Balloons are very popular with topical collectors and you can find many stamps featuring balloons from many countries. I think a lot of the popularity has to do with the US Zeppelin airmails of the U.S., another set I will never probably own.

In any case, the one above issued in 1936 in France features François Pilâtre de Rozier (1754-1785), physicist and balloonist. Francois (let’s just call him Frank) first saw a balloon in June of 1783 when he witnessed the first public demonstration of a balloon by the Montgolfier brothers. Later, in September. he would assist with the untethered flight of a sheep, a cockerel, and a duck from the front courtyard of the Palace of Versailles. French King Louis XVI.

Pushing the ballooning envelope he petitioned to be one of the pilots of the first manned balloon flight. Originally criminals would have been used, due to the threat of death, but he wanted the prestige. In November, 1783 he, and a companion, flew for a 25 minute trip and landed safely.

His final flight was an attempt to fly from France to England over the English channel. At a certain point, while 1,500 feet in the air, his balloon caught fire and he plunged to his death.

Balloons flying in France has always been looked at as a status symbol. In 19th Century Paris, two men, Monsieur de Grandpre and Monsieur de Pique quarreled over the affection of a woman. Rather than simply have a due to the death on the ground they decided to take their dispute to the air. In May of 1808 they each rose into the air in separate balloons armed with shotguns and accompanied by a co-pilot (what was he thinking?).

De Pique fired and missed. Be Grandpre hit De Piques balloon which plummeted to the ground killing both passengers.

Pretty classy way to die. huh?

James Garfield (1831-1881) was the 20th President of the United States, serving from March to September 1881. He was born in a log cabin in Ohio, and he grew up in poverty, working on a farm to help support his family.

Garfield attended Williams College in Massachusetts, and he later became a professor of classics and mathematics at Hiram College in Ohio. He was also a preacher in the Disciples of Christ church.

Garfield served in the Union Army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of major general. After the war, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he became known for his support of civil rights and education.

In 1880, Garfield was nominated as the Republican candidate for President, and he won the election by a narrow margin. His presidency was short-lived, however, as he was shot by an assassin just four months into his term. Garfield struggled to recover from his wounds, but he eventually died of infection 11 weeks later.

His assassin, Charles Guiteau, shot him in the back and the arm. The location of the shooting is now the site of the National Gallery of the Art in Washington D.C. Guiteau was arrested and held for trial. Much like Charles Manson, he attracted many fans who came to see him. The guards even allowed him to hold a New Years Eve ball that hundreds attended to wish him well. In his words, “They don’t, any of them, wish to see me hung. Everybody was very glad to see me. They all expressed the opinion without one dissenting voice that I would be acquitted.”

Men would come to shake his hand, women brought their children to meet him and he even put out a call for a wife who should be “a nice Christian lady under 30 years of age.”

Guiteau claimed he was told to kill the president by God and that he wasn’t actually the one to kill him. This was partly true as the doctor who cared for the President used his unwashed, dirty hands and fingers to remove the bullet from his abdomen, most likely causing the infection that ultimately killed him.

Guiteau would be hung but before he was he read a poem called, :I am going to the Lordy”

President Garfield was shot on the National Mall. The site only got a plaque in 2018.

The pottery seen in the stamp above is from a small tribe that got quite a bit of press back in the 1950’s. The Huaorani.

The Huaorani are an indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. They are also known as the Waorani or the Waodani, and they have traditionally lived as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers in the remote regions of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

The Huaorani have a long history of conflict with outsiders, particularly with the oil companies that have exploited the natural resources in their territory. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Huaorani were the target of a campaign by missionaries to “civilize” them. At the time the tribe consisted of about 500 people separated into three groups of warring factions. They were known to be fierce fighters and cannibals.

On January 8th, 1956, a group of Christian missionaries made it their goal to bring the word of God to the tribe. They flew in circles around the island lowering and dropping gifts. Thinking that this warmed the tribe up and they were open to a visit, they landed the plane on a sandbar and approached the tribe bearing more gifts. It took the missionaries three days to entice them out of the treeline onto the beach. When they finally came out they offered them gifts and the Huaorani reciprocated and offered gifts of their own.

