Mark Twain’s birthday!

November 30, 1835, Mark Twain was born! Happy birthday Mark, wherever you are…

It’s really very hard to say just a few things about the life of this gigantic American writer. So we just write a tiny summary of his exciting life and we propose very few paper suggestions from the millions are in existence!

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain,was an American writer and humorist. He is most noted for his novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885),the latter frequently called “the Great American Novel.”

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later offer the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion’s newspaper. After working as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion. He was a disappointment at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” which became very popular and brought nationwide attention. His lectures were also well received. Twain finally had found his calling.

He accomplished great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit, sarcasm and satire earned admiration from critics and nobles, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

He lacked financial acumen, and though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he misspent it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal duty.

Twain was born during a visit by Halley’s Comet, and he predicted that he would “go out with it” as well. He died the day following the comet’s subsequent return. He was acclaimed as the “greatest American humorist of his age,” and William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American literature.”

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!

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I Want to Hold Your Hand

November 29, 1963 UK single release: ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’/’This Boy’ by the Beatles!

“I Want to Hold Your Hand” is a song by the English rock band The Beatles. Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and recorded in October 1963, it was the first Beatles record to be made using four-track equipment.

With advance orders exceeding one million copies in the United Kingdom, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” would ordinarily have gone straight to the top of the British record charts on its day of release (29 November 1963).  But had it was blocked by the group’s first million seller “She Loves You”, previous UK single, which was having a resurgent spell in the top position following intense media coverage of the group.

Taking two weeks to dislodge its predecessor, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” stayed at number one for five weeks and remained in the UK top fifty for twenty-one weeks in total.It was also the group’s first American number one, entering the Billboard Hot 100 chart on 18 January 1964 at number forty-five and starting the British invasion of the American music industry.

By 1 February it held the number one spot — for seven weeks — before being replaced by “She Loves You”, a reverse scenario of what had happened in Britain, and remained in the US charts for a total of fifteen weeks. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” became the Beatles’ best-selling single worldwide.

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!

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Polaroid captured human moments instantly

The instant camera is a type of camera that generates a developed film image. The most popular types to use self-developing film were formerly made by Polaroid Corporation.

Polaroid Corporation is an American-based international consumer electronics and eyewear company, originally founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land. It is most famous for its instant film cameras, which reached the market in 1948, and continued to be the company’s flagship product line until the February 2008 decision to cease all production in favor of digital photography products.

On November 27, 1948 the 1^st Polaroid camera sold!

Then the colossal story of this magnificent, human moment “recorder” began to reflect instantly upon billion small pieces of paper!

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!

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How to customize your brand new eCharta Shop

In a previous post we had the opportunity to go through the brand new eCharta Shops, the exciting new feature that effectively turns all sellers on eCharta to shop owners ! In this post, we’ll go backstage and we’ll show you how you can customize your brand new eCharta Shop

The basics

In the MyCharta Sell Tab, you can find the “My Shop” menu from where you can tune up your shop, add your own shop categories and visit your shop front page.

Tune up your eCharta Shop

In the “Tune Up Shop” page, you can customize the look & feel of your shop front to your liking.

You can set your Shop’s name, description and logo. This is very basic & vital information about your Shop that helps customers to identify you. A careful selection of your shop name, description and logo can enhance your brand recognition.

Organize your Shop Categories

In your shop you can set up your own categories for your listings. The freedom of   organizing your listings in your own categories, allows you to better reach your target audience. In order to set up and organize your categories, you can visit the “MyCharta Sell Tab” and go to “Shop Categories” page.

In the “Shop Categories” page you can add your own categories, change their names, order them they way you prefer and delete them.

By default when a new Listing is added on eCharta and the seller has not selected a Shop Category, it is put in the catch-all category “Other”. In the same spirit, when a category is deleted then all Listings belonging to that category are automatically transferred to the “Other” category.

Tip: Sellers can emulate a category hierarchy by using a separator character (e.g. a dash) in the name.  For example one could have a Category named “Books” and more fine grained Categories named “Books – Science Fiction” – “Books – Children” – “Books – Cookbooks” etc.

We hope you’ll enjoy setting up you shop!

