Taiwan Inaugurates First Female President

Today's featured postcard was a private swap from Taiwan showing the Office of the President, Republic of China in Taipei with a ROCUPEX '13 TAIPEI commemorative postage label from the 2013 National Stamp Exhibition of R.O.C. and International Invitational Stamp Exhibition, and a matching pictorial postmark on August 23, 2013. The Office of the President is the site of the inauguration ceremony this Friday, May 20, 2016 where Tsai Ing-wen took oath of office to become the first female president of Taiwan.

Tsai Ing Wen (R) replaces former President Ma Ying Jeou (L) after a landslide election victory on January 16, 2016. She faces immediate challenges to revitalize the economy, and to balance the demands of the her electorate for greater independence and the pressure of One-Country from China.

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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.

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway

Postcard US-3429537 to France shows a northbound San Diegan train, in the form of two Budd-built Rail Diesel Cars (RDC's), pulls out of Santa Ana, California. The photo was taken by Thomas H. Gildersleeve on July 3, 1952. Those cars were brand new and were placed in service on May 21, 1952.

According to Thomas H. Gildersleeve, "the first San Diegan was inaugurated as a diesel powered streamlined train on March 27, 1938, and it soon evolved into an entire fleet of Los Angeles - San Diego trains encompassing three sets of equipment, each of which made two daily round trips. After the RDC was introduced, Santa Fee purchased this one pair to replace one of the conventional streamliner sets in San Diegan service."

"The RDC San Diegans lasted until January of 1956, at which time they were reassigned to train No's 311 and 312 between Newton and Dodge City, Kansas, as it was felt they lacked sufficient seating capacity for continued service on the popular San Diego line. In their new assignment, the cars displayed a more conventional Santa Fe paint scheme with the usual red and yellow front end, and one of the cars sported a baggage section, making it similar in appearance to an RDC-2. The cars climaxed their career on the Santa Fe by operating out of Carlsbad, New Mexico."

The card features two of the five 1999 33-cent USPS commemorative stamps titled "All Aboard!" The original water color illustrations used on the stamps depict art deco-style passenger trains of the 1930s and 1940s. On the far left was the Super Chief, famous for carrying motion picture people between Chicago and Los Angeles, also known as the "Train of the Stars." On the second left was the Congressional which followed a route between New York and Washington, D.C. Its slogan was "Every Mile Electrified."

The stamp on the far right shows one of the five 2015 Forever USPS commemorative stamps with Mexican artist Martín Ramírez's drawings from circa 1960–1963, a gouache, colored pencil, and graphite drawing on pieced paper “Untitled (Trains on Inclined Tracks).”