Fourth Saturday, September - World Rabbit Day

4th Saturday of September - World Rabbit Day

International Rabbit Day is celebrated on the fourth Saturday of September every year.  It was founded in 1998 by The Rabbit Charity in the U.K., and it became a significant day to celebrate and spread awareness about rabbit protection and conservation.

In their natural habitats, rabbits serve the two main functions of keeping plant life in check and providing food for carnivorous predators.  Because they can eat a wide variety of plants. Populations of rabbits play an important role in keeping fast-growing weeds and plants from overgrowing. In recent years its population has declined due to several factors including habitat transformation and viral diseases. 

Do you know, Rabbits perform an athletic leap, known as a 'binky' when they're happy-performing twists and kicks in midair.

Evolution of Flight - Amritpex

 

Evolution of Flight 

South India Philatelists' Association conducted a National level stamp exhibition from August 13th, 2022 to August 15th, 2022.  I participated in that exhibition and won a bronze medal.  Thanks a lot to all the friends who have helped me with material and knowledge.  Long way ahead, hope to do better in future exhibitions.

World's first flight across South Atlantic

 World's first flight across South Atlantic

Pilot, Naval Lieutenant aviator Artur de Sacadura Freire Cabral (1881-1924) and navigator rear admiral Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho (1869-1959) successfully completed the World's first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic on June 1922, from Lisbon, Portugal to Recife, Brazil.  They covered 8383 kilometers in 62 hours and 6 minutes.  They departed on the 30th of March and reached on the 5th of June.  As they realized that the journey would require landing on the sea, they flew in British-made floatplanes - the Fairey III biplane. 

In May 1919, Albert Cushing Read(1887-1967) commanded a crew of five on the Curtiss NC-4 flying boat, the first aircraft ever to make a transatlantic flight with 6 stops on the way.  

A.C.Read reached this milestone a couple of weeks before Alcock and Brown's non-stop flight, and eight years before Charles Lindbergh's first solo non-stop flight. Albert Read flew from New York, the USA to Plymouth, England.  On the way he stopped at Lisbon, Cabral was part of the group that greeted him.  This incident was the inspiration for Cabral.

Helicopters

 Helicopters

Although most people believe that the Russian inventor, Igor Sikorsky invented the helicopter, it was actually a French engineer by the name of Paul Cornu who designed and flew the first successful rotary-winged aircraft in Normandy, France in 1907.

I am looking for a 2008 S.Tome E Principe miniature sheet

Near Lisieux in northern France in 1907, Monsieur Cornu became the first person to (ever so briefly) pilot an airborne rotary-wing, vertical-lift aircraft. The rotorcraft (using an unpowered rotor in free autorotation to develop lift) from Cornu’s own design was a twin-rotor job,  the blades rotating in opposite directions which neutralized the torque. M. Cornu’s craft levitated about 1.5 meters off the ground, hovering for some 20 seconds.  The Cornu ”Ur-copter” wasn’t maneuverable at all (requiring manpower to hold it in position from the ground) and therefore wasn’t practical,  but it is considered to be a forerunner of the modern helicopter.

Etienne Oehmichen, whose early prototypes included vertically-mounted rotors and a tail rotor, allowing it to fly a distance of one kilometre in 1924!  Oehmichen was also the first to carry passengers in his Oehmichen No. 2 helicopter. 

1957 French Inventors "Etienne Oehmichen" stamp I am looking for

By the early 1920s Spanish aviator and engineer  Juan De la Cierva built the autogyro (sometimes called a “windmill plane” or ‘gyroplane’)… his success advanced the understanding of rotor dynamics.

In 1936 Focke and Gerd Achgelis‘ Focke-Wulf Fw-61 smashed existing helicopter records for range and altitude and demonstrated autorotation descent to landing.  This plus a control system much more reliable and robust than earlier rotorcrafts leads many aviation geeks to consider the Fw-61 to be “The world’s first truly functional helicopter”.

Sikorsky is commonly thought of as “The father of helicopters” because he invented the first successful helicopter upon which further designs were based. The VS-300 (commercial name R 4) became the model for all modern single-rotor helicopters.

Sikorsky was credited with developing the first “mass-produced” helicopter. 

The VS-300, the world’s first successful helicopter, is a predecessor of all modern choppers. Igor Sikorsky developed the first practical helicopter and was his own original flight test pilot. The first prototype of course had only one seat, in the center.  He flew on Sept. 14, 1939.

Nikolay Ilyich Kamov was a Soviet aerospace engineer, a pioneer in the design of helicopters, and the founder of the Kamov helicopter design bureau.

