July 19 in stamps Degas, 1952 Olympics, George II, 1980 Olympics

Here are some events that happened on July 19th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day.


1834 Born: Edgar Degas, French painter, sculptor, and illustrator (d. 1917)

Edgar Degas (born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, 19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers, racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation

Some stamps depicting Degas and or his artwork

1890 Born:  George II of Greece (d. 1947)

George II (Greek: Γεώργιος Βʹ, Geórgios II; 19 July 1890 – 1 April 1947) reigned as King of Greece from 1922 to 1924 and from 1935 to 1947. He was a paternal first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Some stamps depicting  George II

1952 – Opening of the Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland.

The 1952 Summer Olympics (Finnish: Kesäolympialaiset 1952; Swedish: Olympiska sommarspelen 1952), officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Helsinki, Finland, from July 19 to August 3, 1952.

Medal count

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	United States	40	19	17	76
2	Soviet Union	22	30	19	71
3	Hungary	16	10	16	42
4	Sweden	12	13	10	35
5	Italy	8	9	4	21

Some stamps issued to commemorate the 1952 Olympics

1980 – Opening of the Summer Olympics in Moscow.

The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad (Russian: И́гры XXII Олимпиа́ды, tr. Igry XXII Olimpiady), was an international multi-sport event held in Moscow, Soviet Union, in present-day Russia.

The 1980 Games were the first Olympic Games to be staged in Eastern Europe, and remain the only Summer Olympics held there, as well as the first Olympic Games to be held in a Slavic language-speaking country. They were also the first Olympic Games to be held in a socialist country, and the only Summer Games to be held in such a country until 2008 in Beijing, China

Eighty nations were represented at the Moscow Games – the smallest number since 1956. Led by the United States, 66 countries boycotted the games entirely because of the Soviet–Afghan War. Some athletes from some of the boycotting countries (they are not included in the list of 66 countries that boycotted the games entirely) participated in the games under the Olympic Flag. The Soviet Union would later boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics.


Medal count

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Soviet Union (URS)*	80	69	46	195
2	East Germany (GDR)	47	37	42	126
3	Bulgaria (BUL)	8	16	17	41
4	Cuba (CUB)	8	7	5	20
5	Italy (ITA)	8	3	4	15

Some stamps issued to commemorate the 1980 Olympics

July 18 in stamps Pedro II, Gemini 10, Nadia Comaneci , Caravaggio, Hendrik Lorentz

Here are some events that happened on July 18th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day.


1610 Died: Caravaggio, Italian painter (b. 1571)

Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio (28 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily from the early 1590s to 1610. His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.


Caravaggio employed close physical observation with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro that came to be known as tenebrism. He made the technique a dominant stylistic element, darkening shadows and transfixing subjects in bright shafts of light. Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and scenes, often featuring violent struggles, torture and death. He worked rapidly, with live models, preferring to forgo drawings and work directly onto the canvas. His influence on the new Baroque style that emerged from Mannerism was profound. It can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Rembrandt, and artists in the following generation heavily under his influence were called the "Caravaggisti" or "Caravagesques", as well as tenebrists or tenebrosi ("shadowists").

Below are some stamps depicting Caravaggio  or his paintings from Italy, Albania, East Germany and the Vatican

1841 – Coronation of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil.

Dom Pedro II (English: Peter II; 2 December 1825 – 5 December 1891), nicknamed "the Magnanimous", was the second and last monarch of the Empire of Brazil, reigning for over 58 years. He was born in Rio de Janeiro, the seventh child of Emperor Dom Pedro I of Brazil and Empress Dona Maria Leopoldina and thus a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza. His father's abrupt abdication and departure to Europe in 1831 left the five year-old as Emperor and led to a grim and lonely childhood and adolescence, obliged to spend his time studying in preparation for rule. He knew only brief moments of happiness and encountered few friends of his age. His experiences with court intrigues and political disputes during this period greatly affected his later character; he grew into a man with a strong sense of duty and devotion toward his country and his people, yet increasingly resentful of his role as monarch


Upon leaving the country, Emperor Pedro I selected three people to take charge of his son and remaining daughters.  The possibility of lowering the young Emperor's age of majority, instead of waiting until he turned 18, had been floated since 1835. His elevation to the throne had led to a troublesome period of endless crises. The regency created to rule on his behalf was plagued from the start by disputes between political factions and rebellions across the nation. Those politicians who had risen to power during the 1830s had by now also become familiar with the pitfalls of rule. According to historian Roderick J. Barman, by 1840 "they had lost all faith in their ability to rule the country on their own. They accepted Pedro II as an authority figure whose presence was indispensable for the country's survival." When asked by politicians if he would like to assume full powers, Pedro II shyly accepted. On the following day, 23 July 1840, the General Assembly (the Brazilian Parliament) formally declared the 14-year-old Pedro II of age. He was later acclaimed, crowned and consecrated on 18 July 1841


Below are some Brazilian stamps depicting Pedro II

1853 Born: Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1928)

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He also derived the transformation equations underpinning Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity.

