Cedar at Sunset | Lebanon

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The cedar of Lebanon is a tall evergreen tree which has been prized for its high quality timber, oils and resins for thousands of years. The tree is the national emblem of Lebanon.

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(right) Kamal Fouad Joumblat (born 1917) was a Lebanese politician, a major ally of the Palestine Liberation Organization until his assassination in 1977. 

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Baobab at Sunset, Tarangire National Park | Tanzania

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Tarangire National Park is the sixth largest national park in Tanzania. The park is famous for its elephant migration.

 

The baobab is found in the savannas of African and India, mostly around the equator. It can grow up to 25 meters tall and can live for several thousand(!) years.

The baobab is leafless for nine months of the year. The tree looks like it has been picked out of the ground and stuffed back in upside-down.

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Part of a series of stamps “ Grasshoppers of Tanzania”. 

Thank you Steve!

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City of Oujda | Morocco

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Oujda is a city located in North-East of Morocco, only 9 miles west of Algeria. 

The city is the only place in the country where you can move from a mountainous landscape to the sea and the desert in a single day. 

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Carpet weaving in Ghardaia | Algeria

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Ghardaïa is a city located within the Sahara Desert in northern-central Algeria. The city is part of a pentapolis, a hilltop city amongst four others, built almost a thousand years ago in the M’Zab valley.

The valley has conserved practically the same way of life and the same building techniques since the 11th century. It is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

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Oran Olympic complex (2014). The complex covers an area of 106 ha and is dedicated to the practice of several sports disciplines including football, athletics, tennis and cycling.

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Sand Dunes of Temet | Niger

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The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world. Covering large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia. Over 9 million square kilometers of desert! 

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A group of Yao initiates in Malawi

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Malawi is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa with about 15 million inhabitants. The country is bordered by Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania. The Yao are one of the three major ethnic groups in Malawi. The Yao is are primarily subsistence farmers, growing crops in the savannahs surrounding the lake.

 

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A 2014 Christmas stamp and a stamp part of a set of stamps depicting the Big Five of Africa. 

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Lilac-breasted Roller | Zambia

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The lilac-breasted roller is a member of the roller birds family. It is widely distributed in sub-Saharan Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula, preferring open woodland and savanna.

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A postcard from Central African Republic

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The Central African Republic (CAR) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of theCongo and Cameroon.

 

The western lowland gorilla is the most numerous and widespread of all gorilla subspecies. Populations can be found in the Central African Republic and most of its neighboring countries.

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Fascinating stamp but couldn’t find anything about it. 

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Nubble Lighthouse | USA

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Cape Neddick Lighthouse is a lighthouse in the state of Main. The lighthouse is located atop of a large rock island (Nubble Island) about 90 meters off shore.

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Beachy Head Lighthouse | United Kingdom

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Beachy Head is a chalk headland in the United Kingdom, close to the town of Eastbourne. The lighthouse in the sea in front of Beachy Head was built in 1902.  

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Breskens Lighthouse | The Netherlands

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The lighthouse of Breskens is the oldest remaining cast-iron lighthouse in the Netherlands. It was built in 1867 and became a monument in 1982. Breskens is a harbour town in the Dutch province of Zeeland.

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The guilder denominated stamps were declared invalid in 2013 because of a large stamp fraud case. But they still do the job.

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Grønningen Lighthouse | Norway

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Grønningen Lighthouse is located on a small rocky island off the Norwegian coast. Part of the island is a bird sanctuary. During the summer the house is operated as a hostel with 40 beds for overnight stays. 

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Couldnt find anything about the stamp.

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Islands of St. Petersburg: Zayachy Island

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St. Petersburg's is sometimes mentioned as "the Venice of the North" because the city, like its Italian counterpart, is almost entirely built on a series of islands across the delta of the Neva River. Some only separated one from another by narrow canals or rivers, others, however, are clearly separate from the rest of St. Petersburg.

Zayachy Island is also known as Hare Island. In 1703 Peter the Great founded the Peter and Paul Fortress on this island. 

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Islands of St. Petersburg: Vasilyevsky Island

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Vasilyevsky Island is the largest of St. Petersburg's islands. In the first years of St. Petersburg, the Island was planned as the heart of the city, and Tsar Peter The Great (1672 – 1725) forced prominent citizens to settle here.

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Part of a large set of stamps “Contemporary Art of Russia”. Both issued 2014.

(left) Near Radonezh. The Vorya River, by Aleksandr Sytov (born 1957). (right) The Victory of Peresvet, by Pavel Ryzhenko (1970—2014).

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Turks and Caicos Islands: Middle Caicos

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Middle Caicos, also known as Grand Caicos, is the largest island in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The Crossing Place Trail is a historical path that used to connect the communities on Middle Caicos and North Caicos. The trail ends at a Crossing Place Point. Here, at low tide, travellers were able to wade over to North Caicos.