Ka-10 1950 Single-seat observation helicopter. NATO reporting name Hat.

Ka-22 Vintokryl 1959 Experimental rotor-winged transport aircraft. NATO reporting name Hoop.

Ka-26 1965 Light utility helicopter. NATO reporting name Hoodlum.

Ka-27 1974 Anti-submarine helicopter. NATO reporting name Helix.

Ka-50 "Black Shark" 1982 Single-seat attack helicopter. NATO reporting name Hokum.

1st September : World letter writing Day

In the late 1990s, Richard Simpkin, an Australian author, artist, and photographer wrote letters to those he considered to be Australian legends. He became excited when these legends responded to him by letter.  In 2005, he penned down his experience of writing letters in the book 'Australian Legends'.  In 2014, he founded World Letter Writing Day.

In this fast electronic world, the habit of writing is slowly vanishing.  One's handwriting reflects their state of mind, education, person's character, and more.  Handwritten letters give emotional bonding between people.  There is even one branch of science that deals with handwriting called graphology.  Graphology is the study of personality through one's handwriting. 

Here are a few interesting anecdotes about the power of 'letter writing': 

An 11-year-old girl named Grace Bedell wrote a letter to Lincoln stating that his face is  “so thin,” and would benefit from a beard.  Lincoln had taken her advice to heart and did grow a beard perhaps the most famous one in American history.

India's first Prime Minister, Nehru's letter to his 10-year-old daughter Indira Gandhi, who later became India's first woman Prime Minister not only shows the bonding between them,  But it helped him to teach her about human history and the history of India while he was away on business.  It was published as a book called "Letters from a Father to his Daughter".   Even when we are away, the letters shorten the distance.

The below stamp was issued by Thailand Post in the year 1969

The below stamp was issued by Japan Post in the year 1993

30th August : International Whale Shark Day

International Whale Shark Day

Whale Shark?  We know Whales. They are mammals like humans.  They give birth to young ones and feed them milk. We Know Sharks, they are fish, they lay eggs.  Whales produce sound to communicate, whereas sharks don't have that skill. What is Whale Shark? A whale shark is a shark.  It is the biggest living species of shark on our planet.  

Despite the fact that they are so big, their teeth are very small, and they move slowly in the ocean at 5 km per hour. Despite the fact that they can dive up to 1,000 meters, they prefer to roam seas that have around a 50-meter depth.  For this reason, they can be hunted easily. The skin pattern of each whale shark is unique, just like the fingerprint of humans.

We are losing this unique animal because of overhunting for its meat, skin, and bone, colliding with boats, getting trapped in fishing nets, and consuming plastics thrown at sea.

In 2008, during the International Whale Shark Conference held in Isla Holbox,  over 40 whale experts and ocean activists declared August  30th as International Whale Day. In 2012, it got its momentum and since then it is celebrated all around the world.

Below Rhincodon_typus (whale shark) stamp was issued by India Post in 2009.

First Supersonic Flight

On October 14, 1947, Air Force brigadier general Charles Elwood Yeager set a world record on Bell Aircraft Company's Bell X-1. “Chuck” Yeager became the first pilot to break the sound barrier. Flying the rocket-powered Bell X-1, he achieved Mach 1.06 (Mach is the ratio of the speed of a body to the speed of sound in the surrounding medium).

Fifty years later the USPS commemorated that event with a 32-cent postage stamp honoring the first supersonic flight.

While coming to stamp issuing policy, many countries, includeing India, USA, the living persons can not appear on a stamp. So, neither Yeager’s name nor his image is part of the stamp design. This was not the first time in USA, that an airplane on a stamp appeared as if no pilot was on board. After Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927,  USPS issued an airmail stamp depicting the Spirit of St. Louis with no mention or image of Lindbergh.

But Yeager’s wife, Glennis Faye Dickhouse is half lucky as she has her name on the stamp. Yeager had named the Bell X-1 “Glamorous Glennis” in her honor. But because of the error in this stamp design, the plane's name near the nose is misspelled "Glenna" instead of "Glennis".

I am lucky to get this 1997, First super sonic stamps on cover.

The first supersonic transport (SST) was the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144, which had its first supersonic flight in June 1969 and began flying mail between Moscow and Alma-Ata (Almaty) in 1975.

The first supersonic passenger-carrying commercial airplane, the Concorde, was built jointly by aircraft manufacturers in Great Britain and France. It made its first transatlantic crossing on September 26, 1973, and entered regular service in 1976. British Airways and Air France stopped flying the Concorde in 2003.

The Concorde had a maximum cruising speed of 2,179 km (1,354 miles) per hour, or Mach 2.04.