Somalia

On the top row of this album page are two pairs of stamps. The first pair is of Antonio Pacinotti and Luigi Galvani.

Pacinotti was a physicist from Pisa, Italy. He is attributed for inventing the dynamo in 1860, which is integral still today for the generation of electricity. The stamps commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of his invention. One interesting thing to me about the stamps is that they seem to be the first in which Italy made a stamp from a photograph. Galvini was a physcist and biologist who was known for research and discovery of electricity derived from chemical reactions and in particular in living tissues and bodies. His name and discoveries is the basis of the term galvanism, it being a direct current of electricity produced by a chemical reaction. His name and this phenomemom is also the basis for the term galvanized to refer to materials coated with zinc, as well as the metaphor of concepts or ideas being galvanized, being solidified. These two stamps also commemorate the first congress of the International Society of Radio-Biology, which was Galvini’s field of study. It took place in Venice in 1934.

Connecting the Empire

King Vittorio Emanuelle III and the Fascist Party sought to build an Italian empire to include many colonies. Italy focused on taking territories in northeast Africa: Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, etc. As these colonies were established, sometimes by negotiations and sometimes by brutal military force, merchants and other businesses were needed to reap the benefits of the colonies. However, there were no easy and quick ways to get to these colonies. To fill this need and to promote Italian interests, the government formed from some smaller airlines, a new airline called, Ala Littoria (i.e., Winged Lictor). Incidentally, lictore was an ancient Roman word that meant to bind. The term lictor was used for a person who escorted the emperor and his magistrates wherever they went, acting as bodyguards.

Flights to the colonies were called the Linea dell’Impero (i.e., Line of the Empire), also known as Linea Imperiale (i.e., Imperial Line). It flew from Rome to each major city in the empire: Benghazi in Libya, Asmara in Eritrea, Addis Abeba in Ethiopia and Mogadishu in Somalia. The air mail stamps on the second and third row of this album page show an image of the King with the text, Roma Mogadiscio (i.e., Rome Mogadishu) to commemorate the start of that route in November 1935.

University Competitions

As part of the Aryan mentality of the Fascist Party in Italy, the government sought to promote athletics, academics and the arts among young Italians. As part of this, they organized annual competitions in three area: sports, art and culture, and labor. Collectively, these competitions we known as the Littoriali (i.e., Lictorial). This is related to the word lictor mentioned above. Since a lictor was an imperial bodyguard, he had to be fit, strong, resourceful, loyal, responsible, and conscientious. The aim of the Littoriali was to encourage young people to strive to be similar in the qualities and attributes of lectors.

The last set of stamps on this album page were to commemorate the thirteenth anniversary of the Littoriali. I’m not sure why they celebrated these games on this particular year. I’d understand issuing stamps the first year, or on an anniversary of a round number (e.g., the tenth or fifteenth anniversary), but not the thirteenth. Maybe they didn’t think to do it earlier.

Note

This page is complete with unused stamps. They’re not very expensive ones, so it wasn’t much trouble to find and buy them. Still, I’m glad to have them.

Contains 13 spots: own 13 – 13 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Oct 28, 2022

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot

own

catalog

subject

description

comment

Italian Inventors

1.1	✓	362	Antonio Pacinotti Dynamo Inventor	50c (may 1934) comm., purple
1.2	✓	363	Antonio Pacinotti Dynamo Inventor	1.25₤ (may 1934) comm., sky blue
1.3	✓	364	Luigi Galvani Electroradiobiology Congress	30c (aug 1934) comm., brown
1.4	✓	365	Luigi Galvani Electroradiobiology Congress	75c (aug 1934) comm., red

Rome - Mogadishu Flight

2.1	✓	A83	Vittorio Emanuele III First Rome to Mogadishu Flights	1₤ (nov 1934) air mail, purple
2.2	✓	A84	Vittorio Emanuele III First Rome to Mogadishu Flights	2₤ (nov 1934) air mail, sky blue
2.3	✓	A85	Vittorio Emanuele III First Rome to Mogadishu Flights	4₤ (nov 1934) air mail, red
3.1	✓	A86	Vittorio Emanuele III First Rome to Mogadishu Flights	5₤ (nov 1934) air mail, green
3.2	✓	A87	Vittorio Emanuele III First Rome to Mogadishu Flights	8₤ (nov 1934) air mail, red
3.3	✓	A88	Vittorio Emanuele III First Rome to Mogadishu Flights	10₤ (nov 1934) air mail, sepia

University Contests

4.1	✓	377	Roman Lictor	20c (apr 1934) comm., red
4.2	✓	378	Eagle & Musket	30c (apr 1934) comm., brown
5.1	✓	379	Curtatone & Montanara Battles	50c (apr 1934) comm., purple

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.