Clara Harlowe Barton (1821 – 1912)

Clara Harlowe Barton (December 25, 1821 – April 12, 1912), nicknamed "Angel of the Battlefield," was a Union nurse during the American Civil War. Also a teacher and patent clerk, Barton is noteworthy for doing humanitarian work when relatively few women worked outside the home in that era. She nursed the wounded at Antietam and at Virginia battlefields; helped identify and mark graves at Andersonville prison; and later founded the American Red Cross.

The 20¢ stamped card is one of the twenty cards corresponding to the twenty 32¢ American Civil War stamps issued at Gettysburg, PA on June 29, 1995. It was sent to France as US-4015356.

Buffaloes, Custer State Park, Black Hills, South Dakota

Postcard US-3761486 to Germany is a vintage card showing Custer State Park, a state park and wildlife reserve in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota. On the back of the card, it reads: "Custer State Park is one of the largest State Parks in the U.S.A. It contains 128,000 acres of wonderful scenery, consisting of mountains, picturesque gorges, beautiful lakes and streams. 90,000 acres are under fence, and roaming unmolested within this enclosure are Buffalo, Elk, Deer, Big Horn Sheep, Rocky Mt. Goats and Antelope."

Wikipedia lists the park area as 71,000 acres. Founded in 1912 and named after Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, the park has an annual buffalo roundup and auction in September, where buffaloes are rounded up, with surplus sold at auction so that the remaining number of animals can be sustained by the rangeland forage. However, those "buffaloes" are actually American Bison as shown on the card.

Cherry Blossoms About to Reach Peak Bloom in D.C.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a spring celebration in Washington, D.C., commemorating the gift of 3020 cherry trees from Tokyo, Japan to the city of Washington D.C.  First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park on March 27, 1912. This weekend, the cherry blossoms are projected to hit peak bloom while the Annual National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade and the 55th Annual Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival will attract a large crowd.

Earlier today, USPS and Japan Post jointly issued the Gifts of Friendship Forever stamps on April 10, 2015, featuring cherry blossom trees and flowering dogwood trees, celebrating the enduring bond between U.S. and Japan on the centennial of the thank-you gift of flowering dogwood trees from the United States to Japan in 1915.

Outgoing postcard US-3263842 to Japan shows the Washington Monument with cherry blossoms in the foreground. It has one of the Gifts of Friendship stamps in the front featuring the Lincoln Memorial with vibrant cherry trees.

Titanic Memorial Lighthouse

Postcard US-2849023 to Portugal shows the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse, at the entrance to the South Street Seaport in New York City, New York.

The 60-foot or 18-meter lighthouse was originally built on the roof of the old Seamen's Church Institute of New York and New Jersey at the corner of South Street and Coenties Slip in 1913, over looking the East River. The time ball on the top of the lighthouse, activated by a radio signal from the Naval Observatory in Washington D.C., would drop down the pole to signal 12:00 at noon to the ships in the harbor from 1913 to 1967.

When the Seamen's Church Institute moved to 15 State Street in July 1968, the lighthouse was donated to the South Street Seaport Museum. It was erected on the corner of Fulton and Pearl streets in May, 1976. It is one of those memorials in the U.S., Canada, England and Northern Ireland that remember the people perished on the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912.

Take Pride in America

Postcard US-2849038 to Texas was a 14-cent postal postcard issued by USPS in 1987. It features a mountain-lake scene with brilliant blues and rich greens at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson, Wyoming. It was part of the "Take Pride in America" national public awareness campaign to encourage people to take pride in the nation's natural and cultural resources.

According to an AP Newsfeatures article in Lawrence Journal World on September 20, 1987, "launched by President Reagan in his 1986 State of the Union message, 'Take Pride in America' has been a major campaign to ensure the wise use and stewardship of our public lands - natural resources that belong to all Americans."

The National Elk Refuge was created in 1912 to protect habitat and provide sanctuary for one of the largest elk herd in the world. The refuge is home to an average of 7,500 elk each winter. and receives nearly one million visits annually.

The domestic postcard rate, according to Akdart.COM, was 14 cents between February 17, 1985 and April 3, 1988. Yet, another stamped postal postcard issued in 1980 also had a 14-cent postage when the domestic postcard rate was 10 cents.

On an unrelated note, USA team was edged out by Belgium 1:2 at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in a Round of 16 match at Arena Fonte Nova in Salvador, Brazil on July 1, 2014, but not without a fight. The USA Team exceeded the expectation as many did not believe it would make into the Round of 16. "Man of the Match" Tim Howard, who set a World Cup record by making 16 saves, said before the match: "we’re proving critics wrong." We are still proud of the United States Men's National Soccer Team, and are optimistic about their future despite of a loss.

#451566972 / gettyimages.com

Fenway Park, Boston

Postcard US-2752817 from Oxford, MA shows the Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest Major League Baseball (MLB) ballpark, and has been the home of the Boston Red Sox MLB team since it opened on April 20, 1912. Due to the age and constrained location, it is the fourth smallest by seating capacity, second smallest by total capacity, and one of seven that cannot accommodate at least 40,000 spectators among the all MLB baseball parks.

Fenway has hosted ten World Series, as early as in its 1912 inaugural season and as recent as in 2013 World Series. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 7, 2012.

Remembering Titanic, 102 Years Later

Courtesy National Museums Northern Ireland

Yesterday marks the 102nd anniversary of RMS Titanic's sinking in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York City, USA. Postcard US-2542374 to Portugal shows that Titanic was leaving Southampton on April 10, 1912 as the last mooring line connecting Titanic to port was cast off. The postcard was obtained from the exhibition "Fire & Ice: Hindenburg and Titanic" at the National Postal Museum in Washington D.C. The exhibition, concluded on January 6, 2014, examined the less known heroic story of Titanic's mail clerks and featured a remarkable underwater footage of the ship's mail room.

Double Ten Day

October 10 is the Double Ten Day that celebrates outbreak of the Wuchang Uprising in Hubei Province, China in 1911. It began with the local dissatisfaction about the nationalization of railway lines, and soon became a crisis and escalated to an uprising that ended the Qing Dynasty and ushered in the Republic of China (ROC) in 1912. Following the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Party of China took full control of mainland China and founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The ROC relocated its government to Taiwan and continued to recognize the Double Ten Day as the National Day of ROC,

The island of Taiwan, formerly known as "Formosa", was mainly inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines until the Dutch settlement during the Age of Discovery in the 17th century, when ethnic Chinese began immigrating to the island. The shaped postcard, showing a historical map of Taiwan around that time, was one of my earliest postcard collections. It was acquired when I was in Taipei to attend a joint conference GIS AM/FM Asia'97 & GeoInformatics'97: Mapping the Future of Asia Pacific. held from May 26 to May 29 in 1997. It was mailed back to the US and had a postmark dated on June 3, 1997.