Here are stamps issued by South Africa that would be candidates for a themed collection of elements on stamps.
Given South Africa’s large mining industry, it is somewhat surprising that relatively few stamps with a mining theme have been issued.
Gold (atomic number 79) 1961 First Definitive Issue Issued May 31, 1961 Perf. 14 | Photogravure | Wmk Coat of Arms 201 113 2c Ultramarine and yellow | Pouring gold [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue Part 1, British Commonwealth 1997]Iron (26) Steel is primarily composed of iron, with most types containing around 98% to 99.5% iron, with the remaining percentage typically made up of carbon and trace elements depending on the specific steel grade.
1978 50th Anniversary of ISCOR* (South African Iron and Steel Industrial Corporation) Issued Jun. 5, 1978 Perf. 12 | Design: Hein Botha | Litho. | No Wmk 441 225 15c Multicolored | Steel rail *In the early 2000s, Iscor was sold by Thabo Mbeki’s government as his administration sought to run a tight ship and right the country’s finances. The name Iscor disappeared for good in March 2005. [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue Part 1, British Commonwealth 1997]Carbon (6) 1980 World Diamond Congress, Johannesburg Issued May 12, 1980 Perf. 14 |Design: A.H. Barrett |Litho. |No Wmk 478 20c Multicolored | Cullinan II diamond*
*Yes, a diamond is nothing but a lump of carbon. The Cullinan II is a 317.4 carat cushion-cut diamond that is the second-largest cut from the original Cullinan diamond. It is also known as the Second Star of Africa and is the most valuable stone in the Imperial State Crown in the Tower of London. The Cullinan Diamond is the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, weighing 3,106 carats (621.20 g), discovered at the Premier No.2 mine in Cullinan, South Africa, on 26 January 1905. [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue Part 1, British Commonwealth 1997]These four metals happen to sit right next to one another in the periodic table: Titanium (22) Vanadium (23) Chromium (24) Manganese (25) 1984 Strategic Minerals Issued Jun. 8, 1984 Perf. 14 x 14¼ | Design: Hein Botha | Litho. | No Wmk 558 11c Multicolored | Manganese 559 20c Multicolored | Chromium 560 25c Multicolored | Vanadium 561 30c Multicolored | Titanium [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue Part 1, British Commonwealth 1997]Gold (79) 1986 Centenary of Johannesburg Issued Sep. 25, 1986 Perf. 14 | Design: J. van Niekerk | Litho. | No Wmk 607 30c Multicolored | Gold bars [Source: Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue Part 1, British Commonwealth 1997]
This sounds like a very interesting project: find postage stamps of the world that point to an element in the Periodic Table, directly or indirectly.
That is exactly what Larry G. French from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, had done, and writes about here and says:
“A premium was attached to identifying stamps on which element names and symbols or some other chemical notation appeared. I also attempted to include as many nations as possible while ensuring a good blend of people, places, applications and scientific fields was represented. For some elements (typically those with great economic significance such as gold and aluminum) there were many options to select from. Conversely, the frustratingly chemically similar lanthanides and actinides and the ephemeral super heavy weight chemical division posed a more significant challenge, one requiring deep digging and a creative license“.
Here is the “philatelic table of the elements”. (I requested a high-resolution version of this image from the site’s webmaster so that I can see all the details of the stamps). At first blush, I know of several stamps in my South Africa collection that refer to gold or have the mineshafts of gold mines on them. There is also a set of South African stamps from 1984 with symbols for chromium, manganese, vanadium* and titanium on. *Atomic number 23, and the stamp appears in the table above.
Here are the descriptions of the stamps in the table:
1 Hydrogen – North Vietnam
Test of Chinese hydrogen bomb;
nuclear chemistry in hydrogen bomb
2 Helium – U.S.S.R.
Tokamak fusion reactor
Will fusion ever become a viable clean energy source?