The missionaries offered members of the tribe rides in the airplane. The first to ride, a man named Nankiwi, went up with his girlfriend. Upon returning, he and his girlfriend encountered the tribal leaders who were irate because he had been unchaperoned which was against the tribal rules. Rather than taking the blame Nankiwi told the elders he and his girlfriend were kidnapped by the missionaries. The elders called for the missionaries to be killed. All five missionaries were killed and the airplane destroyed.

Predictably, that did not stop the church or oil companies from encroaching on their tribe. They raised funds and doubled down on their efforts

Today, the Huaorani are working to protect their land and way of life from further encroachment by oil companies and other outsiders. They established the Huaorani Ecolodge, a sustainable tourism project that allows visitors to experience their culture and the rainforest while also providing income for the Huaorani. However in 2017 they closed the Ecolodge project under pressure from the government and oil companies who wanted to do seismic testing in the area

http://www.huaorani.com/

Despite the challenges they face, the Huaorani continue to maintain their cultural traditions and connection to the land.

Remember – there are usually interesting stories behind stamps. You just have to do some research. Even a simple stamp about pottery can inform, educate and provide you a glimpse into a world you may know nothing about.

The above stamp from Nigeria shows Queen Nefertari on the Left and Rameses II (also spelled Ramses and Ramessess) aka Ramses the Great on the right. It was put out by UNESCO to help save the monument from the flooding that would have destroyed it.

But we are here to talk about Ramses. Before being named Pharaoh, Ramses, as a teenager, had ten sons and almost as many daughters. He has 6 to 8 main wives and many dozens of lesser wives and concubines. He is believed to have fathered at least 80 sons and 60 daughters.

All of this was planned. He wanted to build a dynasty around his bloodline. He gave all his male heirs important positions while training his first 12 sons to succeed him.

Things didn’t quite work out as planned. He outlived all his sons. His 13th son, Merenptah, did take over the throne but the Ramses dynasty was extinct in 150 years.

If you think 80 sons and 60 daughters is impressive. Wait until you see the stamp and story of Genghis Khan!

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

Above is a stamp featuring George Washington that I am sure to never own. However, I can tell you a story about George that not many people know.

On October 5th, 1879, only five months into his presidency, President Washington went down to the The New York Society Library and checked out two books. One was titled, “The Law of Nations” and the other was volume 12 of the “Commons Debate”.

Now Washington was a busy man. Setting up the government, commanding the army and other small tasks probably caused him to forget to return the books to the library.

In 2010, two centuries later, an archivist at the library discovers that the books were never returned. The staff at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate can not find the books in his belongings either. Adjusted for inflation over 221 years, his fine exceeds $300,000.

Eventually, after searching, they were able to find a duplicate copy of “The Law of Nations” for $12,000 and the library considered the fine paid.

Friday the 13th has always been a day of dread. The number 13 is considered unlucky. Most buildings don’t have a 13th floor.

Friday, October 13, 1307 was no exception. It proved exceedingly unlucky for the Christian warriors calling themselves the Knights Templar and their Grand Master, Jacques de Molay.

The Knights Templar, in the name of Christ, became very, very wealth during the reign of King Philip IV of France and he began to worry that their popularity and wealth may weaken or undermine his authority. He was also indebted to them financially. In order to even things out he collaborated with Pope Clement V and accused them of crimes against the church including denying Christ, worshiping idols and spitting on the crucifix. Of course, none of these things had happened so to remedy that the King had the Knights Templars tortured until they confessed. Then he sentenced them all to be burned alive.

As the flames began to rise, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar cursed King Philip and the Pope.

Did it work?

Well, perhaps. Both King Philip and Pope Clement were dead within the year. Both of Philips sons died young leaving behind no heirs. The kings bloodline was eradicated and his wealth had vanished.

We all learned in school that World War One was initiated because of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (pictured above) but it very well have been because of an wrong turn by his limo driver, Leopold Lojka.

The Archduke was in Sarajevo, Bosnia and, earlier in the day, had a bomb tossed at his car by a would be assassin. The bomb exploded after his car had passed and injured others behind them in another car. The Archduke and his wife Sophie took a brief rest and then insisted on going out to visit at a local hospital those injured in the blast because, why not?

