Word: mauritius
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...Governor's wife was giving a fancy-dress ball, and she decided that the invitations should go out bearing the latest thing-postage stamps. The year was 1847, and stamps had just been authorized for the Indian Ocean colony of Mauritius, which her husband administered. So she asked that old, half-blind Mr. Barnard, the island's watchmaker, jeweler and amateur engraver, finish the island's first stamps as soon as possible...
Today only 26 stamps are known to exist of that first issue of 500 bearing Mr. Barnard's inconsequential slip, which made a philatelic byword out of the phrase "Post Office Mauritius." The one-and twopenny samples that were up for auction last week by the London firm of Robson Lowe, Ltd. had left Mauritius on a letter to a wine merchant in Bordeaux (it took 85 days to get there). As well as being rare, they were in excellent condition. So when the bidding reached ?27,500, Raymond H. Weill, a New Orleans dealer, made his only...
...youngsters because they hope that enough of them will grow up to be the big and wealthy collectors of tomorrow. But while stamp collectors have earned a reputation as quiet and retiring types, they have sometimes proved to be less than perfect models for the kiddies. A one-penny Mauritius "Post Office" Red recently sold in England for $23,800 is known to have belonged to an unlikely philatelist, Manhattan Financier Eddy Gilbert, before he fled to Brazil in last year's E. L. Bruce scandal. And in 1892, a Parisian named Hector Giroux was so anxious...
Port-Louis, Mauritius...
...five-week tour of Britain's territories in East Africa, brisk but smiling Princess Margaret was greeted on Mauritius by a fez-topped honor guard, soldiers of the Tanganyika battalion of the King's African Rifles. Later, she moved on to the spice island of Zanzibar. Censorship was instituted to tone down earthy invitations, mostly in Swahili but some in English, that are all the rage with Zanzibar's native girls, who now wear various amorous slogans written on their bright robes. By the time she drove observantly around the island, the most suggestive such bids...