Not-quite astro stamps
from pre 1957
These didn’t make it on to my list of
astro stamps for the reasons stated.
ARGENTINA
SG 827 from 1951 (commemorating the 10th
anniversary of the state airline) and SG 856 from 1954
(commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Argentine Post
Office in South Orkney) each have a recognizable Southern Cross
in the background, but it is incidental to the composition of
the stamp.
SG 827
SG 856
BOLIVIA
SG 511 and 521 from 1951 (not illustrated)
depict the so-called Gate of the Sun, but its astronomical
connection is doubtful.
CANADA
SG 447 from 1953 (below) has what appears
to be an aurora behind the head of a polar bear, but it’s
not a substantial part of the design.
SG 447
CHILE
SG 252, 253 from 1934 and SG 296, 297 from
1941 (below) all show an aircraft and the Southern Cross. The
1941 issues might just count but the 1934 design is too
stylized. These scans come from the Antonius Ra World
collection
http:
//solo18.abac.com/mward/collection/mapindex.html
SG 252, 253
SG 296, 297
Another stylized Southern Cross appears on
Chile SG 381–3 from 1948 (part of a natural history
series featuring a range of botanical and zoological designs).
The rest of the star pattern appears to be imaginary. The scan
below is from Andrew Fowler of Paper Heritage.
SG 381–3
MEXICO
SG 438 from 1923 (not illustrated) shows
what is called the Pyramid of the Sun, while SG 554 (1934)
shows the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, and SG 619 (1938) shows
the Chichen Itza ruins, but all these have more to do with
religion and ritual than astronomy. The same goes for the
Pyramids of Egypt.
A couple of red herrings:
Judging by the brief catalogue descriptions
alone, the following two stamps might appear to deserve
categorization as astro stamps – but they are not.
Danzig SG 245 (1936) shows an area of the port now known as Gdansk
with a tower that is described in the Gibbons catalogue as an
“observatory”. This waterside building, which is
now an archaeological museum, was a lookout post for monitoring
shipping, like a coastguard station, not observing the sky.
Guatemala SG 218 (1926) is described in the Gibbons catalogue as
“National Observatory”. In fact it is the National
Observatory la Aurora, a meteorological (and nowadays also
geophysical) observatory, not an astronomical one.
Why no Euler, Hamilton, Poincaré?
Although these three made contributions to
astronomy, they were not primarily astronomers (not even
Hamilton, despite being a professor of astronomy!). We can
therefore conclude that they made it on to stamps for reasons
other than astronomical ones.
|
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|