Showing posts with label New Hebrides. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Hebrides. Show all posts

Sunday, August 30, 2020

August 31st in stamps de Bougainville, Baudelaire, Wilhelmina

Here are some events that happened on August 31st. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day


1811 Died: Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French admiral and explorer (b. 1729)

Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville (12 November 1729 – 31 August 1811) was a French admiral and explorer. A contemporary of the British explorer James Cook, he took part in the Seven Years' War in North America and the American Revolutionary War against Britain. Bougainville later gained fame for his expeditions, including circumnavigation of the globe in a scientific expedition in 1763, the first recorded settlement on the Falkland Islands, and voyages into the Pacific Ocean. Bougainville Island of Papua New Guinea as well as the Bougainvillea flower were named after him.

In 1771, Bougainville published his travel log from the expedition under the title Le voyage autour du monde, par la frégate La Boudeuse, et la flûte L'Étoile (a.k.a. Voyage autour du monde and A Voyage Around the World). The book describes the geography, biology and anthropology of Argentina (then a Spanish colony), Patagonia, Tahiti and Indonesia (then a Dutch colony). The book was a sensation, especially the description of Tahitian society. Bougainville described it as an earthly paradise where men and women lived in blissful innocence, far from the corruption of civilization.

After an interval of several years, Bougainville again accepted a naval command and saw much active service between 1779 and 1782 during the American Revolutionary War, when France was as an ally of the rebels. He played a crucial part in the French victory at the Battle of the Chesapeake, which led to the eventual defeat of Great Britain.

Returning to Paris, he was one of the founding members of the Bureau des Longitudes. In 1799, the Consul Napoleon made him a senator. He died in Paris on 31 August 1811.


Stamps from New Hebrides and New Caledonia depicting de Bougainville

New Caledonia Admiral de Bougainville & Count

New Hebrides Louis Antoine de Bougainville,1968.


1867 Died: Charles Baudelaire, French poet and critic (b. 1821)

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.

His most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrializing Paris during the mid-19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience.

Stamps from France and Monaco depicting Charles Baudelaire

France, 1951 Baudelaire

Monaco - 1972 - 150 th Anniversary of the birth of Charles Baudelaire


1880 Born: Wilhelmina, queen of the Netherlands (d. 1962)

Wilhelmina (Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Maria; 31 August 1880 – 28 November 1962) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1890 until her abdication in 1948. She reigned for nearly 58 years, longer than any other Dutch monarch. Her reign saw the First and the Second world wars, the Dutch economic crisis of 1933, and the decline of the Netherlands as a major colonial power.

Wilhelmina was the only child of King William III and his second wife, Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont. On William's death in 1890, she ascended to the throne at the age of ten under the regency of her mother. In 1901, she married Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, with whom she had a daughter, Juliana. Wilhelmina was generally credited with maintaining Dutch neutrality during the First World War.

Following the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, Wilhelmina fled to Britain and took charge of the Dutch government-in-exile. She frequently spoke to the Dutch people over radio and came to be regarded as a symbol of the Dutch resistance. She returned to the Netherlands following its liberation in 1945.

Increasingly beset by poor health after the war, Wilhelmina abdicated in September 1948 in favour of Juliana. She retired to Het Loo Palace, where she died in 1962.

Dutch, Suriname and  Netherlands Indies stamps depicting Wilhelmina

1924 Queen Wilhelmina tête-bêche

1899 - 1921 Queen Wilhelmina 25 cents

1899-1905 Queen Wilhelmina 10 Guilders

Queen Wilhelmina Suriname

Netherlands Indies Wilhelmina

Netherlands Definitives Queen Wilhelmina 1947-1948

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

November 12th in stamps First Austrian Republic, de Bougainville, Tin Ujevic, John William Strutt

Here are some events that happened on November 12th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day


1729 Born: Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French admiral and explorer (d. 1811)

Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville (12 November 1729 – 31 August 1811) was a French admiral and explorer. A contemporary of the British explorer James Cook, he took part in the Seven Years' War in North America and the American Revolutionary War against Britain. Bougainville later gained fame for his expeditions, including circumnavigation of the globe in a scientific expedition in 1763, the first recorded settlement on the Falkland Islands, and voyages into the Pacific Ocean. Bougainville Island of Papua New Guinea as well as the Bougainvillea flower were named after him.