3 Lithium – Bolivia
Salar de Uyuni Salt Flats; Lithium resources for battery production/resource development in underdeveloped economies
4 Beryllium – Brazil
Emeralds; Legal battle over ownership of 180,000 carat Brazilian Bahia emerald
5 Boron – Turkey
Colmanite CaB3O4(OH)3 H2O; boron production
6 Carbon – Austria
Petrochemical industry, carbon compound; energy, carbon emissions, global warming
7 Nitrogen – France
Alkaloids, quinine discovery;
medicines from plants, malaria
87 Francium – France
Discovery by Frederic & Irene Joliot-Curie; work of Marguerite Perey at Curie Institute
88 Radium – India
Marie Sklodowska Curie discoverer; radium therapy in medicine
89 Actinium – Zaire
Trace quantities of actinium in pitchblende; uranium ore from Shinkolobwe mine in the Congo (Zaire) source of uranium for Manhattan Project
90 Thorium – Austria
Auer’s thorium mantle gas lamp; thorium pollution around superfund site(s) Camden, NJ Auer Lamp manufacturing site(s)
91 Protactinium – Sweden
Frederick Soddy; partial credit for discovery of protactinium isotopes, Nobel Prize
92 Uranium – West Germany
Uranium fission; Otto Hahn and discovery
of nuclear fission
93 Neptunium – United Nations
Fallout from above ground nuclear tests; nuclear arms control
96 Curium – Madagascar
Curies in Lab; Curies’ contributions to chemistry; uranium ore for radium production from Madagascar
97 Berkelium – Rep. of Guinea
Ernest Lawrence discovery of berkelium with cyclotron; Lawrence’s role in Manhattan Project; cyclotrons for synthesizing elements
98 Californium – Egypt
Landmine prohibition; neutron source for mine detection systems
99 Einsteinium – Rep. Marshall Islands
Ivy Mike test at Enewetak Atoll; first production element 99; nuclear testing, discovery of synthetic elements
100 Fermium – Italy
Enrico Fermi (with famous mistake in equation on board); Fermi’s role in Manhattan Project
101 Mendelevium – U.S.S.R.
Rutherford and Einstein; production of mendelevium via einsteinium bombardment with alpha particles
102 Nobelium – Hungary
10th anniversary JINR
103 Lawrencium – St. Vincent
Lawrence with first cyclotron; Lawrence’s role in Manhattan Project, cyclotrons for synthesizing elements
104 Rutherfordium – New Zealand
Electrons orbiting Rutherford’s head; Rutherford’s contributions to chemistry & physics, Nobel Prize
We have had cloudy skies for most of the evenings here in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s been a challenge to see that wily comet called C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS).
C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) is a comet from the Oort cloud* discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China on 9 January 2023 and independently found by ATLAS South Africa on 22 February 2023. The comet passed perihelion at a distance of 0.39 AU on 27 September 2024, when it became visible to the naked eye. [Source: Wikipedia]
*The Oort Cloud lies far beyond Pluto and the most distant edges of the Kuiper Belt. While the planets of our solar system orbit in a flat plane, the Oort Cloud is believed to be a giant spherical shell surrounding the Sun, planets and Kuiper Belt Objects. It’s like a big, thick bubble around our solar system, made of icy, comet-like objects. The Oort Cloud’s icy bodies can be as large as mountains – and sometimes larger. [Source: science.nasa.gov]
Picture posted by South African Lafras Smit (from Heilbron, Free State province, South Africa), on his Facebook account. 19 Okt 24 Wat wil jy nou nog meer in een foto hê? Daar is die Melkwegkern, Venus, Komeet Tsuchinshan – Atlas en ‘n vrystaatse windpomp! Translation: Could one want anything more in one photo? There’s the core of the Milky Way galaxy, Venus, comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas, and a windpump from Free State province!
Yikes.
From cbsnews.com: After weeks of debate, NASA has ruled out bringing two astronauts back to Earth aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule because of lingering concerns about multiple helium leaks and degraded thrusters, both critical to a successful re-entry, officials said Saturday. Launched June 5, Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams originally expected to spend a little more than a week in space in the Starliner’s first piloted test flight. They’ll now spend at least 262 days in orbit — nearly nine months — before returning to Earth around Feb. 22 with two Crew 9 fliers after they wrap up a normal six-month tour of duty.
