Postage stamps are pieces of paper, with glue or adhesive on the back. They are put on the corner of an envelope to pay the fee for having the postal service take the envelope to where it is being sent. There are a lot of different postage stamps in the world. They have existed since the nineteenth century. Most countries have their own stamps. People collect them in books called stamp albums. Sometimes people collect stamps from only one country, or there is something else that links the stamps. Perhaps, the stamps all have errors in the printing like in the "Inverted Jenny" picture with the aeroplane printed upside down.
Maps on stamps is a common topic on stamp collecting. Almost every country has featured maps on stamps. There are also topic maps including demographic and cross topic ones (showing explorer routes over maps).
People on stamps is one more common topic in stamp collecting. For instance, many famous people are featured on stamps in the United States.
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a country in Europe. It split off from Austria-Hungary in 1918 and split apart in 1993.
In mid-1938 Nazi Germany took over Czechoslovakia and split off Slovakia. After World War II the USSR annexed a part of eastern Czechoslovakia so that they could have a border with Hungary. The USSR also annexed parts of Poland and Romania. All four of these countries were in the USSR's sphere of influence. The USSR thought that this meant they could make sure the countries did what they wanted. In 1968 the USSR thought that the government of Alexander Dubcek was moving away from communism and leaving the Warsaw Pact, and invaded Czechoslovakia.
In 1989 Czechoslovakia peacefully removed the Communist dictatorship in the "Velvet Revolution".
On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Both countries separated in peace.
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William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst (April 29, 1863–August 14, 1951) was an important American newspaper owner who was born in San Francisco, California.
He was the only child of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, a former schoolteacher from Missouri, and George Hearst, a successful miner who became a multimillionaire and later a US Senator from California.
Hearst was a member of the US House of Representatives for New York between 1903 and 1907, as a member of the Independence Party, which he started.
Hearst was a media tycoon. He started a newspaper empire, which is now the Hearst Corporation. He became known for publishing sensationalist stories, which were often false or only very loosely based on the truth.
The film "Citizen Kane" by Orson Welles is based upon the story of Hearst's life.
Learned at Harvard
Joseph Pulitzer
Joseph "Joe" Pulitzer (April 10, 1847 – October 29, 1911) was an American publisher of Jewish descent. He is best known for the Pulitzer Prizes, which were started after his death by his will.
He is also known, long with William Randolph Hearst, for starting yellow journalism as a way to sell more papers by printing sensationalism in articles.
Joseph Pulitzer was born in Makó, in present-day Hungary. Originally, he wanted to do a military career, but was turned down by the Austrian army. They said his health was bad and that he did not see very well. He went to live in the United States in 1864 to serve the Union in the American Civil War. After the war he settled in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1868 he began working there for a German-language daily newspaper, the "Westliche Post". He joined the Republican Party and was elected to the Missouri State Assembly in 1869. In 1872, Pulitzer bought the "Post" for $3,000. Then, in 1878, he bought the "St. Louis Dispatch" for $2,700 and merged the two papers, which became the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch", which remains St. Louis' daily newspaper. It was at the Post-Dispatch that Pulitzer developed his role as a champion of the common man with exposés and a hard-hitting populist approach.
By 1883, Pulitzer had made a lot of money. In that year, he bought the "New York World". That newspaper had been losing $40,000 a year. He paid $346,000 to Jay Gould, the owner. Pulitzer changed its focus to human-interest stories, scandal, and sensationalism. In 1885, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but resigned after a few months' service. He did not like politics. In 1887, he recruited the famous investigative journalist Nellie Bly. In 1895 the "World" introduced the popular Yellow Kid comic by Richard F. Outcault. This was the first newspaper comic printed with color. Under Pulitzer's leadership, circulation grew from 15,000 to 600,000, making "The New York World" the largest newspaper in the nation.
The editor of the rival "New York Sun" attacked Pulitzer in print. He called him "The Jew who gave up his religion". This was in 1890. This was intended to turn away Pulitzer's Jewish readership. Pulitzer's already failing health deteriorated rapidly, and he left the newsroom. He continued to actively manage the paper from his vacation retreat in Bar Harbor, Maine and his New York mansion.
In 1895, William Randolph Hearst purchased the rival "New York Journal", which led to a circulation war. This competition with Hearst, particularly the coverage before and during the Spanish-American War, linked Pulitzer's name with "yellow journalism".
After the "World" exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company in 1909, Pulitzer was indicted for libeling Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan. The courts dismissed the indictments, in a victory for freedom of the press.
In 1892, Pulitzer offered Columbia University's president, Seth Low, money to set up the world's first school of journalism. The university initially turned down the money, evidently unimpressed by Pulitzer's unscrupulous character. In 1902, Columbia's new president Nicholas Murray Butler was more receptive to the plan for a school and prizes, but it would not be until after Pulitzer's death that this dream would be fulfilled. Pulitzer left the university $2 million in his will, which led to the creation in 1912 of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, but by then the first school of journalism had been created at the University of Missouri. Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism remains one of the most prestigious in the world.
Joseph Pulitzer died aboard his yacht in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina in 1911. He is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York. In 1917, the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded, in accordance with Pulitzer's wishes.
In 1989, Pulitzer was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor, reformer and politician. His "New York Tribune" was the most influential newspaper of the period 1840-1870. Greeley used it to promote the Whig and Republican parties.
He is best known for his socially colored journalism. He wanted to convince people of his ideas. He thought that the role of a journalist must be to convince people with sound arguments. He did not like the sensationalist approach of Joseph Pulitzer and others.
Greeley ran for President in 1872, but died before the election results came. Whether or not if he died he would have lost to Ulysses S. Grant.
Arachnid
The Arachnids are a class of eight-legged arthropods. They are a highly successful group of mainly terrestrial invertebrates: spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, ticks, and mites, and a number of smaller groups.
In 2019, a molecular phylogeny study put horseshoe crabs in the Arachnida.
Arachnids are . The requirements for this class is to have two body regions; a cephalothorax and an abdomen; 4 pairs of legs; and 2 pairs of mouthpart appendages, the chelicerae and the pedipalps.