Tortoise: Guinness Ad Campaign

Postcard US-4015876 to Germany shows "Tortoise" from a vintage Guinness ad campaign poster. The tortoise was an appropriate candidate to promote Guinness beer as a pick me up, circa 1936.

F Line Streetcar in San Francisco

Postcard US-4010006 to Germany shows the F Market & Wharves line, one of several light rail lines in San Francisco, California, that runs as a heritage streetcar service. Distinctive from most other lines in the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) system, the F line's operation uses exclusively historic equipment both from San Francisco's retired fleet as well as from cities around the world. Market Street Railway, a nonprofit organization of streetcar enthusiasts, provides a support role by raising funds and helps to restore vintage streetcars.

San Francisco's Prettiest Ladies

Postcard US-4032025 to Germany shows an aerial view of  "Painted Ladies," a term in American architecture used for Victorian and Edwardian houses and buildings painted in three or more colors that embellish or enhance their architectural details. The card is one of those from Above San Francisco postcard book.

Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are battling in California on final day of campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders is ending the night with a get-out-the-vote concert in San Francisco featuring Dave Matthews, Fantastic Negrito, Fishbone and actor Danny Glover; Clinton stages her own closing musical event with stars Christina Aguilera, Andra Day, John Legend, Ricky Martin, and Stevie Wonder in the Los Angeles area.

Earlier, AP and other news organizations find Hillary Clinton has secured enough delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination, breaking a high glass ceiling for women.

Blue Angels and Thunderbirds Crashed in Separate Accidents

It is rare to see an aircraft crash from military flying demonstration squadrons as they feature the most skillful pilots from their respective services. As a matter of fact, the last accident for the US Navy's Blue Angles happened during an air show at a Marine Corps air station in Beaufort, South Carolina in April 2007, when Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Davis was killed; the US Air Force's Thunderbirds saw its last crash in September 2003 with Capt. Chris Stricklin parachuting to safety. Therefore, it's such a bizarre coincidence as a Blue Angels F-18 and a Thunderbirds F-16 crashed separately in the same day.

One F-16 fighter jet of the Thunderbirds crashed near Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado around 1 p.m. MDT (12 p.m. PDT), following a flyover for the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony with President Obama in attendance as the keynote speaker. The pilot of the No. 6 Thunderbirds jet Maj. Alex Turner ejected safely.

A mere hour later at approximately 3 p.m. CDT (1 p.m. PDT), a U.S. Navy Blue Angels  F/A-18 fighter jet crashed while in formation during an air show practice in Smyrna, Tennessee on June 2, 2016. The pilot did not eject and was killed in crash.

Postcard US-3935005 to Germany shows a paratrooper in descent against the Moon during the Aviation Nation on November 13, 2010.

Thunderbird No.6 was seen at the Aviation Nation on Nov. 14, 2010

Orchestra Hall in Chicago

Postcard US-4029700 to Germany was a 15¢ postal card in the Historic Preservation Series saluting Chicago's Orchestra Hall, home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1904. The indicium shows the interior of the hall where the first-day ceremonies were held at 11:30 a.m. on Friday October 19, 1990. The hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 21, 1978, and designated as a National Historic Landmark on April 19, 1994.

Constitutional Convention in 1787

Today is the 229th anniversary of the opening of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, PA. Postcard US-4013590 to Germany was a 1987 14¢ postal card, the first of three issues by USPS commemorating the bicentennial of the Constitution.

The card bears a multi-colored 14-cent pre-printed stamp on its upper right corner, depicting Independence Hall as it appeared in 1787. Built in 1753, the building now known as Independence Hall was the colonial legislature and later Pennsylvania State House for the Province of Pennsylvania. It was the principal meeting place where both the United States Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) and the United States Constitution (September 17, 1787) were debated and adopted. Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, it is now the centerpiece of the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The multi-color design also shows five convention delegates: George Mason of Virginia, Gouverneur Morris of New York, James Madison of Virginia, Alexander Hamilton of New York and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, standing to the right of what was then the Pennsylvania State House. All eventually signed the Constitution except Mason, who refused because he believed the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government. Their names are printed on the lower left corner of the card as well..