In 1771, Bougainville published his travel log from the expedition under the title Le voyage autour du monde, par la frégate La Boudeuse, et la flûte L'Étoile (a.k.a. Voyage autour du monde and A Voyage Around the World). The book describes the geography, biology and anthropology of Argentina (then a Spanish colony), Patagonia, Tahiti and Indonesia (then a Dutch colony). The book was a sensation, especially the description of Tahitian society. Bougainville described it as an earthly paradise where men and women lived in blissful innocence, far from the corruption of civilization.

After an interval of several years, Bougainville again accepted a naval command and saw much active service between 1779 and 1782 during the American Revolutionary War, when France was as an ally of the rebels. He played a crucial part in the French victory at the Battle of the Chesapeake, which led to the eventual defeat of Great Britain.

Returning to Paris, he was one of the founding members of the Bureau des Longitudes. In 1799, the Consul Napoleon made him a senator. He died in Paris on 31 August 1811.


Stamps from New Hebrides and New Caledonia depicting de Bougainville

New Caledonia Admiral de Bougainville & Count

New Hebrides Louis Antoine de Bougainville,1968.



1842 Born: John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1919)

John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh(12 November 1842 – 30 June 1919), was a British scientist who made extensive contributions to both theoretical and experimental physics. He spent all of his academic career at the University of Cambridge. Among many honors, he received the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his investigations of the densities of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies." He served as President of the Royal Society from 1905 to 1908 and as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge from 1908 to 1919.

Rayleigh provided the first theoretical treatment of the elastic scattering of light by particles much smaller than the light's wavelength, a phenomenon now known as "Rayleigh scattering", which notably explains why the sky is blue. He studied and described transverse surface waves in solids, now known as "Rayleigh waves". He contributed extensively to fluid dynamics, with concepts such as the Rayleigh number (a dimensionless number associated with natural convection), Rayleigh flow, the Rayleigh–Taylor instability, and Rayleigh's criterion for the stability of Taylor–Couette flow. He also formulated the circulation theory of aerodynamic lift. In optics, Rayleigh proposed a well known criterion for angular resolution. His derivation of the Rayleigh–Jeans law for classical black-body radiation later played an important role in the birth of quantum mechanics (see Ultraviolet catastrophe). Rayleigh's textbook The Theory of Sound (1877) is still used today by acousticians and engineers.

Stamp issued by Guinea Bissau depicting Lord Rayleigh

Guinea Bissau Nobel Prize Physics John William Strutt Rayleigh



1955 Died: Tin Ujevic, Croatian poet and translator (b. 1891)

Augustin Josip "Tin" Ujević (5 July 1891 – 12 November 1955) was a Croatian poet, considered by many to be the greatest poet in 20th century Croatian literature.

From 1921, he ceased to sign his name as Augustin, thereafter using the signature Tin Ujević

In addition to his poetry, Tin Ujević also wrote essays, short stories, serials (feuilletons), studies on foreign and domestic authors, and he translated philosophical discussions from many foreign languages. He translated numerous works of poetry, novels and short stories into Croatian (Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust, Joseph Conrad, Benvenuto Cellini, George Meredith, Emile Verhaeren, Arthur Rimbaud, André Gide, among others).

He wrote more than ten books of essays, poetry in prose and meditations — but his enduring strength lies chiefly in his poetic works. At first a follower of Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević and more especially A.G. Matoš, Ujević soon moved on and developed his own independent voice.

He preferred the French and American modernists such as Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Walt Whitman, whose work he translated. His first collections Lelek sebra, and Kolajna, inspired by his years in Paris, are considered the peak of modern Croatian lyrical poetry.

From those original first books grew a body of work that is a classic of Croatian literature, and according to the British poet Clive Wilmer, "Tin Ujević was one of the last masters of European Symbolism". Poet and writer Anne Stevenson says his "melancholy, turn-of-the-century lyricism" is comparable to that of Thomas Hardy, of Edward Thomas, and of early Yeats".

