1.
Postage stamp
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Postage stamp may also refer to a formatting artifact in the display of film or video, Windowbox. A postage stamp is a piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are printed on special paper, show a national designation and a denomination on the front. They are sometimes a source of net profit to the issuing agency, stamps are usually rectangular, but triangles or other shapes are occasionally used. The stamp is affixed to an envelope or other postal cover the customer wishes to send, the item is then processed by the postal system, where a postmark, sometimes known as a cancellation mark, is usually applied in overlapping manner to stamp and cover. This procedure marks the stamp as used to prevent its reuse, in modern usage, postmarks generally indicate the date and point of origin of the mailing. The mailed item is delivered to the address the customer has applied to the envelope or parcel. Postage stamps have facilitated the delivery of mail since the 1840s, before then, ink and hand-stamps, usually made from wood or cork, were often used to frank the mail and confirm the payment of postage. The first adhesive postage stamp, commonly referred to as the Penny Black, was issued in the United Kingdom in 1840, there are varying accounts of the inventor or inventors of the stamp. The postage stamp resolved this issue in a simple and elegant manner, concurrently with the first stamps, the UK offered wrappers for mail. S. Postal service for priority or express mailing, the postage stamp afforded convenience for both the mailer and postal officials, more effectively recovered costs for the postal service, and ultimately resulted in a better, faster postal system. With the conveniences stamps offered, their use resulted in greatly increased mailings during the 19th and 20th centuries, as postage stamps with their engraved imagery began to appear on a widespread basis, historians and collectors began to take notice. The study of stamps and their use is referred to as philately. Stamp collecting can be both a hobby and a form of study and reference, as government-issued postage stamps. The postage for the item was prepaid by the use of a hand-stamp to frank the mailed item. Though this stamp was applied to a letter instead of a piece of paper it is considered by many historians as the worlds first postage stamp. Rowland Hill The Englishman Sir Rowland Hill began interest in postal reform in 1835, in 1836, a Member of Parliament, Robert Wallace, provided Hill with numerous books and documents, which Hill described as a half hundred weight of material. Hill commenced a study of these documents, leading him to the 1837 publication of a pamphlet entitled Post Office Reform its Importance
2.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
3.
Fiscal cancel
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In philately a fiscal cancel is a cancellation on a stamp that indicates that the stamp has been used for fiscal purposes. The stamp may either be a stamp, intended purely for fiscal use. Fiscal cancels take a variety of forms, Pen cancels with a simple cross, damaging the surface of the stamp using a serrated or ridged roller. Handstamp cancels similar to the postmark on a stamp and which may be in purple or red ink rather than the black favoured for cancels of postage stamps, tearing or other physical damage to the stamp. Examples, Postage stamps valid for fiscal or postal purposes are often worth less when fiscally used than when postally used. They are not, however, necessarily more common fiscally used than postally used
4.
Cancellation (mail)
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A cancellation is a postal marking applied on a postage stamp or postal stationery to deface the stamp and prevent its re-use. Cancellations come in a variety of designs, shapes, sizes. Modern United States cancellations commonly include the date and post office location where the stamps were mailed, the term postal marking sometimes is used to refer specifically to the part that contains the date and posting location, although the term often is used interchangeably with cancellation. The portion of a cancellation that is designed to deface the stamp, some stamps are issued pre-cancelled with a printed or stamped cancellation and do not need to have a cancellation added. Cancellations can affect the value of stamps to collectors, positively or negatively, the cancellations of some countries have been extensively studied by philatelists and many stamp collectors and postal history collectors collect cancellations in addition to the stamps themselves. The first adhesive stamp was the Penny Black, issued in 1840 by Great Britain. The cancels were handmade and depicted a Maltese cross design, the color of the stamps was also changed to red-brown so as to ensure that the cancellation showed clearly. Britain soon abandoned the Maltese crosses and in 1844 began to employ cancellations displaying numbers which referred to the location of mailing, Early cancellations were all applied by hand, commonly using hand stamps. Where hand stamps were not available, stamps often were cancelled by marking over the stamp with pen and these methods generally involved the scraping or cutting-away of part of the stamp, or perhaps punching a hole through its middle. High speed cancellation machines were first used in Boston between 1880–1890 and subsequently throughout the country, today, cancellations may either be applied by hand or machine. Hand cancellation is used when sending unusually shaped mail or formal mail to avoid damage caused by machine cancellation. Postal meter stamps and similar modern printed to order stamps are not ordinarily cancelled by authorities because such stamps bear the date produced. Bullseye cancellation also called Socked on the nose or SOTN, is a collectors term for a cancellation, typically of circular design. Such cancellations are popular with stamp collectors because of their neatness and the fact that the time, date. The prevalence of bulls-eye cancellations varies considerably by country and time period, cancelled-to-order stamps, also known as CTOs, are stamps that have been cancelled by a postal authority, but were never used to transmit mail. CTOs are created by postal authorities to sell the stamps cheaply to stamp collectors, many Eastern European countries and others sold great numbers of CTOs to collectors in the 1950s - 1990s strictly for revenue. CTOs often may be identified as the stamps still retain their original gum, some authorities use the same canceller for all CTOs, and apply it very neatly in the corner of four stamps at one time. In some instances, the cancellations are actually printed as part of the stamp itself, deferential cancellation is a cancellation designed so as not to deface the image of the ruler or regent on the stamp
5.