The first-day-of-issue ceremonies of the card was held in the courtyard of Independence Hall at 10:30 a.m. on May 25, 1987.

The Fittest City in the U.S.

The American Fitness Index (AFI) recently released the ACSM American Fitness Index Data Report, offering a scientific snapshot of the health and fitness level for the major metropolitan areas in the US. Washington D.C., for the 3rd year in a row, ranks as the fittest city.

The American College of Sports Medicine and the Anthem Foundation have considered such factors as what percentage of the city's population reporting exercising within the past 30 days and accessibility to parks and green spaces, in order to determine how fit a city is. The top 10 cities are:

1. Washington D.C.
2. Minneapolis, MN
3. Denver, CO
4. Portland, OR
5. San Francisco, CA
6. Seattle, WA
7. Boston, MA
8. Salt Lake City, UT
9. Hartford, CT
10. San Diego, CA

Las Vegas ranks 41st among the bottom 10 cities.

Postcard US-3971221 to Germany shows a black and white map drawing of the D.C. area with a matching diamond shaped 37¢ commemorative stamp issued by USPS on September 23, 2003.

1000th Card Sent

Postcard US-3972061 to Germany was the 1000th card sent from my PostCrossing account twimbk. It shows a pair of swans forming a heart symbol with love. Swans (天鵝) are birds of the family Anatidae (鴨科) within the genus Cygnus. The geese and ducks are swans' friends close relatives. A previous copy was sent to Russia as US-3284982 under another account.

USPS issued the Quilled Paper Heart Forever stamp at Dallas Love Field in Dallas, Texas on January 12, 2016, as the 44th stamp in its Love stamp series. The heart on the stamp was created using the ancient art of quilling by rolling and shaping narrow strips of paper, laying them on their edges, and gluing them in place to form intricate designs.

Trump International Hotel

Real estate developer Donald Trump is poised to become the presumptive Republican presidential nominee after his decisive win in Indiana, which led Ted Cruz to drop out of the race.

Postcard US-3620197 to Germany shows a view, from a pedestrian bridge over the Union Pacific Railroad in down Las Vegas, with the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, a 64-story luxury hotel, condominium, and timeshare, appeared on the left opening. Named for the real estate developer, the property is distinctive as the exterior windows are gilded with 24-carat gold.

Pluto and Its Moon Charon

Postcard DE-4851768 from Germany shows Pluto and its moon Charon.

USPS announces that it will issue the Pluto – Explored! Forever stamps at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City, New York on May 31, 2016 during the World Stamp Show – NY 2016, in order to recognize the NASA's history-making first reconnaissance of Pluto: New Horizons mission in 2015.

The souvenir sheet contains four stamps in two designs. The first design shows an illustration of the New Horizons spacecraft, while the second design shows a striking image of Pluto taken by the spacecraft near its closest approach. The image is a composite of four photos from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, combined with data from the sensor Ralph.

Chinatown, San Francisco

Postcard US-3934037 to Germany is a reproduction of a vintage poster of the Chinatown in San Francisco, California. It shows the Cathay House Restaurant located in the heart of Chinatown with a lengthy traditional Chinese menu and a prime street view for people and cable car watching on California Street.

"San Francisco Sees a Colorful History Slip Away in Chinatown" by Jean H. Lee, run on Los Angeles Times on May 31, 1998, was an interesting article to read about the changes and conflicts that had happened there: "while old-timers want to maintain the district's antique, if stylistically bogus, architecture, recent immigrants are clamoring for new development."

Singing Waiter Costume

Postcard US-3580552 to Germany shows an set of Singing Waiter costume on display at the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas on April 6, 2014. Along with the Pier Dancer costume shown below, it's part of a special costume collection that had appeared on Jubilee, an iconic showgirl spectacular at Bally's that closed on February 11, 2016 after a 34-year run.

Get Ready for the Spring

DE-5016521, a greeting card from Germany, came just before the spring officially starts on March 20, 2016.