British poet Richard Berengarten, who has translated some of Ujević's best works into English, writes

"Although Tin's major achievement is as a lyricist, his oeuvre is much broader than lyric alone. He was a writer of profound and discerning intellect, broad and capacious interests, inquisitive appetite and eclectic range."


Ujević died on 12 November 1955 and is buried at Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb.


Stamps from Serbia, Yugoslavia and Bosnia issued to commemorate Tin Ujević

Tin Ujević 2017 stamp of Bosnia

Tin Ujević 2016 stamp of Serbia

Yugoslavia1991 Tin Ujevic


1918 – Austria becomes a republic. After the proclamation, a coup attempt by the communist Red Guard was defeated by the social-democratic Volkswehr.

The First Austrian Republic (German: Republik Österreich) was created after the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 10 September 1919—the settlement after the end of World War I which ended the Habsburg rump state of Republic of German-Austria—and ended with the establishment of the Austrofascist Federal State of Austria based upon a dictatorship of Engelbert Dollfuss and the Fatherland's Front in 1934. The Republic's constitution was enacted in 1 October 1920 and amended on 7 December 1929. The republican period was increasingly marked by violent strife between those with left-wing and right-wing views, leading to the July Revolt of 1927 and the Austrian Civil War of 1934.

On 11 November 1918, Emperor Charles I in all but name abdicated, by relinquishing his right to take part in Austrian affairs of state.

The next day, 12 November, the National Assembly officially declared German-Austria a republic and named Social Democrat Karl Renner as provisional chancellor. On the same day it drafted a provisional constitution that stated that "German-Austria is a democratic republic" and "German-Austria is an integral part of the German republic"  The latter provision reflected the deputies' view that felt that Austria would lose so much territory in any peace settlement that it would no longer be economically and politically viable as a separate state, and the only course was union with Germany. This was enforced by the refusal of Hungary to sell grain and of Czechoslovakia to sell coal to Austria-Germany.

As the Empire collapsed and a ceasefire was announced, the Provisional Assembly sought to forestall socialist revolution by organizing a coalition government led by the minority Social Democrats. Karl Renner became Chancellor and Victor Adler became Foreign Minister. The Social Democrats co-opted newly created soldier and worker councils and used their control over labor unions to implement social policies that blunted the socialist appeal.

The first stamps issued by the German-Austrian republic

Austria 1918-1919, Issues of the Republic, Overprinted

Austria 1918-1919, Issues of the Republic, Overprinted

Austria 1918-1919, Issues of the Republic, Overprinted

Austria 1918-1919, Issues of the Republic, Overprinted

Monday, November 04, 2019

November 4th in stamps van Honthorst, Felix Mendelssohn, Paul Delaroche

Here are some events that happened on November 4th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day



1592 Born: Gerard van Honthorst, Dutch painter (d. 1656)

Gerard van Honthorst (Gerrit van Honthorst) (4 November 1592 – 27 April 1656) was a Dutch Golden Age painter who became especially noted for his depiction of artificially lit scenes, eventually receiving the nickname Gherardo delle Notti ("Gerard of the nights"). Early in his career he visited Rome, where he had great success painting in a style influenced by Caravaggio. Following his return to the Netherlands he became a leading portrait painter.

Honthorst was a prolific artist. His most attractive pieces are those in which he cultivates the style of Caravaggio, often tavern scenes with musicians, gamblers and people eating. He had great skill at chiaroscuro, often painting scenes illuminated by a single candle.

Some of his most notable pieces were portraits of the Duke of Buckingham and his family (Hampton Court), the King and Queen of Bohemia (Hanover and Combe Abbey), Marie de Medici (Amsterdam Stadthuis), 1628, the Stadtholders and their Wives (Amsterdam and The Hague), Charles Louis and Rupert, Charles I's nephews (Musée du Louvre, St Petersburg, Combe Abbey and Willin), and Baron Craven (National Portrait Gallery, London). His early style can be seen in the Lute-player (1614) in the Louvre, the Martyrdom of St John in Santa Maria della Scala at Rome, or the Liberation of Peter in the Berlin Museum.