According to the biography published by the Nobel Foundation, "It may well be said that Lorentz was regarded by all theoretical physicists as the world's leading spirit, who completed what was left unfinished by his predecessors and prepared the ground for the fruitful reception of the new ideas based on the quantum theory." He received many other honors and distinctions, including a term as chairman of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, the forerunner of UNESCO, between 1925 and 1928.

Dutch stamp depicting Hendrik Lorentz

1966 – Human spaceflight: Gemini 10 is launched from Cape Kennedy on a 70-hour mission that includes docking with an orbiting Agena target vehicle.

Gemini 10 (officially Gemini X)[2] was a 1966 crewed spaceflight in NASA's Gemini program. It was the 8th crewed Gemini flight, the 16th crewed American flight, and the 24th spaceflight of all time (includes X-15 flights over 100 kilometers (54 nautical miles)).

For many years the spacecraft was the centerpiece of a space exhibition at Norsk Teknisk Museum, Oslo, Norway. It was returned on request in 2002.


The spacecraft is currently on display at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Below is a cover with a postmark from USS De Haven as part of the US Navy Recovery Force

1976 – Nadia Comăneci becomes the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics.


Nadia Elena Comăneci is a Romanian retired gymnast and a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. Comăneci is the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games, and then, at the same Games (1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal), she received six more perfect 10s en route to winning three gold medals. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, she won two more gold medals and attained two more perfect 10s. During her career, Comăneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals

A First Day Cover and a sheet depicting Nadia Comăneci

July 17th in stamps Catherine the Great, Romanov family, Spanish Civil War

Here are some events that happened on July 17th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day



1762 – Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia.



Catherine II (2 May [O.S. 21 April] 1729 – 17 November [O.S. 6 November] 1796), also known as Catherine the Great (Екатери́на Вели́кая, Yekaterina Velikaya), born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, was Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796, the country's longest-ruling female leader. She came to power following a coup d'état that she organised—resulting in her husband, Peter III, being overthrown. Under her reign, Russia was revitalised; it grew larger and stronger and was recognised as one of the great powers of Europe

Stamps from Russia depicting Catherine the Great

1918 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are executed by Bolshevik Chekists at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

In the early hours of 17 July 1918, the royal family was awakened around 2:00 am, got dressed, and were led down into a half-basement room at the back of the Ipatiev house. The pretext for this move was the family's safety, i.e. that anti-Bolshevik forces were approaching Yekaterinburg, and the house might be fired upon

Nicholas was carrying his son. When the family arrived in the basement, the former empress complained that there were no chairs for them to sit on. Yurovsky ordered two chairs brought in, and when the empress and the heir were seated, the executioners filed into the room. Yurovsky announced to them that the Ural Soviet of Workers' Deputies had decided to execute them. A stunned Nicholas asked, "What? What?" and turned toward his family. Yurovsky quickly repeated the order and Nicholas said, according to Peter Ermakov, "You know not what you do."

The executioners drew handguns and began shooting; Nicholas was the first to die


Some Russian stamps depicting Tsar Nicholas II

1936 – Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain starts the civil war.

The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: Guerra Civil Española) took place from 1936 to 1939. Republicans loyal to the elected, left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, in alliance with the Anarchists and Communists, fought against a revolt by the Nationalists, an alliance of Falangists, Monarchists, Carlists, conservatives and Catholics, led by a military clique among whom General Francisco Franco soon achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets, and different views saw it as class struggle, a war of religion, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, between fascism and communism. It has been frequently called the "dress rehearsal" for World War II.

The Nationalists won the war, which ended in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.

Some Spanish Civil War stamps

July 16th in stamps District of Columbia, Ahmad Shah Qajar

Here are some events that happened on July 16th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day

1790 – The District of Columbia is established as the capital of the United States after signature of the Residence Act.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington or D.C., is the capital of the United States. Founded after the American Revolution as the seat of government of the newly independent country, Washington was named after George Washington, the first president of the United States and a Founding Father. As the seat of the United States federal government and several international organizations, Washington is an important world political capital. The city is also one of the most visited cities in the world, with more than 20 million tourists annually.

The signing of the Residence Act on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of a capital district located along the Potomac River on the country's East Coast. The U.S. Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress, and the District is therefore not a part of any state.

1909 – Persian Constitutional Revolution: Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar is forced out as Shah of Persia and is replaced by his son Ahmad Shah Qajar.


Ahmad Shah Qajar (21 January 1898 – 21 February 1930), was Shah (King) of Persia from 16 July 1909 to 15 December 1925, and the last ruling member of the Qajar dynasty.

