In 1939 King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth (the parents of Queen Elizabeth II) toured Newfoundland, Canada, and visited the United States. George VI became the first reigning monarch to visit both countries. Since this visit occurred after the Statute of Westminster (1931) it is very important to emphasize that George VI toured the country as King of Canada, and not the British monarch.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came to Hyde Park, New York, the home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for a hot dog picnic. June 11, 1939.

A friendship between the king and President Franklin D. Roosevelt developed during this visit that would persist through the Second World War.

Their Majesties toured Canada for 29 days by train (over a distance of 8,600 miles), and millions gathered to see the Royal Train and its occupants.

All first day covers show the May 15 date, even though the train did not go into service until May 17.

The tour began on May 17th, 1939 and ended on June 15th, 1939.

The first day covers issued for the event included cachets and the stamps released only two days prior to the commencement of the Royal Tour.

King George and Queen Elizabeth entered the United States June 7, 1939,

A set of three bicolored stamps (Scott & Canada Specialized #'s246-248) was issued on May 15, 1939 as originally intended. It includes the 1¢ stamp depicting Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose, a 2¢ value showing the Canadian War Memorial in Ottawa (a reminder of the joint Anglo-Canadian sacrifice in WWI), and a 3¢ portraying the king and queen.

Here are some first day covers from my collection that represent this historic occasion originally obtained by Pearle Koonce in 1939.

From top to bottom in order of the route you'll see the Royal Train Cachet stamped on the train, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton, and Newfoundland.

And finally Newfoundland issues commemorative stamps the day the king and queen leave St John's June 17th, 1939.

I wish I had been there.

See the film 'Hyde Park On Hudson".

I hate television. Not the invention itself, but network television. It's nauseating. Full of lies, crime, dirty politicians, bad news, con artists, snake oil sales pitches and nightmarish imagery. Network sport is organized crime with all the gambling that's associated with it.

Public television has evolved into an embarrassing, annoying, pesky, ceaseless, frequent, nearly incessant form of broadcast panhandling whereupon you see a few minutes of some boring documentary about an endangered worm in the Serengeti, or something similar, for about five minutes and then some loud fat woman, that was probably fitted for her dress at a tent and awning company, staring into a tv camera for the next 55 minutes begging for money so "we can continue to produce wonderful programs about endangered worms in the Serengeti", hence returning to the documentary for another five minutes until it's time to replay the next 55 minutes of broadcast panhandling.

They too, have I done away with in my home.

And I haven't watched a network or local newscast voluntarily in years. They suck and wreck havoc on your health. If I hear or see one it's like second hand cigarette smoke. As an example, waiting for an oil change for my car in the lounge at Firestone where the tv just happens to be fixed on some stinky news channel or some obnoxious stupid show that conducts DNA testing to determine who illegitimate children belong to.

What do the networks sell more of, on every evening newcast, than anything else ? Drugs !

Every kind of drug for anxiety, headache, depression, arthritis and heart disease. Why ?

Because the news and network television manufactures pain and capitalizes on fear, misfortune and suffering. The very things thousands of people seek treatment for and die from every year.

And who profits ? The pharmaceutical companies, of course ! And the funeral business.

Turn off your television and stay healthy !

ps...AM and FM radio isn't far behind....

Mrs. K. Hutton of Eastbourne, Sussex England was a jeweler.

She collected rare stamps, too.

She had a friend in Belgium, a watchmaker and gemologist, by the name of H. De Baets

Mr. De Baets sent this to her, cancelled in Brussels, Belgium on December 16, 1952.

 And the reverse with watchmaker De Baets ink-stamped cachet...

Belgian postal authorities ordered the discontinuance of the printing of the stamp with the portrait of King Baudouin in the top right corner.

Why ?

Because of hundreds of complaints about his facial features, including a crooked nose.

Here's the real nose of King Baudouin of Belgium....

And the newspaper article, clipped by Mrs.Hutton, that appeared in the Daily Telegraph of London on December 15, 1952, the day before the cover was mailed, which features the two portraits of the king.

Semi-postal stamps, the third, fourth and fifth stamps from the left, were applied to assist the fund raising efforts of the nation and a surtax was applied to these three stamps on this beautiful cover to serve the fight against tuberculosis, a very noble cause.

The two stamps on the left, the orange and yellow, are typographed definitive stamps that were issued between 1935 and 1946 and feature the Coat of Arms of Belgium.

And of course the limited production run of King Baudouin, because of a crooked nose, on the right.

The stamps, left to right, are Scott Catalog #'s 266, 270B, B524, B523, B525 and King Baudouin #418.

My personal feeling is that the king was well represented on the stamp and looked fine.

Daniel Webster was a great man.

A senator, a statesman, a great speaker.

Daniel Webster was the man who introduced legislation to produce pre paid adhesive postage stamps.

The first adhesive stamps printed for the United States Post Office.

He's been honored 14 times on the stamps of our nation.

This is the first day cover of Scott Catalog #725 from my collection.

Yes, it's scarce, and rough, and I'm proud to share it with you.

Notice the invitation cachet for the Chicago World's Fair, sent from Dartmouth, College in Hanover, New Hampshire, the state of Daniel Webster's birth and his collegiate Alma mater.

Before the Civil War the dream of every American was to own their own piece of land.

When the Civil War ended people began migrating from rural communities to the cities.

The American Dream became home ownership which transfigured itself into the American Nightmare in the early 21st Century with rampant real estate fraud and thousands of American homeowners and families losing their homes because of unscrupulous real estate hustlers, and thousands of real estate agents, mortgage brokers, bankers, closing attorneys, homebuilders and Realtors going to jail for housing and banking fraud.