His 1620 The Adoration of the Shepherds in the Uffizi was destroyed in the Via dei Georgofili Massacre of 1993.

Honthorst's 1623 The Concert was purchased for an undisclosed sum by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from a private collection in France in November 2013. The painting had not been on view since 1795. The 1.23-by-2.06-metre (4.0 by 6.8 ft) The Concert went on display for the first time in 218 years in a special installation at the National Gallery of Art's West Building on November 23, 2013. It remained there for six months before going on permanent display in the museum's Dutch and Flemish galleries.

Stamps from New Hebrides and New Zealand depicting van Honthorst's works

New Hebrides Nativity, by Gerard van Honthorst


New zealand 1968 christmas 2½c adoration of the shepherds van honthorst

1847 Died: Felix Mendelssohn, German pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1809)

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 1809 – 4 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include symphonies, concertos, piano music and chamber music. His best-known works include his Overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Italian Symphony, the Scottish Symphony, the oratorio Elijah, the overture The Hebrides, his mature Violin Concerto, and his String Octet. The melody for the Christmas carol "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" is also his. Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words are his most famous solo piano compositions.

A grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn was born into a prominent Jewish family. He was brought up without religion until the age of seven, when he was baptized as a Reformed Christian. Felix was recognized early as a musical prodigy, but his parents were cautious and did not seek to capitalize on his talent.

Mendelssohn enjoyed early success in Germany, and revived interest in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, notably with his performance of the St Matthew Passion in 1829. He became well received in his travels throughout Europe as a composer, conductor and soloist; his ten visits to Britain – during which many of his major works were premiered – form an important part of his adult career. His essentially conservative musical tastes set him apart from more adventurous musical contemporaries such as Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Charles-Valentin Alkan and Hector Berlioz. The Leipzig Conservatory, which he founded, became a bastion of this anti-radical outlook. After a long period of relative denigration due to changing musical tastes and antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his creative originality has been re-evaluated. He is now among the most popular composers of the Romantic era.

Stamps from Vatican, East Germany and Germany depicting Felix Mendelssohn

East Germany Felix Mendelssohn

Germany Felix Mendelssohn

Vatican Felix Mendelssohn



1856 Died: Paul Delaroche, French painter and educator (b. 1797)

Paul Delaroche (17 July 1797 – 4 November 1856) was a French painter who achieved his greater successes painting historical scenes. He became famous in Europe for his melodramatic depictions that often portrayed subjects from English and French history. The emotions emphasized in Delaroche's paintings appeal to Romanticism while the detail of his work along with the deglorified portrayal of historic figures follow the trends of Academicism and Neoclassicism. Delaroche aimed to depict his subjects and history with pragmatic realism. He did not consider popular ideals and norms in his creations, but rather painted all his subjects in the same light whether they were historical figures, figures of Christianity, or real people of his time like Napoleon Bonaparte and Marie-Antoinette. Delaroche was a leading pupil of Antoine-Jean Gros and later mentored a number of notable artists like Thomas Couture, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and Jean-François Millet.

Delaroche was born into a generation that saw the stylistic conflicts between Romanticism and Davidian Classicism. Davidian Classicism was widely accepted and enjoyed by society so as a developing artist at the time of the introduction of Romanticism in Paris, Delaroche found his place between the two movements. Subjects from Delaroche's medieval and sixteenth and seventeenth-century history paintings appealed to Romantics while the accuracy of information along with the highly finished surfaces of his paintings appealed to Academics and Neoclassicism. Delaroche's works completed in the early 1830s most reflected the position he took between the two movements and were admired by contemporary artists of the time—the Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833; National Gallery, London) was the most acclaimed of Delaroche's paintings in its day. Later in the 1830s, Delaroche exhibited the first of his major religious works. His change of subject and “the painting’s austere manner” were ill-received by critics and after 1837, he stopped exhibiting his work altogether. At the time of his death in 1856, he was painting a series of four scenes from the Life of the Virgin. Only one work from this series was completed: the Virgin Contemplating the Crown of Thorns.

Monaco stamp featuring a Napoleon Bonaparte painting by Paul Delaroche

Monaco Napoleon, by Paul Delaroche, 1969