On 16 July 1909, Mohammad Ali Shah was overthrown by rebels seeking to restore the 1906 Constitution. The rebels then convened the Grand Majles of 500 delegates from different backgrounds, which placed Ahmad Shah, Mohammad Ali's six-year-old son, on the Sun Throne

July 15th in stamps Rembrandt, Rosetta Stone, Champollion, Hermann Emil Fischer

Here are some events that happened on July 15th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day


1606 Born: Rembrandt, Dutch painter and etcher (d. 1669)


Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606– 4 October 1669) was a Dutch draughtsman, painter and printmaker. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history. Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt's works depict a wide range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes as well as animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art (especially Dutch painting), although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and innovative, and gave rise to important new genres


Some stamps from  Germany, Cyprus, France and the Netherlands depicting Rembrandt or his works

1799 – The Rosetta Stone is found in the Egyptian village of Rosetta by French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard during Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign.

The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele, rediscovered in the western world in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic script and demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. As the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, the Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, thereby opening a window into ancient Egyptian history

Below are a First Day Cover from Egypt as well as stamps from Egypt, France and Monaco depicting the Rosetta Stone as well as Jean-François Champollion who published his first breakthrough in the decipherment of the Rosetta hieroglyphs in 1822

1919 Died: Hermann Emil Fischer, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)

Hermann Emil Louis Fischer (9 October 1852 – 15 July 1919) was a German chemist and 1902 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He discovered the Fischer esterification. He also developed the Fischer projection, a symbolic way of drawing asymmetric carbon atoms. He also hypothesized lock and key mechanism of enzyme action. He never used his first given name, and was known throughout his life simply as Emil Fischer.

In 1875, the year following his engagement with von Baeyer, he published his discovery of the organic derivatives of a new compound of hydrogen and nitrogen, hydrazine. He investigated their derivatives, establishing their relation to the diazo compounds, and he noted the readiness with which they entered into combination with other substances, giving origin to a wealth of hitherto unknown compounds. Of such condensation products undoubtedly the most important are the hydrazones, which result from the interaction with aldehydes and ketones. His observations, published in 1886, that such hydrazones, by treatment with hydrochloric acid or zinc chloride, yielded derivatives of indole, the parent substance of indigo, were a confirmation of the views advanced by von Baeyer on the subject of indigo and the many substances related to it.

He next turned to the fuchsine (then called "rosaniline") magenta dyes, and in collaboration with his cousin Otto Fischer, he published papers in 1878 and 1879 which established that these dyes were derivatives of triphenylmethane. Emil Fischer's next research was concerned with compounds related to uric acid. Here the ground had been broken by von Baeyer, but Fischer greatly advanced the field of knowledge of the purines. In 1881 and 1882 he published papers which established the formulae of uric acid, xanthine, caffeine (achieving the first synthesis), theobromine and some other compounds of this group. After purine itself was isolated, a variety of derivatives were prepared, some of which were patented in view of possible therapeutical applications.

Fischer is particularly noted for his work on sugars. Among his early discoveries related to hydrazine was that phenylhydrazine reacted with sugars to form substances which he named osazones, and which, being highly crystalline and readily formed, served to identify such carbohydrates more definitely than had been previously possible. Later, among other work, he is noted for the organic synthesis of D-(+)-glucose. He showed how to deduce the formulae of the 16 stereoisomeric glucoses, and prepared several stereoisomerides, helping to confirm the Le Bel–Van 't Hoff rule of the asymmetric carbon atom.

In the field of enzymology, Fischer is known for his proposal of "the lock and key" model as a mechanism of substrate binding.

Fischer was also instrumental in the discovery of barbiturates, a class of sedative drugs used for insomnia, epilepsy, anxiety, and anesthesia. Along with the physician Josef von Mering, he helped to launch the first barbiturate sedative, barbital, in 1904. He next carried out pioneering work on proteins. By the introduction of new methods, he succeeded in breaking down the complex albumins into amino acids and other nitrogenous compounds, the constitutions of most of which were known, and by bringing about the recombination of these units, he prepared synthetic peptides which approximated to the natural products. His researches made from 1899 to 1906 were published in 1907 with the title Untersuchungen über Aminosauren, Polypeptides und Proteine.

In 1897 he put forward the idea to create the International Atomic Weights Commission. Fischer was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1899. He was awarded the 1902 Nobel Prize in chemistry "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his work on sugar and purine syntheses."

Many names of chemical reactions and concepts are named after him:

• Fischer indole synthesis
• Fischer projection
• Fischer oxazole synthesis
• Fischer peptide synthesis
• Fischer phenylhydrazine and oxazone reaction
• Fischer–Speier esterification
• Fischer glycosidation
• Kiliani–Fischer synthesis

Stamp issued by Guinea Bissau depicting Emil Fischer