Agriculture and Forestry

On 20th September 1982 Liechtenstein issued four stamps with their associated maxi cards on the theme of  Human Labour, namely Agriculture and Forestry.  

Today I post this card which is the first of the lot with a 30 Rappen stamp on Agriculture.

Thank you Maria.

Transmission of Electrical Energy

The main event of the International Electrotechnical Exhibition in Frankfurt (May 16 to September 19, 1891) was the suggestion made by Oskar von Miller regarding transmission of electrical energy with three-phase alternating current (phase current) from Lauffen  Neckar to Frankfurt.

The picture on this maxi card shows the turbine and the transformer house of the Main station at Lauffen.

Thank you Maria.

Men at Work

The stamp on this maxi card is one of a set of 12 definitive stamps issued by Liechtenstein on 10.9.1984 in a series titled "Men at Work". This particular stamp is about Industry and Research. Each of the stamps has an associated postcard such as this one.

Thank you Merja. 

Battleship Missouri Memorial

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the absence of a perceived threat to the United States came drastic cuts in the defense budget, and the high cost of maintaining and operating battleships as part of the United States Navy's active fleet became uneconomical; as a result, Missouri was decommissioned on 31 March 1992 at Long Beach, California. Her last commanding officer, Captain Albert L. Kaiss, wrote in the ship's final Plan of the Day:

Our final day has arrived. Today the final chapter in battleship Missouri’s history will be written. It's often said that the crew makes the command. There is no truer statement ... for it's the crew of this great ship that made this a great command. You are a special breed of sailors and Marines and I am proud to have served with each and every one of you. To you who have made the painful journey of putting this great lady to sleep, I thank you. For you have had the toughest job. To put away a ship that has become as much a part of you as you are to her is a sad ending to a great tour. But take solace in this—you have lived up to the history of the ship and those who sailed her before us. We took her to war, performed magnificently and added another chapter in her history, standing side by side our forerunners in true naval tradition. God bless you all.

—Captain Albert L. Kaiss

Missouri returned to be part of the reserve fleet at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington, until 12 January 1995, when she was struck from the Naval Vessel Register. She remained in Bremerton, but was not open to tourists as she had been from 1957 to 1984. In spite of attempts by citizens' groups to keep her in Bremerton and be re-opened as a tourist site, the U.S. Navy wanted to pair a symbol of the end of World War II with one representing its beginning. On 4 May 1998, Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton signed the donation contract that transferred her to the nonprofit USS Missouri Memorial Association (MMA) of Honolulu, Hawaii. She was towed from Bremerton on 23 May to Astoria, Oregon, where she sat in fresh water at the mouth of the Columbia River to kill and drop the saltwater barnacles and sea grasses that had grown on her hull in Bremerton, then towed across the eastern Pacific, and docked at Ford Island, Pearl Harbour on 22 June, just 500 yd (460 m) from the Arizona Memorial. Less than a year later, on 29 January 1999, Missouri was opened as a museum operated by the MMA.

Thank you Becky for this lovely card.

The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific

The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (informally known as Punchbowl Cemetery) is a national cemetery located at Punchbowl Crater in Honolulu, Hawaii. It serves as a memorial to honor those men and women who served in the United States Armed Forces, and those who have given their lives in doing so. It is administered by the National Cemetery Administration of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Millions of visitors visit the cemetery each year, and it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Hawaii.

This lovely card was sent by Becky.

USS Arizona Memorial

My friend Becky from Hawaii sent me these nice cards of the Arizona Memorial.

The USS Arizona Memorial, located at Pearl Harbour in Honolulu, Hawaii, marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 by Japanese imperial forces and commemorates the events of that day. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the island of Oʻahu was the action that led to the United States' direct involvement in World War II.

The memorial, built in 1962, is visited by more than one million people annually.^[1] Accessible only by boat, it straddles the sunken hull of the battleship without touching it. Historical information about the attack, shuttle boats to and from the memorial, and general visitor services are available at the associated USS Arizona Memorial Visitor Center, which opened in 1980 and is operated by the National Park Service. The sunken remains of the battleship were declared a National Historic Landmark on 5 May 1989.