‘The full moon captured from space’ posted on X by Curiosity@MAstronomers. It’s not clear from the post when this picture was taken, though. This August’s full moon (the supermoon called Blue Moon*) occurred at 2:26 p.m. EDT (1826 GMT) on Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, when the moon was 100% fully illuminated. *Blue Moon means it’s the third full moon in a season that has four full moons.
It’s time for another cool British stamp that had arrived on an envelope in my mailbox.
150th Anniversary of Dinosaurs’ Identification by Owen Issued 1991, Aug. 20 Perf. 14½ x 14 | Phosphorized paper 1577 1010 Triceratops | 37p | grey, greenish yellow, turquoise-blue, dull violet, yellow-brown & black [Source: 1997 Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue Part 1: British Commonwealth] Additional notes: 1. Richard Owen worked as a taxonomist for the London Zoo and coined the word dinosaur (originally ‘dinosauria’) in 1841. 2. Triceratops lived in the Late Cretaceous period, about 68 to 66 million years ago, in what is now western North America.
It was another beautiful blue sky day here in the city— 85°F (29 °C).
Here’s a view of downtown Bellevue, taken from my passenger seat at the top of the Ship Canal Bridge as we were heading north on I-5. That’s the Portage Bay body of water in the foreground. Vessels have the Montlake Cut to get to Lake Washington (visible at left, middle of the picture). Downtown Bellevue is on the east side of Lake Washington, and those are the Cascades mountain range in the distance.
Happy solstice!
It’s the earliest summer solstice in 228 years, or— since George Washington’s presidency.
So astronomical summer starts today here in the Northern Hemisphere.
With the scorching weather in much of the USA, it has felt like summer for many weeks already, of course.
We are going to be at 81 °F (27 °C) or so, through Saturday, here in the Seattle metro area.
Today marks the 44th anniversary of the 1980 Mt St Helens eruption.
‘We know that Mount St. Helens is the volcano in the Cascades most likely to erupt again in our lifetimes. It is likely that the types, frequencies, and magnitudes of past activity will be repeated in the future. However, neither a large debris avalanche nor a major lateral blast like those of May 18, 1980 is likely now that a deep crater has formed’.
– Cascades Volcano Observatory, Mount St. Helens, Nov. 3, 2023 (from the usgs.gov website)
Mount St. Helens prior to the catastrophic eruption of May 18, 1980. Streams and lava flows also visible. View is looking southerly from oblique aerial view. Mount Hood in distance. [Photo and description from usgs.gov website]Plinian eruption column from May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helens. Aerial view from the Southwest. [Photo and description from usgs.gov website]
Here is a new image of the Martian surface, taken by the Perseverance rover.
The atmosphere of Mars is much thinner than Earth’s.
The Red Planet’s atmosphere contains more than 95% carbon dioxide and much less than 1% oxygen.
Gravity on Mars is about 38% of the gravity of Earth, due to its smaller mass.
We were treated to a rare display of the northern lights here from Seattle on Friday night.
I took the first two pictures from my back porch around midnight on Friday.
The third picture was taken by my friend Thomas from Kitsap Peninsula. Look for the grouping of stars called the Big Dipper (a big ladle, left-of-middle, top of picture).
Anticipation of the total eclipse of the sun that is about to be visible in a large swath of North America, is at a fever pitch.
The eclipse will be visible starting at 12:06 p.m. CDT near Eagle Pass, Texas, before progressing to totality by about 1:27 p.m. CDT.
It will progress along its path to the northeast over the next few hours and the last of the eclipse in North America will be seen from Caribou, Maine at 4:40 p.m. EDT.
It does look like there will be cloud cover in several places along the way.
Here in the Pacific Northwest we will only see some 20% of the sun being obscured by the moon, and that is if the clouds allow it.
