Manarola, Italy

Postcard IT-250393 from Italy shows a view of Manarola, a small town in the province of La Spezia, Liguria, Italy.

The second smallest of the five famous Cinque Terre towns, Manarola, along with Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, and Riomaggiore, is part of a 1997 UNESCO World Heritage Site on a rugged portion of northern Italian coastlines. It could also be the oldest of the towns in the Cinque Terre, with the cornerstone of the church, San Lorenzo, dated from 1338.

On June 2 each year, Italy celebrates its National Day Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day) to commemorate the institutional referendum held by universal suffrage in 1946, when the Italian people went to the polls to decide what form of government they preferred, following World War II and the fall of Fascism. The result was 12,717,923 votes for a republic and 10,719,284 for the monarchy.

Changdeokgung Palace, South Korea

Postcard KR-118364 from South Korea shows a gate (資始門) inside Changdeokgung Palace (昌德宮) in Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea. One of the "Five Grand Palaces" built by the kings of the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897), it was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

Can you tell the difference between those cherry blossom trees and plum blossom trees respectively on each side of the gate?

If Comet Has a Choice

Comet is in the news as the European Space Agency's spacecraft made a first ever soft landing on a comet after a 10-year, 310-million-mile or 500-million-kilometer journey. However, the mission may have ended early as the spacecraft apparently bounced and landed in a shadow and could not get enough charge to its batteries from solar panels.

A comet is basically a big dirty snow ball that circles the Sun. When getting close to the Sun, it gets heated up and begins to emit gas and particles from its nucleus, forming a visible atmosphere, and sometimes a tail upon the effects of solar radiation and solar wind.

Comets become extinct when they have lost all of their volatile ices and particles as a result of having passed too close to the Sun, or having passed close to the Sun too many times. So, I am wondering if a comet has a choice, will she choose to stay away from the Sun and live as a dirty snow ball eternally, or to get close to the Sun and reveal herself in splendid once and for all?

Postcard US-2107408 to Russia was made from a photo I collected when I was in graduate school. Google Image Search turns up several additional photos at Sunet.SE's ftp site. It looks like to be Comet Hale–Bopp that had its closest approach to Earth on March 22, 1997.

Tamsui, Taiwan

Postcard TW-908889 from Taiwan offers an aerial view from the north of Tamsui District (淡水區) in New Taipei City, Taiwan. It is a sea-side district where the Tamsui River, whose name means "fresh water", flows west into the Taiwan Strait. As a natural harbor, Tamsui was a major fishing and trade port in history because of its proximity to mainland China.

Twenty six years ago, the Tamsui Line,  a railroad branch line operated by the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) and connected Taipei and Tamsui, closed on July 15, 1988. The Taipei Metro Tamsui Line was later built along the route. Upon the completion of the Metro Line in 1997, Tamsui experienced a dramatic increase of tourist traffic. Tamsui is popular for viewing the sunset into the Taiwan Strait, for various activities on several riverside parks, and for shopping at open-air markets specializing in traditional handicrafts and street-vendor snacks. Visitors can also visit a fisherman's wharf, and take ferries traversing across and along the river.

Tamsui is home to three universities: Aletheia University, Tamkang University, and St. John's University. On the upper left of the postcard, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (TPE) can be seen in the background.

Fifth and Fremont, Las Vegas

Outgoing postcard US-2545674 to Poland shows the intersection of Fifth and Fremont Streets, downtown Las Vegas in a historical photo. Today Fifth Street is known as Las Vegas Boulevard. On the corner of Fifth and Fremont was Woolworth's anchoring the corner. It had a soda fountain and grill inside where many youngsters could be found twirling on the bar seats enjoying a frosty root beer float. It opened in 1948 and remained on Fremont Street for almost fifty years until 1997 when the chain closed the remaining Woolworth's around the country.

Tongli, China

Postcard CN-1076001 from China shows Tongli (同里), a historical town in Wujiang county, Jiangsu Province, China. It has been given the nickname "Venice of the East" for a system of canals. The town, on the outskirts of Suzhou, retains many of the features of an ancient Wu region town.

One of most notable attractions in Tongli is the Retreat and Reflection Garden (退思园). It is a private garden built in 1885-1887 by designer Yuan Long. The concept of design was adopted from a famous quote "Step forward to do your job loyally; step back to think about how to make up your mistakes (進思盡忠，退思補過)" in Zuo Zhuan (左傳) or sometimes translated as the Chronicle of Zuo that is among the earliest Chinese works of narrative history, covering the period from 722 B.C. to 468 B.C.

Through an extension in 2000, the Retreat and Reflection Garden,  along with the Canglang Pavilion, the Lion Forest Garden, the Garden of Cultivation, the Couple's Garden Retreat, was included in the property of the Classical Gardens of Suzhou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that was originally recognized in 1997.

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.