Hopping in his car, a open-roofed Double Phaeton limousine, the line of cars sped off to the hospital. Only no one told the drivers where they were going. Finding out they were going in the wrong direction the convoy of cars stalls and tries to turn around in the narrow street.

In the meantime, in a cafe on the very same street, Gavrilo Princip is munching away on some Bosnian food (probably bosanki lonac, the national dish of Bosnia) and angrily muttering to himself on the failed earlier attempt on the Archdukes life.

Glancing out of the window, he sees the stalled limo and rushes out and promptly shoots Sophie in the stomach and Ferdinand in the neck. Sophie, seeing the blood coming out of her husbands mouth exclaims, ““For Heaven’s sake! What happened to you?” and promptly falls into her husband’s lap. The Archduke, cries out to his wife. “Sophie dear! Don’t die! Stay alive for our children!” and then slumps down into his seat. His feathered cap slips off his head sending green feathers throughout the car.

Both would die in transit back to the Townhall which they had started from.

Princip would be tried for the murder of the Archduke and his wife and would die four years later from tuberculosis. Another 40 million people would later die in World War One.

The Sixth President of the United States of America, John Quincy Adams, was the son of a President. Generally quiet he was seized by bouts of depression. He married Louisa Catherine Johnson who was frail and sickly.

To bolster his health and spirit, each morning he would trot down to the Potomac River, strip naked and wade into the usually cold waters leaving his clothes on the bank.

He wasn’t entirely naked though. Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador to Washington noted in 1821:

“The Secretary of State was seen one morning at an early hour floating down the Potomac, with a black cap on his head and a pair of green goggles on his eyes.”

His wife and doctor tried to talk him out of it but he persisted, frequently swimming further out and for longer times which saw him swimming against the strong tides and leaving him weary. He wrote:

“… the remonstrances of my friends against the continuance of this practice will induce me to abandon it, perhaps altogether.”

In 1825 he headed out with his valet, Antoine, accompanying him in a canoe to try and swim across the river.

“I jumped overboard, and Antoine did the same, and lost hold of the boat, which filled with water and drifted away. We were as near as possible to the middle of the river, and swam to the opposite shore. Antoine, who was naked, reached it with little difficulty. I had much more, and while struggling for life and gasping for breath, had ample leisure to reflect upon my own discretion. My principal difficulty was in the loose sleeves of my shirt, which filled with water and hung like two fifty-six pound weights upon my arms.

Despite almost drowning, he did not stop. Again in 1825 he experienced an entirely new kind of river adventure:

I walked as usual to my ordinary bathing-place, and came to the rock where I leave my clothes a few minutes before sunrise. I found several persons there, besides three or four who were bathing; and at the shore under the tree a boat with four men in it, and a drag-net. … I enquired if any one had been drowned, and the man told me it was old Mr. Shoemaker, a clerk in the post-office, a man upwards of sixty years of age, who last evening, between five and six o’clock, went in to bathe with four other persons; that he was drowned in full sight of them, and without a suspicion by them that he was even in danger. They had observed him struggling in the water, but, as he was an excellent swimmer, had supposed he was merely diving, until after coming out they found he was missing. They then commenced an ineffectual search for him, which was continued late into the night. The man said to me that he had never seen a more distressed person than Mrs. Shoemaker last evening. … I stripped and went into the river. I had not been more than ten minutes swimming, when the drag-boat started, and they were not five minutes from the shore when the body floated immediately opposite the rock, less than one hundred yards from the shore, at the very edge of the channel, and where there could not be seven feet deep of water. I returned immediately to the shore and dressed.

Death and almost drowning would have stopped most but the worst was yet to come.

After many attempts to be granted an interview with the President, news reporter Anne Royall hid in the bushes watching the president strip naked and frolic in the water. Seeing an opportunity she scooped up his clothes and held them ransom until he agreed to do an interview.

The interview went well and Anne kept his secret as they agreed but he was soon found out by other members of the press. Despite the embarrassment John Quincy would continue to swim in the Potomac every chance he had until his death at age 80 in 1848. His last words were “This is the last of Earth. I am content!“.

Anne was one of America’s first newspaperwomen and was known in Washington as an eccentric who never held her tongue when given the chance to aie her often controversial views.. John Quincy Adams would later call her a “virago errant in enchanted armor”.