Post by Londonbus1 on Mar 10, 2016 18:58:22 GMT
On December 28th 1908, just after 5.15am a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the Sicily/Calabria area of Southern Italy killing between 100,000 and 200,000 people. The city of Messina alone lost 90% of it's inhabitants. It shocked the world into raising funds to help the survivors and a number of countries joined together to produce Charity Labels for sale in their towns and cities and in their respective currency denominations.
Austria, Germany, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Russia, USA, Netherlands and Italy issued triangular-shaped labels of a common design, printed in Se-Tenant sheets of 50.
The item below I found recently and was a wonderful surprise as I had never seen a full sheet before.
A limited edition of 50 folders were put together for a Poster Stamp display by the UK's Cinderella Stamp Club on July 16th 2011 using sheets of German Pfennig Messina Charity Labels. These were mounted inside.
I have long found it rather odd that while these labels are not plentiful, when I do find them [or the odd one], they are invariably the German Pfennig types.
Still, it was a special moment to find a full sheet.
