Manama / Ajman year 1969 Space stamps / Gagarin and White MNH**
This issue is particularly interesting as it pays tribute to space pioneers from both the Soviet (Yuri Gagarin) and US (Edward H. White) programs, often in the context of their tragic, early deaths.
Here are the key details for the Manama / Ajman 1969 Space Stamps featuring Gagarin and White:
🌌 Stamp Set Details
- Year of Issue: 1969
- Issuing Authority: Ajman / Manama
- Theme: Space Exploration / In Memoriam of Fallen Pioneers
- Yuri Gagarin: First man in space (died in a training flight crash in 1968).
- Edward H. White: First American to perform a spacewalk (died in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967).
- Composition: These figures were commemorated in a variety of forms, often as overprints on existing space-themed stamps or as part of a larger space series:
- Single Stamps/Blocks: Stamps featuring the portrait of either Gagarin or White, often with an overprint reading “In Memoriam” or commemorating the anniversary of their deaths.
- Souvenir Sheets (Miniature Sheets): Larger sheets containing one or more stamps with decorative margins.
- Design: The stamps feature portraits of the astronauts against backgrounds of early rockets, satellites, and the cosmos. The key feature for this specific set is the commemorative overprint dedicated to their memory.
- Varieties: Like most Ajman/Manama issues of the era, these stamps exist in both Perforated and Imperforated (imperf) versions. The imperforated versions were explicitly produced for the collector market.
