Pallas’s Cat (Manul) Tajikistan, 1996

Blood donation and organ transplant themed postage stamps from all around the world

cardiology

Chinese stamps commemorating the 1964 animated movie, “Havoc in Heaven,” based on the misbehaving, mouthy Monkey King making trouble in the orderly world of the Celestials. 

It’s a commemoration of the historic era (between 1950-1966) when Shanghai was one of the animation capitals of the world, when the Wan Brothers and others worked with the Shanghai Arts and Film Studio….but before the beginning of the cultural revolution in the late 1960s, when many Chinese animators returned to the countryside as farmers or workers. Prior to 1966, the Chinese animation world was far more technical and developed than the equivalent industry in Japan at the same time, but after the cultural revolution in ‘67, China never really recovered from that lost decade, and Shanghai was never really the cultural center of animation in Asia again, despite some extraordinary efforts (usually in Shanghai by people trained by the Wan Brothers). 

| Two Somali stamps from 1986.

more stamps in cardiology

three 1992 Finnish stamps featuring illustrations from Tove Jansson’s popular Moomin series

US Postage Stamp 1974 (via Wikipedia ‘Headless Horseman’ article)

a 2014 Japanese stamp depicting an arctic hare

[id: a postage stamp with a detailed, realistic illustration of an arctic hare, which is white with black tipped ears. end id]

Y2K stamps from Indonesia