I originally posted this on Facebook but decided to put it here as well.

Useless stamp factoid of the day. Burma Shave, which was famous for it’s roadside advertising poems in the 1930’s, was named after the country of Burma because it was originally a liniment whose ingredients were imported from there.

I would write this stuff on my stamp blog but no one visits there so…. I will leave you with 2 original Burma Shave poems.

Does your husband
Misbehave
Grunt and grumble
Rant and rave
Shoot the brute some
Burma-Shave

No matter
How you slice it
It’s still your face
Be humane
Use
Burma-Shave

Burma is now called, Myanmar and this stamp feature a large bell which is frequently called “The Liberty Bell” (No, not the one in Philadephia) but is more properly identified as the Mingun Bell which is presently located in Mingun, Sagaing, Myanmar.

I had originally posted I believed it to be the Great Bell of Dhammazedi, the largest cast bell to ever have been made. At 327.5 tons, it was stolen by a Portuguese warlord and was lashed to a raft tied to the back of his ship. The bell fell off the raft, sunk to the bottom of the river and is thought to be buried there in 25 feet of mud. As a humorous aside, the warlord’s ship was also sunk by the bell. Later he would be captured and impaled on a stake.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

Based on the photo I recently found I believe it is the Mingun Bell. The cross brace and figurines astride the top of the bell look more like the one depicted in the stamp.

The Mingun bell is 97.5 tons (199,999 pounds) and while no slouch in the huge bell department certainly can not compare to the Great Bell of Dhammazedi (which had a much more interesting story).

It was knocked down in 1893 by an earthquake so I wouldn’t let your kids play under it.

It is not the biggest nor the heaviest bell. That title goes to the Bell of Good Luck located in Foquan Temple in Pingdingshan, Henan, China. It is close to the Spring Temple Buddha, the world’s tallest Buddha statue. It comes in at 116 tons.

But wait, there’s more. The Bell of Good Luck is the largest WORKING bell. The largest bell title, although not working, goes to the Tsar Bell in Moscow. While making the Tsar Bell a fire broke out in May 1737. Workers threw cold water on the bell to put out the fire and cracked it in 11 places.

The wooden supports holding the bell up also burned and it fell back into the casting pit. The Tsar Bell remained in its pit for almost a century. Unsuccessful attempts to raise it were made in 1792 and 1819. Napoleon Bonaparte, during his occupation of Moscow in 1812, considered removing it as a trophy to France, but was unable to do so. It was too heavy. Finally in 1936 it was lifted out an put on a pedestal.

My apologies, again, for the mis-attribution (is that a word? Almost every temple in Burma (Myanmar) has a bell and I could find no explanation on what the stamp depicted.

To wrap things up, there was a tongue-in-cheek MAD Magazine article “Postage Stamp Advertising” where the concept was, ads could be placed on stamps to supplement the beleaguered US Postal Service. This is one of them.