Battle of Shiloh Ends

The stamped card with a 20¢ postage, depicting the Battle of Shiloh that ended on April 7, 1862, is one of the twenty cards corresponding to the twenty 32¢ American Civil War stamps issued at Gettysburg, PA on June 29, 1995.

The stamp set has 16 individual portraits and four battle scenes, chosen from a master list of 50 subjects including Presidents, generals, major battles, rank-and-file soldiers, women, African and Native Americans, and abolitionists. With those stamps, USPS intended to show the wide variety of people who participated in the Civil War.

Battle of Shiloh, named after a church on the battlefield, was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Ironically Shiloh means “place of peace.” Confederates surprised General Ulysses S. Grant at Pittsburg Landing, TN, but lost General A. S. Johnston. Union counterattack at Shiloh Church forced the Southerners to withdraw. After this pivotal battle, it left Union armies in control of the central Mississippi River and large areas of western territories.

Casualties: 13,050 Union, 10,700 Confederate.

Under One Big Roof

Postcard US-3898447 to Tennessee, USA shows 大厝顶 which literally means "big roof", a traditional rural dwelling found in Fujian Province, China where members from an extended family, build, and later extend when the size of family grows, their living units all under one big roof in the same household. The postcard was published by SkyPixel with a drone photo taken by Yuanfeng Zhang (张元锋) using a Phantom 3 Professional.

Greetings from Nashville, Tennessee

Postcard US-3064194 from Michigan, USA was a "Greetings from Nashville", Tennessee card that highlights its nickname "Music City" with an antique guitar. As the capital of the state of Tennessee, Nashville is located on the Cumberland River in the north-central part of the state, serving as a center for the music, healthcare, publishing, banking and transportation industries. It also has a large number of colleges and universities.

Today, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Tanco v. Haslam, No. 14-562 from Tennessee challenging state laws barring the recognition of same-sex marriages performed outside the state. It was part of the consolidated cases in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the bans on same-sex marriage in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. By granting petitions seeking review from plaintiffs challenging those bans in each state, the United States Supreme Court posed to decide once for all whether the Constitution requires states “to license a marriage between two people of the same sex” and whether states must “recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out of state.” The Supreme Court's decision is due before the end of June. Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee, a Republican, did what litigants who have won in the lower court usually do by urging the Supreme Court Justices not to hear the case.