Today’s card was sent by Badhu from China. He sent me a card of Nanjing University, China. Nanjing University, is a major public university, the oldest institution of higher learning in Nanjing, Jiangsu, and a member of the elite C9 League of Chinese universities. Established in 1902 as Sanjiang Normal School, it underwent a number of name changes until it was renamed Nanjing University in 1950. It merged with the University of Nanking in 1952. Nanjing, situated in the lower part of the Yangtze, has historically been the capital of various kingdoms and dynasties, with the reputation as the ce ..read more

Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and driest continent. It contains 90 per cent of all of the ice on Earth in an area just under 1.5 times the size of the United States. It has no government and no indigenous population. Instead, the entire continent is set aside as a scientific preserve. The frozen southern continent wasn’t spotted until 1820. American seal hunter John Davis was the first to claim he landed on Antarctica in 1821, although some historians dispute his claim. At the beginning of the 20th century, two groups of explorers set out across the desolate Antarctic landscape in a rac ..read more

Silvia sent this card from Brazil. The card shows an aerial view of the city of Natal in northeastern Brazil. 2 flags can also be seen; one of Brazil and one of Natal. At the bottom of the card, Xanana, the flower of the city can also be seen. Natal is the capital and largest city of the state Rio Grande do Norte, located in northeastern Brazil. Natal is a major tourist destination and an exporting hub of crustaceans, carnauba wax and fruits, mostly melon, sugar apple, cashew and papaya. Natal was one of the 12 cities selected to host games of the FIFA World Cup, with Brazil as the ..read more

Why don’t we talk about the history of Burmese stamps today? Map of British Burma Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a country in Southeast Asia. Myanmar is the largest of the Mainland Southeast Asian states by area. Its capital city is Naypyidaw, and its largest city is Yangon (Rangoon). Myanmar has been a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since 1997. There was no postal system and no records of using stamps in Burma during the rule of Burmese Kings. Burmese used local messengers and volunteer carriers to send letters. Burma had been an autonomous ..read more

Today’s card was sent by Emily Takada from Tokyo, Japan. The card was bought at the Palace Hotel, Tachikawa, Tokyo. It shows the waiting area inside the hotel. This is a Western-style hotel which is usually called a “Comfort Hotel” in Japan. As tourism becomes more popular in Japan, more of these hotels open up. These types of hotels are not often found in Japan when compared to traditional Japanese-style accommodations such as Ryokan and Minshukus. There are more than 110,000 accommodations in Japan. The breakdown is about 10,000 hotels and less than 80,000 ryokan. The remaining ar ..read more

Most of us have heard of the bird, emu. Emus are indigenous to Australia, they are very large birds and they’re flightless. The emu is also featured on the Australian coat of arms. Many stamps, like the above one, have also been issued with a picture of an emu. At first, I assumed the Emu War to be a joke. It turns out not only did it happen, but it also resulted in a victory for the emus. Can you believe that? You will after you read this article. A mob of emus. Emus migrate from the coastal regions to inland regions each year for breeding. An estimated 20,000 emus realised that the ..read more

Today, we’ll take a look at a card from Russia. It was sent by Anastasia from Norilsk, Russia. The card read “Keep calm and wait for summer”, which is a really popular meme format used worldwide. But, do you know the history behind it?  The sentence on the above card is an imitation of the phrase “Keep calm and carry on”. Keep Calm and Carry On was a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939 in preparation for World War II. The poster was intended to raise the morale of the British public, threatened with widely predicted mass air attacks on major cities.  ..read more

Today’s card is from Marion in Germany but, the card she sent was bought in the Netherlands. There’s a connection and you’ll get to know what it is later in this post. The card reads “Groeten uit Vaals” meaning Greeting from Vaals in Dutch. It shows different places from the town of Vaals in the Netherlands. Vaals is located right on both the Belgian and German border, with the much larger German city of Aachen at just a stone’s throw away. The connection between Germany and the Netherlands which I was talking about earlier is that Vaals is where the borders of the countries Germany, Belgium ..read more

I was going through my stamps and came across a stamp which said “Ciskei”. I knew Ciskei was a part of South Africa, but nothing other than that. So I went ahead and tried to learn more about it; that’s when I came to know that there were other parts of South Africa which had issued their own stamps too. I’ll be talking about them in this post. Ciskei, the only region I knew about was 1 of the 4 independent “Bantustans”, the others being Transkei, Venda and Bophuthatswana. Let’s learn more about them! With the passing of the Bantu Authorities Act in 1951, the apartheid set in motion the creati ..read more

Lisa sent this card from the United States. She’s from Little Rock, Arkansas. The card showed the state flag of Arkansas. This is also the first state flag I received from the USA. Arkansas is a state in the south-central region of the United States. Napoleon Bonaparte sold French Louisiana to the United States in 1803, including all of Arkansas, in a transaction known today as the Louisiana Purchase. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) was a land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 mi ..read more