Today’s #stampoftheday offering highlights two different items that both mark seemingly obscure events that turn out to have resonance for two critical contemporary issues: refugees and climate change.

The first is a series of three “Huguenot Walloon Tercentenary” stamps issued on May 1, 1924. The Huguenots were French Protestants, who in the 16th century lost their rights and fled to other countries in Europe, where they often were initially welcomed as skilled, literate workers who could help revive economies, particularly in places still recovering from the 30-Years War. (In fact, the English word “refugee,” which comes directly from the French word ‘réfugié’ referred to the Huguenots who fled France for England in 1685 following the revocation of an edict that had protected their rights).

While some Huguenots came to what is now the southeast United States and Brazil in the mid to late 1500s, their settlements failed. Walloons were Huguenots who had been forced to leave their original home in Belgium and went to the Netherlands (where they weren’t really welcomed). After unsuccessfully seeking permission to immigrate to the British colony in Virginia they received permission to join a Dutch West India Colony expedition to settlements on the Hudson River (The colony of New Amsterdam was not officially established until 1626).

The other #stampoftheday is an envelope postmarked May 1, 1956 by Operation Deep Freeze, an expedition of U.S. scientists, supported by the U.S. Navy, that spent the southern hemisphere summer (from November 1955 to spring 1956) preparing a permanent research station that would be part of International Geophysical Year (IGY) 1957-58. IGY was a collaborative effort by about 40 countries to carry out studies that would advance world knowledge of Antarctic hydrography and weather systems, glacial movements, and marine life. Today, successors to that research initiative are documenting the extraordinary changes in Antarctica caused by global climate change.

The expedition also carried about 2,500 pounds of mail from stamp collectors, like my father, who wanted to get mail with a postmark from Antarctica. As you can see, my father appears to even have designed his own first-day cover for one of these offerings, which appears to have been postmarked May 9, 1956. The postmarks on both read: “Little America, Antartica, U.S.N. (US Navy).

So there you have it. A seemingly obscure stamp and an unusual postmarked envelope highlight two important contemporary issues.