Little error on your description of the Lech Walesa stamp. He actually won the award in 1983 at noted on the stamp. I haven't checked, but I would guess that the Polish government at the time probably refused to allow him to travel to receive the award.
Mikhail Gorbachev was the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1990.
The time frame from 1989 - 1991 was really momentous. I was working in a lab at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, on a two-week-on two-week-off schedule during 1989 and 1990. We had a television in the lab that we usually kept on just for some background noise. During that time we usually had HNN (Headline News Network, an offshoot of CNN) on most of time just to keep up with the events in Europe. I find both history and current events fascinating, so was following things as they happened very closely. I just happened to end my hitch up at Prudhoe Bay on my birthday, November 9, in 1989. So I flew back to Anchorage were I lived late that afternoon, caught a taxi home from the airport, and then turned to the news on the TV. I sat down dumbfounded as I watched a crowd dancing on top of a wall that they were also beating with sledgehammers. It took a little while to understand what I was watching, but when I did, it was the one time in my life when I actually started crying while watching the news. The Berlin wall was coming down!
I think that whole cascade of events started with the worker revolt in Poland in 1980 led by Lech Walesa.
Thanks for the correction, Richard. I type over a previous day's entries, and save to a new Word document; the 1990 was from the German reunification entry, I neglected to change.
Speaking of pettifogging and pedantic, for anybody who's interested, I post a daily feature on my Facebook page (accessible, I think, to nonmembers) about classical music on stamps. Here's today's:
It was on the 5th of October that Gluck’s seminal masterpiece "Orpheus and Euridice" had its première in 1762; this was the original version in Italian ("Orfeo ed Euridice"), given in Vienna in the presence of the Empress Maria Theresa; his later revision, to a new French libretto ("Orphée et Euridice"), was given in Paris on August 2, 1774. (For those who may welcome a bit of assistance, English yoo-RID-i-see; Italian ay-oo-ree-DEE-chay; French er-ee-DEESS, more or less.) The opera has featured on a number of postage stamps: it was chosen for a design celebrating the bicentenary of the Royal Theater in Stockholm in 1973; for the 25th anniversary of the International Wiltz Festival in Luxembourg in 1977; and for the Gluck entry in a 1999 San Marino sheet of sixteen famous composers and their operas. For the heck of it I threw in a Spanish stamp that bears no connection to Gluck but depicts a Roman era mosaic of Orpheus—the floor (triclinium) mosaic dates from 2nd or early 3rd century Zaragosa (Saragossa, then known as Caesaraugusta).
Oct 6, 1866: First US train robbery in America is committed, on an eastbound train, near Symore, Indiana, when the Reno brothers absconded with $13,000.
Comments
Portugal, Scott Nr 185 (1911)
USA, Scott #1364 (1968)
Little error on your description of the Lech Walesa stamp. He actually won the award in 1983 at noted on the stamp. I haven't checked, but I would guess that the Polish government at the time probably refused to allow him to travel to receive the award.
Mikhail Gorbachev was the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1990.
The time frame from 1989 - 1991 was really momentous. I was working in a lab at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, on a two-week-on two-week-off schedule during 1989 and 1990. We had a television in the lab that we usually kept on just for some background noise. During that time we usually had HNN (Headline News Network, an offshoot of CNN) on most of time just to keep up with the events in Europe. I find both history and current events fascinating, so was following things as they happened very closely. I just happened to end my hitch up at Prudhoe Bay on my birthday, November 9, in 1989. So I flew back to Anchorage were I lived late that afternoon, caught a taxi home from the airport, and then turned to the news on the TV. I sat down dumbfounded as I watched a crowd dancing on top of a wall that they were also beating with sledgehammers. It took a little while to understand what I was watching, but when I did, it was the one time in my life when I actually started crying while watching the news. The Berlin wall was coming down!
I think that whole cascade of events started with the worker revolt in Poland in 1980 led by Lech Walesa.
It was on the 5th of October that Gluck’s seminal masterpiece "Orpheus and Euridice" had its première in 1762; this was the original version in Italian ("Orfeo ed Euridice"), given in Vienna in the presence of the Empress Maria Theresa; his later revision, to a new French libretto ("Orphée et Euridice"), was given in Paris on August 2, 1774. (For those who may welcome a bit of assistance, English yoo-RID-i-see; Italian ay-oo-ree-DEE-chay; French er-ee-DEESS, more or less.) The opera has featured on a number of postage stamps: it was chosen for a design celebrating the bicentenary of the Royal Theater in Stockholm in 1973; for the 25th anniversary of the International Wiltz Festival in Luxembourg in 1977; and for the Gluck entry in a 1999 San Marino sheet of sixteen famous composers and their operas. For the heck of it I threw in a Spanish stamp that bears no connection to Gluck but depicts a Roman era mosaic of Orpheus—the floor (triclinium) mosaic dates from 2nd or early 3rd century Zaragosa (Saragossa, then known as Caesaraugusta).
USA, Scott Nr 3182c (1998)
Great Britain, Scott Nr 2267-72 (2005)
USA, Scott Nr 2044 (1983)
USA, Scott Nr 993 (1950)
Russia, Scott Nr 2259 (1959)
USA, Scott Nr 3896 (2005)
Germany, Scott Nr 918 (1965)
USA, Scott Nr 3395 (2000)
India, Scott Nr 301 (1958)
Argentina, Scott Nr 1978 (1997)
Yugoslavia, Scott Nr 1 (1921)
USA, Scott Nr 3473 (2001)
Comoro Islands, Scott Nr 713 (1989)
USA, Scott Nr 794 (1937)
USA, Scott Nr 2990 (1995)
Ascension, Scott Nr 469 (1989)
Switzerland, Scott Nr 502 (1969)
Great Britain, Scott Nr 2941 (2011)
Bahamas, Scott Nr 464 (1980)
USA, Scott Nr 1063 (1954)
USA, Scott Nr 4880 (2014)
USA, Scott Nr 935 (1945)
USA, Scott Nr 809 (1938)