Since I use postage stamps in my jewelry, I will occasionally be posting stamp trivia. You never know when you could use this, like if you become a contestant on Jeopardy. Besides, it never hurts to put the Candy Crush down once in awhile. - Jan
When Iceland released its first stamp on New Year’s Day, 1873, it shared a king with another country.
Iceland wasn’t a republic until 1944. So when its first stamps appeared, they were identical to the stamps of Denmark. Iceland had been a Danish dependency since the end of the Napoleonic wars.
The king who ruled over Iceland in 1873 was Denmark’s Christian IX. He first appeared on one of Iceland’s stamps in 1902, four years before he died at the
Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen at the age of 88.
As a young man, King Christian asked Britain’s Queen Victoria to marry him, and she declined. His eventual wife was a German princess.
The king’s legacy is largely that of a prolific father-in-law. His six children married into other royal houses and today, his descendants include Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg.
During World War II, Iceland was invaded and occupied by the British, who handed off occupation responsibilities to the Americans a year later.
Today, Iceland is the most sparsely populated nation in Europe. Two thirds of its 322 thousand people live in the capital city of Reykjavik, the world’s northernmost national capital.
From: http://stores.ebay.com/Paul-Talbot-Stamp-Dealer
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