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Baby Face Nelson

Lester Joseph Gillis was born on December 6, 1908. He was known under the pseudonym George Nelson and he was a bank robber and murderer in the 1930s. Gillis was better known as Baby Face Nelson, a name given to him due to his youthful look and his small stature. He was usually referred by criminal associates as “Jimmy”.  Nelson entered into a partnership with John Dillinger, helping him escape from prison in the famed Crown Point, Indiana Jail escape, and was later considered along with the remaining gang members as public enemy number one.

Nelson was blamable for the murder of several people, and has the uncertain distinction of having killed more FBI agents in the line of duty than any other person. Nelson was shot by FBI agents and died after a shootout often called “The Battle of Barrington”. The Barrington gun battle exploded as Nelson, with Helen Gillis and John Paul Chase as passengers, drove a stolen V8 Ford South towards Chicago on State Highway 14.

The date was November 27, 1934 in a street in Barrington outside of Chicago.

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!

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Casablanca in New York City!

Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz . The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in the words of one character, love and virtue. He must choose between his love for a woman and helping her Czech Resistance leader husband escape from the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis.

Story editor Irene Diamond convinced producer Hal Wallis to purchase the film rights of the play in January 1942. Brothers Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein were initially assigned to write the script. However, the Epsteins left the project after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Howard Koch was assigned to continue writing the screenplay until the Epsteins returned to work on Casablanca. Wallis chose Curtiz to direct the film after his first choice, William Wyler, became unavailable. Filming began on May 25, 1942 and ended on August 3, and was shot entirely in the studio and Van Nuys Airport.

Despite the script writing difficulties, and Bogart attempting his first romantic leading role, Casablanca won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Its characters, dialogue, and music have become iconic, and the film has grown to the point that it now consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films of all time.

Casablanca had its world premiere on November 26, 1942 in New York City, and was released on January 23, 1943 in the rest of United States.

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!

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Woody Woodpecker first appearance in Knock Knock

Woody Woodpecker is a very famous cartoon character with his trademark laugh “Ha-ha-ha-HAA-ha!”, an anthropomorphic pileated woodpecker who appeared in theatrical short films produced by the Walter Lantz animation studio and distributed by Universal Pictures.

In Woody’s first cartoon movie Knock Knock supposedly stars Andy Panda and his father, Papa Panda, but it is Woody who steals the show. The woodpecker continually harasses the two pandas, apparently just for the fun of it. Woody of Knock Knock was designed by animator Alex Lovy and Woody’s original voice was actor Mel Blanc. Ironically, Blanc’s characterization of the Woody Woodpecker laugh had originally been applied to a Bugs Bunny prototype, in shorts such as the Elmer’s Candid Camera, and was later transferred to Woody.

Audiences reacted well to Knock Knock, and Lantz realized he had finally hit upon a star to replace the declining Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Woody would go on to star in a number of films. With his distinctive boldness and brash behavior, the character was a natural hit during World War II. His image appeared on US aircraft as nose art, and on mess halls, and audiences on the home-front watched Woody cope with familiar problems such as food shortages.

Woody Woodpecker first appeared in the short Knock Knock was as today on November 25, 1940.

It’s really fun to collect comics and cartoon items and there are a lot of enthusiasts around the world that are crazy about this material!

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!
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Plane crashed, mail survived!

Many airplane accidents and crashes occurred in history. But what happened with the mail, the covers and the postcards that was on those planes?

Let us tell a story of one of these…

The following cover departed from BOMBAY FOREIGN 1936.1^st, India with a final destination to Sussex, England. The cover made a transit stop in ALEXANDRIA. Then changing plane departed for a second transit destination to Brindisi, Italy with the hydroplane SCIPIO.

The flight initiated but the flying boat had engine troubles and had to make a forced landing in Mirabella Bay in Crete, Greece. Attempting this landing a sudden cross wind swung the plane around, it crashed and sank in a few minutes. Two passengers were killed in the crash and one was seriously injured. The 38 postal bags were recovered and dried.

All covers canceled with the 2 line cancellation “DAMAGED BY SEA WATER”.  The stamps are missing on nearly all covers. Very few are known today. One of them is the following… This cover is currently for sale on eCharta!

An exciting paper survival history in 1936!

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Splashdown of Apollo 12

Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the United States Apollo program and the second mission to land on the Moon. It was launched on November 14, 1969 from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida known as Cape Canaveral four months after Apollo 11. Mission commander Charles “Pete” Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean performed just over one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit waiting for the other guys to come back.

