Two United States issues received Scott catalog numbers during the past month: the 5¢ Pinot Noir Grapes coil stamp and the nondenominated ($1.20) Moon global forever stamp.

A stamp celebrating Assateague Island National Seashore, which is divided between Maryland and Virginia, will be among the 16 stamps in the National Parks set to be issued June 2.

Raphael's paintings from five centuries ago have been featured on United States stamps for Christmas, and on Love stamps and commemoratives.

‘A distinguished display of quite exceptional quality’ was how Peter Cockburn, Honorary Secretary of The Royal Philatelic Society London, described the material shown to the Society on 31 March.

Claudia Alta Taylor, born Dec. 22, 1912, in Karnack, Harrison County, Texas, was destined to grow up to become “Lady Bird” Johnson, the wife of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States. As First Lady, she started the Society for a More Beautiful National Capital, a beautification project. The main thrust of the program was the planting of millions of flowers around the capital city.

On Oct 1, 1943, Japan issued a set of seven occupation stamps for use only in the Shan provinces of Burma (Scott 2N51-2N57). This set is in demand from Burma specialists, British Empire collectors and collectors of Japan in both unused hinged condition and used condition.

Considerable attention was devoted during 2015 toward marking the 150th anniversary of perhaps the world’s best-known children’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll’s ingenious tale of Alice’s fall down a rabbit hole and her resulting escapades in Wonderland has captivated the world since it first appeared in 1865, and subsequently was translated into as many as 175 languages. For its part, Britain’s Royal Mail commemorated the anniversary with a set of 10 stamps on Jan. 6, 2015.

During 1978-79, three Americana stamps denominated $1, $2, and $5 were issued. This month’s column takes a look at the $1 stamp (Scott 1610), which pictures a colonial rush lamp and candle holder.

The second stamp design revealed in the United States Postal Service's upcoming National Parks set shows Delicate Arch, a feature of Arches National Park near Moab, Utah.

Grosvenor’s Feb. 24 sale in London offered a worldwide assortment of cinderellas from the collection of brothers Francis and Charles Kiddle.

April 5 marks the 100th birth anniversary of Gregory Peck, whose many film performances include his starring role as attorney Atticus Finch in the 1962 drama, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Mystic Stamp Co., based in Camden, N.Y., became an employee-owned company effective April 1 via the formation of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Owners Donald and Chacea Sundman announced April 2 that they have sold all their Mystic stock to the ESOP. They will continue in their current roles with the company. Donald Sundman is president of Mystic Stamp Co., and Chacea Sundman is director of human resources. They will stay at Mystic and continue to manage the business.

When Postmaster General James Farley went to San Antonio in 1937 to dedicate the Texas city’s new post office and federal building, he used the event to plug stamp collecting. “You’ll find it a lot of fun,” he told a crowd of 3,500. “And besides it helps the [Post Office] department.” Today you would be hard pressed to find a more beautiful post office in America than the six-story Beaux Arts building Farley dedicated across the street from the Alamo. Yet if you go into the post office and buy a stamp — as Farley urged 79 years ago —you are in for an ordeal.

The United States Postal Service unveiled the first of 16 National Parks stamp designs for the set to be issued June 2. The new designs will be revealed one by one over the next three weeks.

American poet Maya Angelou received many honors over the course of her life, including more than 50 honorary degrees, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Sparks Auctions, in Ottawa, held a sale on March 1-3. The highlight was an unused 15¢ gray “Large Queen” stamp of 1868, on watermarked paper perforated 11½ by 12.

Cherrystone held a sale Feb. 23-24 in New York of United States and worldwide material, including some seldom-seen early Newfoundland airmail provisionals.

Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries held a series of sales in mid-March, beginning with Don David Price’s remarkable collection of United States bicolor issues on March 15, followed by Steven Walske’s collection of U.S.-France trans-Atlantic mail on Marach 16.

Christoph Gaertner Auktionshaus, based near Stuttgart, Germany, held another of their customary gargantuan sales on Feb. 22-27. The 37,000 lots came from 1,500 consignors, according to the firm, and pushed the sale catalog to eight volumes.

A veteran of the Shakespearean stage and popular theater, British actor Alec Guinness (1914-2000) was also a star of superb film dramas, and played the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in three Star Wars movies.