A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 11 May 2021 - T for stars in black and white, and beautiful stamps

 Hello lovely ladies,

here we are again on Tuesday and ready for the T-Party! I have a few drinks to offer today. More of that later. First there are some postcards. I have so many that I´m going to show you two at a time until I get through my pile.

First off is a card from Austria. It celebrates 1000 years of Austria. The name of Austria (in German: Österreich) was mentioned for the first time in a gift deed on 1 November 996 as Ostarrichi. 

The stamps are beautiful. 

The yellow one on the left features a traditional headdress called a Radhaube (wheel cover) which is worn along the Bodensee (or lake Constance). The lake borders Austria, Switzerland and Germany. 

The headdress is made of bobbin lace in golden thread.

I have done bobbin lace myself and it is incredible work.

Of course back in the days they were all hand made by the damsels themselves. They are so pretty.

The stamp on the right features Hedy Lamar and the words Frequenzsprung Verfahren.

Hedy Lamarr (/ˈhɛdi/, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; September or November 9, 1914^[a] – January 19, 2000) was an Austrian-born American actress, inventor, and film producer. She appeared in 30 films over a 28-year career in Europe and the United States, and co-invented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication, originally intended for torpedo guidance.

Lamarr was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, and acted in a number of Austrian, German, and Czech films in her brief early film career, including the controversial Ecstasy (1933). In 1937, she fled from her husband, a wealthy Austrian ammunition manufacturer, secretly moving to Paris and then on to London. There, she met Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio, who offered her a Hollywood movie contract, where he began promoting her as "the world's most beautiful woman".

She and her friend George Antheil invented Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum ( FHSS ), (German Frequenzsprung Verfahren).

During World War II, Lamarr learned that radio-controlled torpedoes, an emerging technology in naval war, could easily be jammed and set off course. She thought of creating a frequency-hopping signal that could not be tracked or jammed. She conceived an idea and contacted her friend, composer and pianist George Antheil, to help her implement it. Together they developed a device for doing that, when he succeeded by synchronizing a miniaturized player-piano mechanism with radio signals. They drafted designs for the frequency-hopping system, which they patented

 This technology is used civilly, for example with Bluetooth and in the original WLAN standard 802.11 . In the military they are called SINCGARS .

My second offering also features a film star from way back: Jean Harlow.

This is a postcard from the USA.

Jean Harlow (born Harlean Harlow Carpenter; March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937) was an American actress and sex symbol. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", she was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood, whose image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow No. 22 on their greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema list.

Harlow was first signed by business magnate Howard Hughes, who directed her first major role in Hell's Angels (1930). After a series of critically unsuccessful films, and Hughes's losing interest in her career, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought out Harlow's contract in 1932 and cast her in leading roles in a string of hits built on her comedic talent: Red-Headed Woman (1932), Red Dust (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Reckless (1935) and Suzy (1936). Harlow's popularity rivaled and then surpassed that of MGM's top leading ladies Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer. 

Here she is wearing the same dress as in the postcard.

She died at the age of 26, of kidney failure during filming of Saratoga. MGM completed the film with the use of body doubles and released it less than two months after her death; it became MGM's most successful film of 1937, as well as the highest-grossing film of Harlow's career.

The stamps are so gorgeous. The one on the left I  think Elizabeth will like. It is a carousel animal (although it looks like a ram or a billy goat).

I believe the carousel animal series is from 1988:

Then in 1994 there was a series with carousel horses.

The middle stamp is about breast cancer. That is close to my heart as I am a breast cancer survivor.

CHICAGO — Countless breast cancer patients will be spared millions of dollars of chemotherapy in the future thanks in part to something that millions of Americans did that cost them just pennies: bought a postage stamp.

Proceeds from the U.S. Postal Service’s breast cancer stamp put researchers over the top when they were trying to get enough money to conduct the landmark study published on Sunday that showed genetic testing can reveal which women with early-stage breast cancer need chemo and which do not.

Without the stamp money, the study may never have been done, he said.

The National Cancer Institute sponsored the study, along with several foundations. A key part — the initial $4.5 million of the cancer institute’s $36 million contribution — came from the stamp, said Dina Singer, who is involved in the institute’s use of stamp proceeds. The money was used to pay for the gene test, which costs more than $4,000 per person.

The stamp on the right features Harold Arlen. Now I have never heard of this man, so I had to look him up:

The music for Over the Rainbow, the soaring ballad sung by young Judy Garland early in the 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz, was written by the gifted Harold Arlen. The song went on to win the Academy Award for best song in a motion picture for Arlen and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg.

Harold Arlen was born Hyman Arluck on Feb. 15, 1905, in Buffalo, N.Y. His father was a cantor and choir director, and his mother also encouraged her son’s musical interests and training as a pianist.

All told, Arlen wrote more than 500 songs, many of them considered popular standards today. Married for more than 30 years to actress and model Anya Taranda, Arlen died April 23, 1986, at age 81.

He is commemorated on a 32¢ stamp issued Sept. 11, 1996, as part of the Songwriters set of the Legends of American Music series (Scott 3100).

That was it from me. Now I only need to bring on the drinks for the T-Party, hosted by Elizabeth and Bluebeard.

We went shopping today and I had noticed that we don´t have much in the line of liquors. We are not big drinkers really but a small glass of liquor sometimes after dinner (especially when we have guests) is always nice. We were at Lidl (European supermarket) and we bought their own brand liquors.  

The bottle nearest to me is a fake Amaretto (almond liquor), the second one is like Baileys (whiskey cream), the third one is a coffee cream liquor I believe and the fourth bottle is a bottle of olive oil! After that is a bottle of cream liquor that we have never had so I´ll let you know what that tastes like. At the end is a bottle of red wine.

Cheers!, me dears!

Happy T-Day,

Hugs, 

Lisca