COVER N. 326 - FRANCE 

Postmark: 48 - Corbigny Nièvre 25.09.2023

Posted on the 25th September; received on the 29th September 2023

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2000... the turn of the century, the moment when all machines would stop functioning due to the infamous Millennium bug.... the year when the earth would implode...

A couple of minutes after the pop of the champagne cork in tune to the countdown I think we all felt like Mark Twain. After all, the news of our deaths were greatly exaggerated... thankfully!

Such a round number, though, had to be an occasion for retrospect and many were the articles in the media devoted to the century highlights. After all, the 20th century had been a tremendously rich one, for better or for worse, in all the fields of human activity. A century of firsts - first climb of the Everest, first heart transplant; first man on the moon (to name but three) - but also a century of lasts, the most resonant of which, as far as I can remember, being the last registered case of  smallpox and the declaration of its eradication...a huge step for man and a truly giant leap for mankind...

Merci, Jean-Pierre for kindling my recollections of a moment to be remembered, from the bug to the fireworks that I saw from my window over the horizon, and which I so vividly still recall.

As I mentioned above, all through 2000 many were the  "century in review" issues in all kinds of media, that summoned us up to take a look back at what the 20th century has been like. Stamps were used for this purpose too and La Poste issued on 17APR2000 a souvenir sheet with five 3 Franc /0,46€ stamps illustrated with "Sport Highlights of the 20th century".

Four of these stamps feature on the cover Jean Pierre sent me, and from left to right they pay homage to:

- Marcel Cerda (1916-1949) a professional Boxer who would win the title of middleweight champion of the world and whose relationship with Edith Piaf was also the talk of the town. Sadly Marcel would die in an aviation accident off the Azores, while flying to New York to meet her;

- Carl Lewis (1961-). This one I remember quite well, because I watched him on TV, both in the long jump and sprint races in the Olympics. I also remember the race he lost to Ben Johnson, and all the controversy about he using prohibited substances also. Still, to this day, he is considered  to be one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century.

- La Coupe du Monde 1998... well, it went to France, the organising country, who would win it again in 2018, coming one victory shy of keeping a replica of the FIFA Wold Cup for good.

- Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974), Lucky Lindy, the man who first flew solo, non-stop across the Atlantic, from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, to  Le Bourget, Paris. Somehow, I would not rate his feat as a sport highlight. Yes he was competing but not for athletic reasons, even if crossing the Atlantic solo for 33 hours in a flying coffin with no forward view at all except that of a periscope, would demand quite an athletic capacity from the pilot, so as to conquer solitude, noise, confinement and, most of all, sleep deprivation.

- Further to these four themes the satmp set also includes a stamp dedicated to Jean Claude Killy (1943-). 

Now skiing is not that a great thing in my own country. We do have a ski resort in our highest range, Serra da Estrela, but even that often has to be artificially fed with snow canons, I believe.

But I do remember Jean-Claude Killy from when I was a child watching the 1968 winter Olympics on TV, and I remember how famous he was for winning a lot of medals.

A usual with Jean-Pierre's covers, the postmark hails from Corbigny, a town of the Nièvre department in central France.