Prague Stamp Shop

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I didn't find the most expensive anthem stamp here.....

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Jose W. Diokno on Stamps

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Jose Wright Diokno (February 26, 1922 - February 27, 1987) was a Filipino nationalist, human rights advocate, lawyer, senator and government minister. Born to Ramon Diokno, a former senator and associate justice of the Supreme Court, and Eleanor Wright, an American who became a Filipino citizen, Jose "Pepe" Diokno graduated from elementary school with distinction, and finished his secondary education at De La Salle College in Manila as Valedictorian in 1937. In 1940, he earned his Bachelor of Science in Commerce Degree summa cum laude from De La Salle. He topped the Certified Public Accountants (CPA) Board Examination the same year with a rating of 81.18 percent. In 1944, without finishing his Bachelor of Laws Degree, he took and topped the bar examination, with a rating of 95.3 percent. After the 1986 People Power Revolution, which effectively ended Marcos rule and was pivotal to Corazon Aquino's election to the presidency, Diokno was appointed to the chairmanship of th...
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The National Anthem of Paraguay

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Paraguayos, República o Muerte (Paraguayans, The Republic or Death!) is the national anthem of Paraguay . The lyrics were written by Francisco Acuña de Figueroa (who also wrote Orientales, la Patria o la tumba, the national anthem of Uruguay) under the presidency of Carlos Antonio López , who at the time delegated Bernardo Jovellanos and Anastasio González to ask Figueroa to write the anthem (Jovellanos and González were commissioners of the Paraguayan government in Uruguay). The anthem was officially finished by Figueroa on May 20, 1846. It still remains unclear who was responsible for the music. Some sources claim that Fre nchman Francisco de Dupuis was the composer, while others cite Francisco Acuña de Figueroa as the composer. Other sources claim that the music was composed by Francisco José Debali, repeating the team of the Uruguayan national anthem. What it is known for sure is that in 1933, the Paraguayan composer Remberto Giménez re-arranged and developed the final version o...
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The National Anthem of Algeria

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The words to " Qassaman " (We Pledge) were written in 1956 in Serkaji-Barberousse Prison in Algiers , where the author Moufdi Zakaria was incarcerated by the French colonial forces. The poem was put into music, first by Mohamed Triki in 1956, then by the Egyptian composer Mohamed Fawzi . Originally containing five verses, the third verse containing anti-French lyrics was dropped when it became the official national anthem upon independence on July 5th 1962. Mohamed Fawzi , (born Mohammed Fawzi Habas Elhaw in 1918 in Tanta Egypt , died 1966) was an Egyptian composer and singer. Fawzi had a beautiful voice which was inherited from his father (a Quran reciter); he began singing at weddings and other events when he was twelve years old. Soon he learned to play the flute, and he went to Cairo looking for an opportunity to sing. Having studied Arabic music in Cairo, he started to work with Badiah Massabni, and then with Fatma Rush di, where he performed and sung the role of Anto...
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The Irish Who wrote the First Version of Japan's Anthem Kimigayo

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The music for the first version of the Japanese national anthem, the Kimigayo , was penned by an Irishman, John William Fenton . Fenton, who was born in Kinsale, County Cork in 1828, came to Japan as a bandmaster with the British army in 1868, the year of Meiji Restoration. In the following year, he started training of the Brass Band in Japan for soldiers of the Satsuma clan at Myoko-ji temple in Yokohama. This band became the country's first military band. When the Emperor Meiji inspected the troops consisting of 4 clans including Satsuma, the military band played for the first time in public. In this occasion, Fenton hastily composed a ceremonial melody to accompany the poem "Kimigayo". Over time, this became accepted as the national anthem, although the current anthem is different from Fenton's original version. Fenton is also known as the father of brass band music in Japan and is celebrated for his musical contribution to Japan. Above is a first day composer fe...
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The National Anthem of Yugoslavia

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" Hej Slaveni " was composed in the mid nineteenth century by a Slovak in response to the loss of cultural identity in his homeland. Taking inspiration from the Polish anthem (which the melody is almost identical to), he composed an anthem that soon became popular with the whole Slavic community, in fact becoming the anthem of Slovakia during World War II (with Slovak words).    Being a confederation of mainly Slavonic states , the song seemed to be a natural fit for post-royalist Yugoslavia. It was sung at the first meetings of the resistance movement (later, the government), and became the temporary national anthem upon the re-establishment of Yugoslavia after the Axis defeat. A search was undertaken for a permanent anthem, but "Hej Slaveni" remained the most popular choice with the citizens; it was declared the temporary anthem in 1977, and was finally made official in 1988.   After most of the members of the Yugoslav federation had declared independence in the...
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Famous Cebuano Cubist Painters

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  Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907–08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque . They brought different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear abstract and fragmented. In the Philippines, the best known cubist painter is the National artist from Pampanga ,  Vicente Silva Manansala .  He was of the first Abstractionists in the Philippine art scene.  His paintings depict a nation in transition, an allusion to the new culture brought by the Americans. Manansala together with Fabian de la Rosa are among the best-selling Philippine artists in the West.  Most of the other well known Cubist like Jose Joya and Ang Kiukok are from Luzon and Mindanao. Let us now look at the best cubist artists from Cebu . 1. Celso Duazo Pepito - (Spiritual Cubist) He is in the forefront of Cubism in Cebu . A renowned and well-respected cubist, he is ...
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The National Anthem of Belgium

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The Belgium anthem had its genesis when Belgium gained its independence in 1830. The popular legend goes that it was written by some young people in a cafe on Fource St. in Brussels in September 1830. While the story may or may not be true, the anthem does date back to that time. In 1860, the anti-Dutch lyrics were softened and the version that is in use today was created. When Dechet (better known as "Jenneval") wrote his verses, he called the poem 'La Bruxelloise'. His publisher thought it better to broaden the scope from the city's to the area's name (Brabant) and renamed it " La Brabançonne " (Song of Brabant). The music was written in September of 1830 and the first public performance of the anthem occurred the following month. Finally, in 1921, it was decreed that only the fourth stanza of the 1860 lyrics are official in the French and Dutch versions. However, an official version of the "Brabançonne" does not actually exist. Differe...
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