Obama Makes Historic Visit to Cuba

Outgoing postcard US-3917425 to Taiwan shows the Southernmost Point Buoy in Key West, Florida. On the buoy, it claims "90 miles to Cuba" although Cuba is actually 94 statute or 81 nautical miles due south at its closest point. Nonetheless, none of the US Presidents had visited Cuba since President Calvin Coolidge's visit in 1928.

Barack Obama made history as the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in Cuba in 88 years, ending decades of hostility between the two countries and marking an historic moment of reconciliation.

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Some US business leaders and entrepreneurs, such as Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox, Brian Chesky, president and founder of Air BnB/PAGE, Daniel Schulman, CEO of PayPal, Ken Siegel, general counsel, Starwood, and Arne Sorenson, president and CEO of Marriott, were aboard Air Force One with Obamas to attend the entrepreneurship event in Havana.

Sending Money to Cuba is now possible from a Western Union sign seen on March 8, 2016

As USPS resumed mail service to Cuba on March 17, 2016,  it was the first time in more than 50 years for the people in the US to be able to send direct mail to the island nation. Hopefully, we will see some official PostCrossing postcards from Cuba soon.

President Obama's letter was among the first batch of direct mails to Cuba

USPS Employees were servicing Obama's letter with a special postmark

Swedish Stamps around the Arctic Circle

I found this advertising card published by Postverkets Tryckeri in 1975 at a stamp show over the weekend, featuring Swedish stamps around the Arctic Circle.

On the top left on the card, a 70 Swedish öre stamp, issued on January 18, 1973, shows a mail truck; on the top right, a 35 Swedish öre stamp, circa 1967, features a painting of the Fjeld by Sixten Lundbohm, The Swedish fjelds, explains the difference between fjelds and mountains.

In the middle row, two 45 Swedish öre stamps, showing a lappkata (teepee) on the left and a reindeer herd on the right, are two of the five stamps from the Around the Arctic Circle set, circa 1970. At the center, a 35 Swedish öre stamp features a view of the Akka Mountains in the Stora Sjöfallet (Great Falls) National Park, circa 1970.

At the bottom on the left, a 1 Swedish krona stamp, circa 1974, features a Swedish overland postman on his northernmost rural delivery route against the background of Scandinavian landscape. Next to it, a 140 Swedish öre stamp, circa 1970, shows a a sled drawn by a reindeer. On the right, a 70 Swedish öre stamp commemorates the European Nature Conservation Year in 1970. The set contains two similar stamps featuring the River Trångforsen in Ljungan, Jämtland, but with different face values. The other stamp has a face value of 55 Swedish öre.

Öre is the discontinued centesimal subdivision of the Swedish krona. 1 KR = 100 öre.

On the back of the card, a tag line reads "Collect Swedish stamp motifs. Ask your dealer for Swedish Stamps."

Lost in MH17 Crash

As shown in the exhibition "Fire & Ice: Hindenburg and Titanic" at the National Postal Museum in Washington D.C. during the period from March 22, 2012 to January 6, 2014, a large number of mails were lost when Hindenburg and Titanic ended in disasters, both of which not only served as the mass travel tools for people but also operated as the world's largest mail carriers at the time.

When the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, all 298 passengers on board were killed. Seen from a photo on the crash site, were some burnt airmails and postcards. One postcard had its PostCrossing ID NL-2576182 visible. Alerted by a post by purplestarfish on the forum, a PostCrossing moderator replied "Postcrossing has contacted the sender of this postcard, to let him know that his card probably won't arrive. We're keeping an eye on other postcards, sent from Netherlands to Taiwan around the same date, which might have been on the same bag of mail."

This tragedy highlights the human costs to innocent travelers inflicted by military conflicts. The incident of lost mails also shows, in a small but vivid way, that such "regional conflicts" do have global impact on people who do not have direct relationship with the flight or the region where the conflicts occur. Time for peace.