Postmark
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A postmark is a postal marking made on a letter, package, postcard or the like indicating the date and time that the item was delivered into the care of the postal service. Modern postmarks are often applied simultaneously with the cancellation or killer that marks the stamp as having been used. Postmarks may be applied by hand or by machines, using such as rollers or inkjets. The local post Hawaii Post had a postmark, parts of which were hand-painted. At Hideaway Island, Vanuatu, the Underwater Post Office has an embossed postmark, the first postmark was introduced by English Postmaster General Henry Bishop in 1661 and showed only the day and month of mailing in order to prevent the delay of the mail by carriers. In England during the part of the 17th century several postmarks were devised for use with the London Penny Post. The postmarks bore the initial of the particular post office or handling house it was sent from along with a time stamp. Postage was prepaid and the postmark was applied to the item by means of an inked hand-stamp. Some historians also consider these postmarks to be the worlds first postage stamps, in Great Britain the first postmark employed for the cancellation of the then new adhesive postage stamps was the Maltese Cross, so named because of its shape and appearance. This was used in conjunction with a stamp which was applied, usually to the rear of the letter. Different types of postmarks include railway post offices and maritime postmarks, similar to this is the censored postmark, overprinted with a black obliteration of the time and place of mailing for similar reasons. The Pony Express used a variety of different postmarks on the mail it carried across the Western United States, there are only 250 known examples of surviving Pony Express mail/postmarks in various collections today bearing one of more than a dozen different types of postmarks. Hawaii post once had a surfboard mail postmark, for covers that traveled by surfboard, a colour postmark is on the United States Postal Service-issued collectible envelope commemorating the 2004 inauguration of George W. Bush. Unofficial entities that issue artistamps may use postmark-like markings as well, marcophily is the study of postmarks and there are many published work on postmarks covering the topic from before 1900, such as the fancy cancels, until the present day. These include the so-called fancy cancels of United States to modern machine postmarks, fewer postmarks are used now than previously, with the advent of meter labels, some types of computer vended postage, and computerized postage that people can print from their own PCs. These indicia are not always postmarked by the Post Office but if put into the later than the date listed on them. Because of this, it is a bad idea to try, an official example relating a numismatic item to postmarks occurred on April 13,1976 when the U. S. issued a new two-dollar bill. People could buy the bills at face value, add a first class stamp, large numbers of these were produced and they remain common
6.
Stanley Gibbons
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The group is incorporated in Jersey but with offices in London, Ringwood in Hampshire and Guernsey. They have also opened new offices in Hong Kong and Singapore. The company is a stamp dealer and philatelic publisher. The companys philatelic subsidiary, Stanley Gibbons Limited, has a warrant of appointment from Queen Elizabeth II. The company has a corporate history, having started as a sole trader business owned by Edward Stanley Gibbons in 1856. The business started when, employed as an assistant in his fathers shop in Plymouth. In 1863 he was enough to purchase from two sailors a sackful of rare Cape of Good Hope triangular stamps. In 1874 Gibbons moved to a house near Clapham Common in South London, by 1890 Stanley Gibbons wished to retire and the business was sold to Charles Phillips for £25,000. Phillips became Managing Director, with Gibbons as Chairman, a new issue department was opened in 1906. In 1914 the company received a warrant from George V. In 1956 the company celebrated its centenary with an exhibition at the Waldorf Hotel opened by Sir John Wilson and it is in that year that Queen Elizabeth II granted her royal warrant to Stanley Gibbons Ltd as her philatelist. In 1967 the firm expanded into the United States in a joint venture with Whitman Publishing, a magazine and catalogues were produced. In 1968 the previously privately held Stanley Gibbons Limited was floated on the market through a tender arranged by S. G. Warburg & Co. Ltd. The offer was a success and was oversubscribed five times. The shares were sold at 20 shillings rather than the tender price of 12 shillings. It was estimated there were 30 to 35 sharesholders before the offer and they still owned 66% of the equity after the offer. Prices subsequently slipped back, however, later in the year, in 1970 The Crown Agents acquired a 20% stake in the company and appointed two Directors to the Gibbons board. The stake was sold in 1976 by which time it had grown to 25% of the company, in 1977 Stanley Gibbons acquired the stock of the firm Chas Nissen, once run by the eminent stamp dealer and philatelist Charles Nissen
7.
Excise stamp
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An excise stamp is a type of revenue stamp affixed to some exciseable goods to indicate that the required excise tax has been paid by the manufacturer. They are securities printed by the ministry of the relevant country. Excise stamps are often as detailed in their design as banknotes - usually made from the type of paper and containing holograms. The reason for such measures is that excise duty is extremely expensive, Excise stamps are most commonly found on tobacco and alcohol products, which reach the consumer in neatly packaged units to which the adhesive stamp is easily affixed. Manufacturers will buy a quantity of excise stamps from the government at their excise value which they are then obliged to affix to every packet of cigarettes or bottle of spirits produced. The excise stamps are ideally affixed with strong glue over the cap of a bottle or across the lid of a box of cigarettes in such a way that they are destroyed when the product is opened. This is so that they cannot be reused, since this would constitute contraband, in countries where excise stamps are required, all cigarettes and alcohol produced legally will bear a stamp. In the UK, excise stamps have been in use for spirits since 2006, russian excise stamps Excise stamps of Russia Excise stamps of Ukraine Tobacco and alcohol revenue stamps
8.
Revenue stamps of Malta
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Malta first issued revenue stamps in 1899, when the island was a British colony. From that year to 1912, all issues were postage stamps overprinted accordingly. Postage stamps also became valid for use from 1912–13, so no new revenues were issued until 1925–30. These exist unappropriated for use as general-duty revenues, or with inscriptions indicating a specific use. The only other revenues after this series were £1 stamps issued in 1941,1948 and 1954, postage stamps remained valid for fiscal use until at least the 1970s. Malta also used impressed duty stamps from the 1920s until these were replaced by pre-printed revenues in the 1970s, the latter were discontinued in the early 1990s. Malta also had specific stamps for the Workmens Compensation Ordinance, passport fees, National Insurance, excise stamps have been used to pay the tax on cigarettes since the 1930s, the tax on spirits since the 2000s, and the tax on wine since 2015. Excise imprints were also used on cinema, theatre and football match tickets from the 1950s to the 1980s, a number of overprint varieties, including double and inverted overprints, are known on this issue. In around 1904, a 3d postage stamp depicting King Edward VII was issued with a local Revenue overprint, in around 1912–13, postage stamps became valid for fiscal use, so the issue of separate revenue stamps became unnecessary. Postage stamps remained valid for use until 1926, when a law was passed limiting their use for postal purposes only. A new series of revenues depicting the Mackennal portrait of King George V was issued between 1925 and 1930 and this issue consisted of eleven values ranging from ½d to £5, with some values being issued in more than one colour. These stamps were designed as key types, having a tablet at the bottom, the general-duty revenues were unappropriated, for issues appropriated for a particular use see the Key types section below. In 1928, postage stamps valid for fiscal use once again. However, the £1 and £5 values remained in use there were no postage stamps of those denominations. In 1941, a £1 revenue with the design as the 1925–30 series. This stamp was issued with a different perforation in 1948, postage stamps remained valid for fiscal use until the 1970s. Malta used impressed duty stamps from at least 1922 to 1973, a total of five issues are known, and all have a design bearing a Maltese cross together with a Tudor crown during the colonial era, or a mural crown after independence. All are embossed in vermilion ink, the impressed revenues were replaced by pre-printed revenues on cheques, with were used between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s
9.
Hejaz railway
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The Hejaz Railway was a narrow gauge railway that ran from Damascus to Medina, through the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia, with a branch line to Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea. It was a part of the Ottoman railway network and was built to extend the line from the Haydarpaşa Terminal in Kadikoy beyond Damascus to the city of Mecca. It got no further than Medina,400 kilometres short of Mecca, Damascus to Medina is 1,300 kilometres. Another important reason was to improve the economic and political integration of the distant Arabian provinces into the Ottoman state, the railway had no debt when completed. A railway had been suggested in 1864 to relieve the suffering of the hajis on their 40-day journey through the wilderness of Midian, the Nafud, about 20% of them commonly died from starvation, thirst and diseases. A public subscription was opened throughout the Islamic world to fund construction, however in 1912 the Ottoman Empire was owing the Deutsche Bank 29 million Turkey Pounds. The railway was to be a waqf, a religious endowment or charitable trust. Before the construction, German military adviser in Constantinople Auler Pasha estimated that the transportation of soldiers from Constantinople to Mecca would be reduced to 120 hours, the Berlin to Baghdad Railway was built in the same time. The railways were interrelated and aimed to strengthen the authority of the Empire over Arab provinces, another intention was to protect Hejaz and other Arab provinces from British invasion. Other than the Haydarpasa-Izmit line, the Hejaz Railway was the railway the Empire built itself in its existence. Under the helm of chief engineer Mouktar Bey the railway reached Medina on September 1,1908, compromises had to be made in order to finish by this date, with some sections of track being laid on temporary embankments across wadis. In 1913 the Hejaz Railway Station was opened in central Damascus as the point of the line. The Emir Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca viewed the railway as a threat to Arab suzerainty, since it provided the Ottomans with easy access to their garrisons in Hejaz, Asir, from its outset, the railway was the target of attacks by local Arab tribes. These were never successful, but neither were the Turks able to control areas more than a mile or so either side of the line. Due to the habit of pulling up wooden sleepers to fuel their camp-fires. During World War I, the German Army produced shale oil from the Yarmouk oil shale deposit to fuel locomotives operating on the railway. The line was damaged in fighting during the war, particularly at the hands of the guerrilla force led by T. E. Lawrence during the Arab Revolt. The Turks built a railway from the Hejaz line to Beersheba
10.
White Rajahs
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Other men sometimes referred to as White Rajahs include Englishman Alexander Hare in Borneo, Scot John Clunies Ross in the Cocos Islands, and Dane Mads Lange in Bali. The first ruler was Englishman James Brooke, as a reward for helping the Sultanate of Brunei fight piracy and insurgency among the indigenous peoples, he was granted the landmass of Sarawak in 1841 and received independent kingdom status. His nephew had been the heir to the throne and objected to the cession. He was later confirmed with the title of Rajah of the territory, the Kingdom of Sarawak developed and expanded during the rule of the first two White Rajahs, growing to occupy much of the north region of the island of Borneo. The Brooke administrations leased or annexed more land from Brunei, the White Rajahs were all related, James and Charles had short grammar school educations, Vyner, Bertram, and Anthony went to public schools and Cambridge University. All but Anthony died in England and are buried at Sheepstor parish church, Anthony Brooke had his ashes interred at Sheepstor as well as at the Brooke Family graveyard in Kuching, as per his last wish. The White Rajahs pursued a policy of paternalism, with the goal of protecting the native peoples from capitalist exploitation, while James Brooke laid much of the groundwork for the expansion of Sarawak, his nephew Charles, the second rajah, was the great builder. He constructed public buildings to serve welfare, such as a hospital and he worked to extend the borders of the state. Vyner Brooke instituted significant political reforms during his tenure and he ended the absolute rule of the Rajah in 1941, before the Japanese invasion of World War II, by granting new powers to the Council Negri. Bertram co-ruled with his brother, taking turns of 6 –8 months in charge of the country each year. Charles inherited under the Will in 1868, and confirmed the succession in his own will of 1913, on his accession in 1918, his son Vyner swore to uphold the Will as forming the constitution of the state. This unique testamentary trust became known as The Sarawak Sovereignty Trust, when James Brooke first arrived in Sarawak, it was governed as a vassal state of the Sultanate of Brunei, the system of government was based on the Bruneian model. Brooke reorganised the government according to the British model, eventually creating a civil service and it recruited European, chiefly British, officers to run district outstations. The Sarawak Service was continually reformed by Rajah James and his successors, Rajah James retained many of the customs and symbols of Malay monarchy, and combined them with his own style of absolute rule. The Rajah had the power to introduce laws and acted as judge in Kuching. The White Rajahs were determined to prevent the peoples of Sarawak from being exploited by Western business interests. They allowed the Borneo Company Limited to assist in managing the economy, the core of the early Sarawak economy was antimony, later followed by gold, which was mined in Bau by Chinese syndicates who imported numerous workers from China. After the local Chinese uprising in 1857, the operations were gradually taken over by the Borneo Company