The landing site for the mission was located in the southeastern portion of the Ocean of Storms in our moon. Unlike the first landing on Apollo 11, Conrad and Bean achieved a precise landing at the site of the Surveyor 3, which had landed on April 20, 1967. They carried the first color television camera to the lunar surface on an Apollo flight, but transmission was lost after Bean accidentally destroyed the camera by pointing it at the Sun. On the second extravehicular activity, they examined the unmanned Surveyor III spacecraft. The television camera and several other components were taken from Surveyor III and brought back to earth for scientific analysis.

The mission ended on November 24, 1969 with a successful splashdown. An exciting time for humanity!

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!
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1904 St. Louis 3rd Olympic games

The map, the official poster and a nice postcard from the Olympics in St. Louis

The 1904 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the III Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States from July 1 to November 23, 1904, at what is now known as Francis Field on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. St. Louis organizers repeated the mistakes made at the 1900 Summer Olympics organized in Paris. Competitions were compacted to a side-show of the World’s Fair and were lost in the chaos of other, more popular cultural exhibits.

Officially, the games lasted for four and a half months; in fact, James Edward Sullivan tried to hold an event every day for the duration of the fair. The Olympic events were again mixed with other side sporting events, but Sullivan called all his sports events “Olympic.” The IOC later declared that only 94 of these events were Olympic Games.

The participants totaled 651 athletes – 645 men and 6 women representing 12 countries. However, only 42 events (less than half) actually included athletes who were not from the United States.

The marathon was the most bizarre event of the Games. It was run in inhumanly hot weather, over dirty roads, with horses and automobiles clearing the way and creating dust clouds.

A Thomas Hicks photo, a season pass, a regular ticket and a press pass show the paper treasures of this era!

The first to arrive at the finish line was Frederick Lorz, who actually rode part of the distance in a car (!).Frederick started the race with the rest of the athletes but not long after the 9th mile he dropped out. In order to retrieve his clothes, he rode on a car and headed to the finish line. But fate plays strange games sometimes and the car broke down on the 19th mile! Having no other choice he re-entered the race and jogged to the finish line and was announced winner of the Marathon. While on that day he was awarded the gold medal, his celebration did not last long as the scheme was unveiled and he was banned for a year by the AAU. Next year, Frederick Lorz came back and won the 1905 Boston Marathon, for real this time.

For US Thomas Hicks (a Briton running for the United States) was the first to cross the finish-line legally, after having received several doses of strychnine sulfate (a common rat poison, which arouses the nervous system in small doses) mixed with brandy from his trainers. No anti-doping control back then! He was supported by his trainers when he crossed the finish, but is still considered the winner. Hicks had to be carried off the track immediately after the run. He was so exhausted that possibly would have died in the stadium. But treated by several doctors he came back next year.

The Worlds Fair was scheduled to open in late 1903, which would have been the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. However because of the preparations for the Olympic games the fair opening was delayed.

Stamps issued before and during the 3rd Olympics in St. Louis.

Before and during the expo and the Games were issued The Louisiana Purchase Exposition Stamps. The First Day of issue for this series of Postage was April 30, 1904. They were issued to promote the exposition.

On the stamps was depicted: Robert Livingston, who served as a delegate of New York and as a delegate to the Constitution Convention. Engraved image of Livingston is taken from a Gilbert Stuart (1783-1872) oil painting of 179. President Thomas Jefferson on 2c Issue. He was the architect of the Louisiana. James Monroe 3c Issue. This issue marked the first appearance of James Monroe on US Postage. Louisiana Purchase Map 10c Issue. This issue depicts an engraved map of the United States, showing the territory of the Louisiana Purchase in darker color, with the year of the purchase, “1803”, inscribed across the face of this area. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing printed only 4,011,200 of these issues and consequently surviving examples have been scarce, making it the most valuable stamp of this series to this day.

A stereo-view card along with the Olympics Award!

As today November 23, 1904 3rd Olympic games Closing ceremony in St. Louis took place!

The Olympics is an event that attracts a lot of people. To watch, to participate voluntarily, to share the athletes sorrow or joy, to …collect. Paper material form all Modern Olympics since 1986 are collected frantically!

Some paper ideas from the same date from the past!
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