space-related events of the twentieth century
Stato: Niger Anno: 1998 Notizie: In 1998 the Republic of Niger nominally issued a souvenir sheet commemorating space-related events of the twentieth century. This sheet shows a giant impactor striking the earth, a comet (possibly Halley's Comet), astronaut John Glenn, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, and a Mercury space capsule. The embedded stamp depicts a dinosaur watching a giant impactor's fireball as it penetrates the Earth's atmosphere. The Scott 2003 catalog indicates this sheet was not authorized by the Niger postal authorities. It is not a legitimate issue. Gagarin, the "Columbus of the Cosmosm," became the first human in space and the first to orbit the Earth. On April 12, 1961 he completed a single orbit of the Earth in the Vostok 1 space capsule. Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth. He completed three orbits in a Mercury capsule called the Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. In October 1998 Glenn became the oldest person so far to travel in space, as a member of the crew of the space shuttle Discovery . The impact depicted on this sheet possibly represents that at the end of the Cretaceous which may have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. If so, the impactor is drawn far too large. The end-Cretaceous impactor was probably about ten to twelve kilometers in diameter. The impactor shown on the sheet appears to be several hundred kilometers in diameter. The Earth has not been struck by an object of this size since very early in its history. |
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