The Black Sun at Volunteer Park tonight. The sculpture of black Brazilian granite on a concrete base was created in 1969 by Isamu Noguchi.
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
The Associated Press
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan’s strongest earthquake in a quarter century rocked the island during the morning rush Wednesday, damaging buildings and creating a tsunami that washed ashore on southern Japanese islands. There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries, and the tsunami threat largely passed about two hours later.
Despite the quake striking at the height of the morning rush hour just before 8 a.m., the initial panic faded quickly on the island that is regularly rocked by temblors and prepares for them with drills at schools and notices issued via public media and mobile phone.
Still, the earthquake was strong enough to scare people who are used to such shaking.
“Earthquakes are a common occurrence, and I’ve grown accustomed to them. But today was the first time I was scared to tears by an earthquake,” Taipei resident Hsien-hsuen Keng said. ”I was awakened by the earthquake. I had never felt such intense shaking before.”
A five-story building in the lightly populated southeastern coastal city of Hualien near the epicenter appeared heavily damaged, collapsing its first floor and leaving the rest leaning at a 45-degree angle. In the capital, tiles fell from older buildings and within some newer office complexes, while debris fell from some building sites. Schools evacuated their students to sports fields, equipping them with yellow safety helmets. Some also covered themselves with textbooks to guard against falling objects as aftershocks continued. [Image taken from a video footage run by TVBS]
Just on the border of your waking mind There lies another time Where darkness and light are one And as you tread the halls of sanity You feel so glad to be Unable to go beyond I have a message from another time
– Lyrics from ‘Prologue’ on the album ‘Time’ by Electric Light Orchestra, 1981
It’s time to fiddle with our clocks again here in the United States.
Daylight Saving Time starts Sunday morning at 2 am.
Yeah, an hour extra daylight at the end of the day— robbed from the daylight in the early morning.
So we’re not really saving any daylight now, are we?
‘Alien-looking lobsters, sponges, urchins, sea stars and sea lilies are among the creatures deep-sea explorers found off the coast of Chile.
Deep-sea explorers searching below the waves off the coast of Chile may have found more than 100 species completely new to science.
The potential discovery of the new creatures across 10 seamounts in the southeast Pacific does more than just add to the depth of understanding of the sheer diversity of ocean life. For the researchers, it shows how ocean protections put in place by the Chilean government are working to bolster biodiversity, an encouraging sign for other countries looking to safeguard their marine waters’.
– From a report by Dino Grandoni for the Washington Post of Feb. 24.
– Pictures are stills from a video by the Schmidt Ocean Institute.
We were sailing just about due south, as we crossed the equator at noon today, close to Manta on the coast of Ecuador.
The captain made an announcement, and sounded the horn of the ship.
There it is, the imaginary line that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. My weather app instantly changed the location from North Pacific Ocean to South Pacific Ocean, and the latitude has now turned negative (south) as well. (Thanks to Bryan for the iPhone compass picture).There was pickleball today— on deck and on the equator, how about that? Two of the five pickleball Amigos from Seattle showed off their skills on the very breezy pickleball enclosure. The entire space is enclosed by netting, so that the pickleball cannot go flying into the ocean. Great!
Euclid is a wide-angle space telescope with a 600-megapixel camera to record visible light, a near-infrared spectrometer, and photometer, to determine the redshift of detected galaxies. It was developed by the European Space Agency and the Euclid Consortium, and was launched on 1 July 2023.
– Wikipedia
Today, the European Space Agency shared the first images obtained from the telescope.
