Postmark Calendar

Great detective work, Rod!!

.....What Philately teaches..................

Never come across the name Filberts before,  but I think you nailed it Bud!

Filberts (Hazelnuts)   My second choice in the Chocolate periodic table,
First is Cadburys  "Rum and Raisin"   then second, Cadburys Hazlenut,    Rated as "Dangerously Yummy"

I have to purchase small bars,  for I will eat everything at one sitting to the point of being ill.




 

At the moment our yard is suffuse with catkins and forget-me-nots but, sadly, not chocolate.

May the 12th in Kristiania, Norway and Walla Walla, Washington.

We've had quite a discussion about the flowers in this card, and seem to have settled on forget-me-nots and filbert catkins as the most likely botanical identifications. However, we've yet to touch on the not-too-hidden romantic message of this arrangement with surrounding eggs. The catkins are symbolic of male excess, as I can attest because my black car has recently turned green from all the pollen dust of catkins. And the forget-me-nots are symbolic of female receptiveness. But, alas, this union was not to be. All the catkin pollen in the world makes no difference to a forget-me-not. So, the egg lies broken with no sign of issue from it. A romantic tragedy? No, but sweetly sad. (Yes, I know that Христос воскресe translates into "Happy Easter" / "Christ is risen.")

Ergo,  the corollary,  Most stamp collectors reside in Expensive Cities.



 

ERROR on a stamp.



A Norwegian, Johan Vaaler (1866–1910), has erroneously been identified as the inventor of the paper clip. He was granted patents in Germany
and in the United States  (1901) for a paper clip of similar design, but less functional and practical, because it lacked the last turn of the wire.
Vaaler probably did not know that a better product was already on the market, although not yet in Norway.
His version was never manufactured and never marketed, because the superior Gem was already available.



Long after Vaaler's death his countrymen created a national myth based on the false assumption that the paper clip was invented by an unrecognised Norwegian genius.
Norwegian dictionaries since the 1950s have mentioned Vaaler as the inventor of the paper clip,
and that myth later found its way into international dictionaries and much of the international literature on paper clips.

What an interesting cover, Vasia!! Thanks for showing it!

You probably know this, since you amazingly appear to be fluent in nearly every language , but "Etranger" on this postmark is likely French for "stranger", "foreigner", etc.  "à l'étranger" means "abroad" or going to a foreign destination.

I wonder if Russia did what Japan did, and have a domestic cancel using the native alphabet (or characters, for Japanese), and another cancel for foreign mail that used the Roman alphabet, and, in this case, French.  "Moscou" is the French spelling for Moscow.

-- Dave

Dave,

in the large majority of cases, the cancellers used on international mail were in Cyrillic script, or, more accurately, were similar to the ones used on domestic mail (i.e in Cyrillic or Cyrillic + one of the languages of the Soviet Republics). There are exceptions, such as the Moscow postmark above in French or the frequently encountered bilingual postmark from the Kiev railway station in the Ukrainian and French languages (see below):



Notice that the postmark cancelling the stamps is also bilingual: in the Russian and Ukrainian languages.

It`s May 14th in Lancashire, England.

Glasgow, Scotland on May 15th, 1996.