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Part of a set of four stamps, Orchids of the Caribbean (2014).

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Ocracoke Island and Lighthouse | USA

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The Outer Banks is a 200-mile long string of narrow barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina and a small portion of Virginia. Barrier islands are long, narrow, offshore deposits of sand or sediment that run parallel to the coastline. 

One of the barrier islands of the southernmost Outer Banks, is Ocracoke Island. The lighthouse dates back to 1823 and still functions today.

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Giant Tortoise on Prison Island | Tanzania

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Changuu Island is a small island about 6 km north-west of Stone Town, Zanzibar. The island is also known as Prison Island. The island was uninhabited until the 1860s when they started a prison on the island for rebellious slaves prior to shipping them abroad or selling them at the slave market in Zanzibar's Stone Town. 

 

In 1919 the British governor of Seychelles sent a gift of four Aldabra giant tortoises to Changuu from the island of Aldabra. These tortoises bred quickly and by 1955 they numbered around 200 animals. 

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Carsaig Arches, Isle of Mull | Scotland

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The Isle of Mull is the second largest island of the Inner Hebrides(after the Isle of Skye), located off the west coast of Scotland. The population of the island is about 2,800.

 

Carsaig Arches are natural arch cliff formations in the south of Mull.

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Dún Eochla, Inishmor Island | Ireland

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The Aran Islands are a group of three islands located at the mouth of Galway Bay, on the west coast of Ireland. Inishmor is the smallest of the Aran islands.

Dún Eochla is a superb stone ring fort located at the highest point on Inishmore. Built sometime between 550 and 800 A.D.

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Europa stamp 2014, depicting traditional Irish musical instrument the Celtic harp. 

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Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico | USA

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Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park hosting the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest.

The Pueblo people were Native American people in the Southwestern States. At the time of Spanish encounter in the 16th century, they were living in villages that the Spanish called pueblos, meaning "towns".

Pueblo Bonito, Spanish for beautiful town, is  the largest and best-known of Chaco’s great houses. Occupied from 900 to about 1200. Built in stages and in its final form contained almost 600 rooms!

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Lucy from Ethiopia

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The Awash valley in Ethiopia contains one of the most important groupings of paleontological sites on the African continent. The remains found at the site, the oldest of which date back at least 4 million years, provide evidence of human evolution which has modified our conception of the history of humankind.

The most spectacular discovery came in 1974, when 52 fragments of a skeleton were found. The skeleton became known as Lucy, inspired by a Beatles song that blasted out of a cassette player as the researchers celebrated their discovery that evening. It shows, for instance, that our distant ancestors began to walk upright on two legs long before they developed big brains.

 

The latest news about Lucy: a closer look on the bones suggests that one of the bones may in fact  belong to a baboon.

The Lower Valley of the Awash is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Thx Steve!

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Archaeological Heritage of the Lenggong Valley | Malaysia

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Gua Teluk Kelawar is the cave where in 2004 the 8,000 year old skeleton of Perak Woman was found. 

The oldest human skeleton found in Malaysia, Perak Man, was found in a nearby cave in 1991. Both caves are located in Lenggong, Perak, Malaysia.

 

The Lenggong Valley was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 2012.

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Strūve Park in Jēkabpils | Latvia

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The Struve Geodetic Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea, through ten countries and over 2,820 km. This helped to calculate the exact size and shape of the planet and marked an important step in the development of earth sciences and topographic mapping. 

 

In Latvia there is a total of 16 points amongst which the astronomical observation station Jēkabpils is the most significant.

The Struve is on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites since 2005.

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Adamstown, the capital of Pitcairn Island

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The Pitcairn Islands are a small group of tiny islands in the remote South Pacific, farther from any continent than any other inhabited island. Adamstown is the capital and sole settlement containing the entire population of the Pitcairn Islands.

 

Pitcairn is a British Overseas Territory. The population has been at a relatively static, but low level, of 50 locals since the mid-1980s. But it is an aging population hence the need for new immigrants. Anyone interested?

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The Mutiny on the Bounty occurred aboard the Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty in the south Pacific, on 28 April 1789. The mutineers variously settled on Tahiti or on Pitcairn Island.

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Salonga National Park | DR Congo

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Salonga National Park is Africa's largest tropical rainforest reserve. Situated at the heart of the central basin of the Congo river, the park is very isolated and accessible only by water. It is the habitat of many endemic endangered species, such as the dwarf chimpanzee, the Congo peacock, the forest elephant and the African slender-snouted or 'false' crocodile.

 

The park is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

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The President of DR Congo since 2001, Joseph Kabila (1971).

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