Crew members were seen busy in setting up another Japanese Spring Celebration Show at the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens in Las Vegas yesterday. The show will feature 82,830 flowers in total, with a lot of Azalea Brilliant, Begonias, Ivy, Hibuscus, Cherry Blossom, Magnolias, and Bamboo canes, from March 18 to May 14, 2016.

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.

Любимая Аленка

Postcard DE-4268170 from Germany shows a candy wrapper for sweets glazed with chocolate "My Favorite Alenka" popular in Belarus. "My Favorite Alenka" is a brand related to "Alenka," a milk chocolate first produced in the Soviet Union in 1965 that has a distinctive creamy, rich taste.

Schwarzwald

Postcard DE-4247507 from Germany shows the Black Forest (Schwarzwald in German) that is a great forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany. Bordering France, it is bounded by the Rhine valley to the west and south. Its highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 meters or 4,898 feet.

It is known for its dense evergreen forests and picturesque villages, which inspired some of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. The cuckoo clock, a pendulum-regulated clock that strikes on the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo's call and has an automaton cuckoo bird moving with each note, was said to be developed and evolved in the region since the 1700s. It’s a destination for hiking and biking at vast nature parks, and skiing in winter.

I {heart} New York (in Las Vegas)

Outgoing postcard US-3263779 to Germany shows New York-New York Hotel & Casino with its architecture resembling the New York City skyline that includes the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.

It is known for the 150-foot or 46-meter tall replica of the Statue of Liberty, whose face not only made into a USPS Forever stamp, but also landed USPS with a copyright infringement lawsuit. There is also another replica of the Statue of Liberty made of thousands of jelly beans in front of "It's Sugar" candy store on the second floor.

Shown predominantly on the lower-left part of the card, the Hershey’s Chocolate World store opened one year ago on June 3, 2014. It added yet one more 11-foot, 800-pound replica of the Statue of Liberty hand carved from milk chocolates.

Among other things, Hershey's also features a replica of the Empire State Building, made out of 1,800 Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars, on the second floor.

Will Rogers Memorial Museum

Outgoing postcard US-3368790 to Germany was a vintage linen postcard with an aerial view of the Will Rogers Memorial Museum and Tomb in Claremore, Oklahoma that commemorates Native American social commentator and actor Will Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) who was one of the world's most famous stars in the 1920s and 1930s. The museum houses artifacts, memorabilia, photographs, and manuscripts pertaining to Rogers' life, and documentaries, speeches, and movies starring Rogers are shown in a theater. He made 71 movies and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. Rogers died in 1935 during a small airplane crash in Alaska. His tomb is located on its 20-acre or 8-hectare grounds overlooking Claremore and Rogers State University. The museum opened in 1938, three years after his death.

May 18 is the International Museum Day. The theme for 2015 is "Museums for a sustainable society."

Bike to Work

May is National Bike Month, established in 1956 and sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists, when many events are offered to showcase the benefits of biking. Bike to Work Week runs from May 11 to May 5, 2015, with Bike to Work Day on May 15 to highlight that biking is a viable transportation alternative.

Postcard US-1996944 to Germany shows a biker in Portland, Oregon, the most walking, biking, and public transit friendly city on the West Coast, according to Walk Score. Minneapolis, MN (Bike Score: 81.3), San Francisco, CA (Bike Score: 75.1); Portland, OR (Bike Score: 72.0); Denver, CO (Bike Score: 71.3); and Boston, MA (Bike Score: 70.3) are the top five most bike friendly cities in the U.S. In comparison, Las Vegas is unfortunately a car-dependent city, ranked 29th (Bike Score: 52.0) among the cities with 300,000 residents or more. An article from the Las Vegas Review Journal has listed 6 scariest things about riding a bike in Las Vegas.

Untitled (a.k.a 'a night') by Simon Pais-Thomas

Postcard US-2266937 to Germany shows a piece of artwork Untitled (a.k.a 'a night') by photographer Simón Pais-Thomas from Santiago, Chile. It was from the opening series of the exhibition "Little Endings" (Finales Pequeños), on display at Salón Tudor, Santiago, Chile through October 7, 2007.