Queen Victoria:The Dowager Empress |
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The empress sits for a photograph in the Diamond Jubilee year of 1897, whose emblem is at the far right of the stamp. Serenity has settled over her in this mezzotint. And little wonder. She has given her name to an age and her descendants, through marriage, are present in every royal house of Europe. |
| LEFT: The Boer War (1899-1902) fought between the British and the Afrikaner republics of South Africa was, in many ways, the first modern war. It was the first to see the wide-scale use of the machine gun and barbwire, the introduction of camouflage military uniforms, military commandos, and that peculiarly modern horror, the concentration camp. Oddly, the Boers lost their independence only to emerge a dominant force in the new crown colony of South Africa, a fact that was reflected in the dual language (English-Afrikaans) postage stamps of the colony. Of further philatelic interest, the Boer siege of the British base at Mafeking produced covers that are highly prized by collectors. | TOP: Telegraphy had been introduced in 1844 by Samuel Morse, but it wasn't until 1898, at the end of Victoria's reign, that the first wireless transmission was made across the English Channel. Building on the work of scientists like Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, Gugliemo Marconi set the stage for the rapid development of radio technology. By 1901, Marconi had taken advantage of vacuum tube technology to broadcast Morse code across the Atlantic Ocean. | |
Widowed Queen ||| Top 10 History Books of 1998
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