sheet was issued in 1946 with education as its subject. The letters B, I and E in the bottom right corner of the stamps indicate that Poland was then a member of the International Bureau of Education…

The Soviet Union amazed the world on Nov. 3, 1957, with the launch of the small satellite Sputnik 2. On board was a small dog, Laika, the first animal to actually orbit Earth. Unfortunately Laika was doomed to die during…

Jack (Jackie) Roosevelt Robinson (b.1919 – d.1972) was a black American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in American Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the “baseball collar line” when he started a game at for the Brooklyn…

For Christmas 1983 and also to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Italian artist and architect Raphael (1483-1520), the postal administration of the British Crown Colony of Gibraltar issued a series in November 1983, consisting of three…

This is a continuation of articles featuring the U.S.A. stamp series entitled “Black Heritage”. I thoroughly recommend further research of the lives of the persons featured in this series of articles.

Quite often when browsing stamps I come across items regarding certain people or subjects of which I previously had no knowledge. But that’s part of the fascination of stamp collecting as a hobby – it can be both intriguing and…

Quite often when browsing stamps I come across items regarding certain people or subjects of which I previously had no knowledge. But that’s part of the fascination of stamp collecting as a hobby – it can be both intriguing and…

A pair of stamps issued by the Republic of Chad in 1969 commemorated the travels of two German explorers of the continent of Africa. The right-hand stamp has a portrait of 19th century German explorer Heinrich Barth (1821-1865) next to…

The Deutsche Post (DP) was the state-owned postal and telecommunications monopoly of what was – from 1949 until the reunification of Germany on the 3rd of October 1990 – the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). DP issued the above stamps in 1981. From…

In 1963 a 6-stamp commemorative set was issued by Swiss Post, two being of 50c. value. The 5c. stamp commemorated 50 years of the Swiss Boy Scout League and the 10c, seen below, the centenary of the Swiss Alpine Club.

Quite often when browsing stamps I come across items regarding certain people or subjects of which I previously had no knowledge. But that’s part of the fascination of stamp collecting as a hobby – it can be both intriguing and…

The Māori people brought the beginnings of their art with them from their ancient homeland in Polynesia when they migrated to New Zealand more than 1,000 years ago and they developed those beginnings to new plateaus over successive generations. Wood…

The ancestors of New Zealand’s Māori people arrived in canoes from Pacific islands before 1300 AD. The Māori had no written language and thus their history and legends were passed on orally from generation to generation, and through carving and…

Airmail stamp collecting is a popular topic for many. In the past Yugoslavia used airmail stamps to promote tourism, displaying attractions to be found in the country. The stamps shown here depict aircraft flying over the Thirteenth Century Cathedral of…

As a child I was always fascinated by the puzzle of how it was possible to place a quite sizeable model of a ship inside a narrow-necked bottle. One of my uncles, an ex-navy man, had a beautiful example in…

Painted Ladies at Bransfield House, Port Lockroy??? Read on …….. Port Lockroy is a sheltered harbour off the coast of Wiencke Island on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Located at the meeting point of three seaways, it offers…