Sunday 5 November 2023

Military Moustache

 Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Moustaches

2010: Battle of Britain Pilots
 

and if one is looking for them then a good place to start is the RAF.  This set of stamps commemorated the pilots who fought a desperate battle over the skies of Britain in 1940 to prevent the German Air-force gaining air superiority over the English channel as a prelude to an invasion.  Churchill famous speech at the time said "never was so much owed by so many to so few" Happily the two pilots - Bob Stanford-Tuck (1916-1987)

and Mike Crossley (1912-1987) lived to tell the tale.
1993: Roman Britain
The Emperor Hadrian never took took the skies but did leave the lasting monument of Hadrians Wall, Rome's northern frontier.  The bronze head was dredged up from the River Thames near London Bridge in 1848 and had been hacked off from the body of a lager than life sized statue. This is one of a handful of bronze portraits of Hadrian to have survived from antiquity. As the British Museum curator commented "Hadrian, apparently aged around 30, is clearly recognisable from his incipient beard, moustache and distinctive physiognomy"

3 comments:

viridian said...

Thank you for sharing all three of these stamps.
Viridian

violet s said...

Hadrian also had quite a prominent proboscis!
Interestingly, both pilots died the same year.

marina said...

Nice stamps of aviators. And Interesting story of the discovery of the bronze statue. (Large noses are a characteristic of Italians ��)