Factories, shops of every kind and mills began appearing throughout the land and along with all of the business and with the transformation of America, following the war, the organized labor movement began to take shape.

A movement that championed the rights of the wage-earners of our nation and sought both fairness and prosperity for them.

A movement that bravely sought to make dreams possible for our workers.

Millions of our citizens became dependent on wages to survive and discovered that rotten employers who kept them in poverty could only be defeated by a group that despised their cruel oppression.

Organized labor remains a powerful force within the structure of our nation and continues to improve the standard of living not just for our people, but sets the example for the world seeking and defending the rights of the working man and woman.

This beautiful First Day Cover was issued on September 1, 1980 in Washington D.C.

The stamp was designed by Peter Cocci. Scott Catalog #1831

Coral reef is a sedimentary rock consisting mainly of calcium that was deposited by the remains of marine animals. It's also marine colonial polyp which are radially symmetrical animals having saclike bodies with only one opening and tentacles with stinging structures characterized by a calcareous skeleton and amassed in a variety of shapes forming reefs, submerged ridges of rock near the surface of the water.

The warm South Pacific Ocean has an abundance of coral reefs. It's the Great Barrier Reef, the longest and most incredible coral reef in the world, that stretches for more than 1500 miles off of the coast of Australia.

Coral formations resemble the things on the lands' surface and are named to reflect the similarities.

Reefs are classified as one of three types:

1. The fringing reefwhich is the sea-level flat reefwhich extend from the shoreline out to the sea.

2. The brarrier reef, which is a larger reef, is separated from the land by a lagoon. The lagoon may be up to ten miles wide.

3.And an atoll, a reef shaped like a ring which encloses a central lagoon. Connecting the laggon to the open sea are the breaks in the atoll which always appear on the side away from the wind.

Charles Darwin believed that coral reefs have a common origin. He used sciientific theory to infer from incomplete evidence that all reefs begin as fringing reefs, the sea-level flat reefs that extend from a shoreline out to the sea, the first classification of reefs.

The majority of marine biologiststhat there is no single explanation to be found for every type of reef.

Of urgency is the fact that coastal develepment and polution are threatening the survival of the reefs throughout the world.

The beautiful Chalice Coral of American Samoa and the Finger Coral of Hawaii are represented on the stamps of this First Day Cover issued at Charlotte Amalie, capital of the United States Virgin Islands on August 26, 1980.

The 15 cent united States stamps on this ArtCraft cover represent the common coral surrounding American Samoa and the atolls of Hawaii and are part of a four stamp issue.

Scott Catalog #'s 1827-1830

 Now I'm ready for a suntan !

I created a new philatelic acronym today.

ICE - Intentionally Created Error

Is an intentionally created error ethical ?

Here's an example sent to me by my friend Jerry Palazola of The Tennessee Postal History Society:

And now at close range:

Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld  29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish diplomat, economist, and author. The second Secretary-General of the United Nations, he served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961.

The Dag Hammarskjöld invert is a 4 cent postage stamp error issued on 23 October 1962 by the United States Postal Service (then known as the Post Office Department). The stamp displays the yellow background inverted relative to the image and the corresponding text.

It's known among philatelists as  "Day's Folly" after Postmaster General J. Edward Day ordered the intentional reprinting of the yellow invert after stating, "The Post Office Department is not running a jackpot operation."

Let's look at the normal stamp, the upper example, and the intentionally created error, the lower stamp:

Fast forward 51 years later to Sunday September 22, 2013, 1PM, The Smithsonian Institute.

The United States Postal Service makes this decision under the watchful eye of United States Postmaster General PatrickR.Donahoe:

The 2013 Invereted Jenny Souvenir Sheet :

And now deja vu with a twist (twist aka upright hahaha pun intended) :

Ethical ?

No.

Why ?

Because the USPS had experienced a 15.9 billion dollar loss in fiscal year 2012 and needed a recovery plan that included an intentionally misprinted handful of souvenir sheets and stamps in an effort to ignite public excitement about one of most desired, coveted and respected philatelic rarities in the entire world, the 1918 24 cent Inverted Jenny airmail stamp.

In addition to the 2.2 million sheets that were printed with the plane inverted, the Postal Service made the announcement that it also printed 100 "non-inverted Jenny" souvenir sheets, with the plane flying right side up. All of the sheets are individually wrapped in sealed envelopes in an attempt to recreate the excitement of finding an inverted Jenny when opening the envelope which foregoes the possibility of discovering a corrected Jenny before purchasing the sheet. Individuals purchasing one of the 100 non-inverted Jenny sheets will discover a congratulatory note inside the wrapper asking them to call a phone number to receive a certificate of authenticity signed by Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe.

The May 14, 1918 Jenny that William Robey discovered was an accident.

The 2013 Jenny souvenir sheet was not.

Hence, the Jenny souvenir sheets became lottery tickets, a raffle, not legitimate errors because of accidental events that occurred during the printing process.

And a slap in face to the world's philatelists.

The 2013 Jenny was not an inadvertant natural event like the one that occurred on May 14, 1918.

Remember these famous last words of October 23, 1962:

"The Post Office Department is not running a jackpot operation."

Postmaster General J. Edward Day 

 Although the errors are commanding high prices, 25 to 50 thousand dollars a sheet, and getting it, they're worthless to me because of the way they were manufactured and sold.

Worse than "Black Bot" intentional errors from the Trucial States, the British Gulf, in the Persian Gulf.

It is my sincerest hope that the postal authority of this nation, and the United States Postal Service, will resolve and mandate that such an event will never occur again.

It tarnishes the reputation of the postal service, injures it's integrity and harms the infrastructure of philately.

Stamp collectors belong to a very honorable, traditional and privileged group of hobby enthusiasts
both united and possesed of moral soundness.

Gambling does not.