One thousand galaxies belonging to the Perseus Cluster with more than 100,000 additional galaxies visible farther away. Each can contain up to hundreds of billions of stars. [Courtesy European Space Agency/Euclid Consortium/NASA; image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi]The spiral galaxy IC 342, an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis, located relatively close to our own Milky Way galaxy. Radius 35,000 light years | discovered 1892 | distance from Earth 10.76 million light years. [Courtesy the European Space Agency/Euclid Consortium/NASA; image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi]The Horsehead Nebula is a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion (in the Milky Way galaxy). Radius 3.5 light years | discovered 1888 | distance from Earth 1,500 light years. [Courtesy of the European Space Agency/Euclid Consortium/NASA; image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi]Irregular galaxy NGC 6822. Discovered 1884 | distance from Earth 1.6 million light years. [Courtesy the European Space Agency/Euclid Consortium/NASA; image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi]A full view of the globular cluster NGC 6397 in constellation Ara in the Milky Way. Radius 34 light years | distance from Earth 7,800 light years. [Courtesy the European Space Agency/Euclid Consortium/NASA; image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi]
I ran out and got the new RSV vaccine yesterday (from Pfizer, marketed as ‘Abrysvo’). It does feel like my system is reacting to it, more so than was the case for the flu shot or the latest COVID vaccine.
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is spread through contact with contaminated surfaces (and from what I understand, not by airborne transmission).
RSV causes mild cold symptoms in most people, but if the virus ends up flourishing in the lungs, it can lead to hospitalization and even death in older people and babies.
Researchers have been trying for decades to create effective RSV vaccines.
One turning point came with the investigation of an RSV protein called ‘RSV prefusion (RSV preF)’ that turned out to provide potent stimulation of the immune system.
Abrysvo contains proteins from the surfaces of two strains of the RSV virus. When a person is given the vaccine, the immune system treats the viral proteins as ‘foreign’ entities and makes defenses against them. If, later on, the vaccinated person comes into contact with the virus, the immune system will recognize the viral proteins and be prepared to attack it.
An illustration of how subunit vaccines work, from Pfizer’s website. This mechanism is one of SIX major categorizations of vaccines. Ready? 1. Live-attenuated vaccines (such as for measles/mumps/rubella, chicken pox). 2. Inactivated vaccines (for polio, flu). 3. Subunit vaccines (shingles, hepatitus B, and now RSV). 4. Toxoid vaccines (such as for tetanus, diphteria). 5. Viral vector vaccines (such as the Ebola vaccine, some COVID vaccines). 6. Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines (used for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine).
Etching depicting some of the most significant plants of the Carboniferous. The Carboniferous is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period 358.9 million years ago, to the beginning of the Permian Period, 298.9 mya. [Picture: Bibliographisches Institut – Meyers Konversationslexikon]From the 2021 book ‘A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth’ by Henry Gee: The Carboniferous* lycopod forests were not like this at all (trees with wood and bark). The lycopods, like their Devonian forebears, were hollow, supported by thick skin rather than heartwood, and covered in green, leaflike scales. Indeed, the entire plant— the trunk and the crown of dropping branches alike— was scaly. With no columns of vessels to transport food, each of the scales was photosynthetic, supplying food to the tissues close by. Even stranger to our eyes, these trees spent most of their lives as inconspicuous stumps in the ground. Only when it was ready to reproduce did a tree grow, a pole shooting upward like a firework in slow motion to explode in a crown of branches that would broadcast spores into the wind. Once the spores had been shed, the tree would die. Over many years of wind and weather, fungi and bacteria would etch away at the husk until it collapsed onto the sodden forest floor below. A lycopod forest looked like the desolate landscape of the First World War Western Front: a craterscape of hollow stumps filled with a refuse of water and death; the trees, like poles, denuded of all leaves or branches, rising from a mire of decay. There was very little shade and no understory apart from the deepening litter forming around the shattered wrecks of the lycopod trunks.
The mushroom spores in the ground in my backyard have started to sprout— the way they usually do in October.
The right kind of soil, and changes in temperature, light and water, trigger them to start growing.
Mushrooms, as living organisms, belong to a kingdom separate from plants (see table below).
Kingdom
Organisms
Monera
Bacteria, blue-green algae (cyanobacteria), and spirochetes
Protista
Protozoans and algae of various types
Fungi
Funguses, molds, mushrooms, yeasts, mildews, and smuts
Plantae
Mosses, ferns, woody and non-woody flowering plants
Animalia
Sponges, worms, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals
