75 Years since the Birth of Gagarin, Macedonia

If it wasn't for his tragic death, today Gagarin would have been celebrating his 82nd birthday...but unfortunately he only managed to get to his 34th one.....

This FDC was issued on 2 February 2009 by the Macedonian Post Office, commemorating the 75th Anniversary of Gagarin's birth....with a face value of the stamp of 50 MKD - one of the numerous stamps with simply useless values, since they are just too high to be used on either a postcard or regular letter up to 20 grams. And that is such a pity cos I am sure that many people would love to see this stamp on the mail I send, but unfortunately the Macedonian postal authorities didn't really care about it.

Anyways, just wanted to commemorate this day, won't go into Gagarin stories...you all know about him and his achievements and importance :)
It just kinda surprised me that there was no google-doodle about Gagarin today....

Space Stamps, USSR

well, Sunday Stamps is a good opportunity to make a come back here as well after "raising the postcards' blog from the dead" first. And ever since I read the topic for today, the notion of USSR got stuck in my head, dont know why...after seeing the entries today I realized how narrow my thinking was, but simply, the thought of Russia or another former communist country, made me think of USSR and USSR only...and even with particular stamps in mind. In the end I thought I should maybe take a look at my Russian stamps too, but in the end I decided to go with my gut feeling and make myself happy and content...going with something else would have left this feeling of 'something missing' inside me and that's no good now, is it?

well, some of you know how hyped I get with EVERYTHING space related, so that's why I was also so anxious today to show a number of USSR stamps that are space related...plus I have never shown USSR stamps here before, so here is the first and I hope not the last time :)

I'll start with these two stamps issued in 1962...at first glance they may seem the same but actually there is a difference in colour at the right side...one is more on the violet tone, while the other one is something between bluish/greenish. These two depict the first manned flight to space, launched on April 12 1961 - and the stamps were issued one year later, to commemorate the one year anniversary.
Тhis set comes in the perforated version -an imperforated one can be obtained as well.

another set where the two stamps only differ in colour a bit. Issued in 1962 as well, representing Vostok 2, a Soviet space mission which carried cosmonaut Gherman Titov into orbit for a full day (or 25 hours to be more precise) on August 6, 1961 to study the effects of a more prolonged period of weightlessness on the human body. Perforated version.

Still in 1962, this time an imperforated version of a set of three stamps. These represent Vostok 3 and Vostok 4. Vostok 3 was a spaceflight of the Soviet space program intended to determine the ability of the human body to function in conditions of weightlessness and test the endurance of the Vostok 3KA spacecraft over longer flights. Cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev/Андриян Николаев (featured on the top right stamp) orbited the Earth 64 times over nearly four days in space, August 11–15, 1962. Vostok 4 was launched a day after Vostok 3, and this was the first time that more than one manned spacecraft were in orbit at the same time. Pavel Popovich (Па́вел Попо́вич)was on Vostok 4 (featured on the top left stamp)

Here is the lovely Sputnik, which was the first artificial Earth satellite, launched on October 4, 1957. The stamp commemorates its fifth anniversary.

and two more stamps from 1962, issued to commemorate all the Vostok Spaceflights, and in Russian you can read "Glory to the Conquerors of Space".

now, here is something from 1963..a fantastic se-tenant stamp if you are asking me! There is another single stamp in the set, but unfortunately I do not have that one. This is another issue to commemorate both Vostok flights going in the space together, Vostok 5 and Vostok 6.  A thing worth noting here is that Vostok 6 was the first human spaceflight mission to carry a woman into space, that is cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.

two stamps from a set of three issued in 1964 - yeah, i miss the third one and what really bothers me is that I'm missing the stamp Gagarin is featured on...sniff ;-( but one cant have it all...
anyway, this set was issued to commemorate the Cosmonautic day and here you can see the Sputniks on the first stamp and the Space station Mars 1 on the second one.

a great stamp from 1965, representing the first space walk, done by Alexey Leonov (Алексе́й Лео́нов) on March 18, 1965.

and just one more set for today, again from 1965, again three stamps issued to commemorate the Cosmonautic day, and here you have from left to right: a Soviet space achievements monument, then a Sputnik sculpture in Moscow and at the end K. E. Tsiolkovsky's monument (Константи́н Циолко́вский), who was a Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory.

well, that would be all...I know it got a bit lengthy but since they were all topic-related, I couldnt just pick one.
A big hug goes to my mum who has collected these over the years while she was really into it ❤

and now it's time to check out what others have come up with for this communist-countries day :)

have a lovely Sunday!

Moonlanding, Paraguay

I almost skipped today's Sunday Stamps...but having in mind today's subject, I felt I would regret if I don't post these stamps, so I'll try to squeeze in a short post here :)

these Paraguay stamps were issued in 1970 and come in a set of nine (so as usual, I must miss a stamp or two with such awesome issues!) On one of the stamps Im missing, you can also see President Kennedy, next to Wernher von Braun, who is also featured on the first stamp at the top.
Von Braun was German–American rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and, subsequently, in the United States and they call him the "Father of Rocket Science".
He was the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon (which is also portrayed on the first stamp).

The following (second row) stamp shows the first astronauts' landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969 (done by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin). And I think it is worth to mention the name of Michael Collins, who was the command module pilot for Apollo 11 and while Armstrong and Aldrin were having a walk on the Moon, Michael was orbiting the Moon.
The stamp next to it also shows the first men on the Moon, taking soil samples and the Apollo 11, while the third stamp in the second row shows the departure of Apollo 11 from the Moon.
The first stamp from the third row shows the landing of the Module, the one in the middle shows the  Lunar Module extraction, while the last  stamp of the ones I have is called Command/Service Module / Lunar Module.

Well, space has always fascinated me, and I wonder if one day we'd all be able to get on a spaceship and have coffee on some other planet...or whatever their specialty may be :)

For more space travels and natural phenomena, click on the button below...and Ill try later to visit everyone, including the pending ones from last Sunday...sorry, but life sometimes interferes