A great history card from Shelton, Washington. It is a drawing of Fort Vancouver, a Hudson Bay Company trading fort and the mouth of the Columbia River and controlled the Oregon Territory. At the time, Oregon Territory stretched to Alaska to California.  Fort Vancouver was built in the winter of 1824-25 and named for Captain George Vancouver of the Royal Navy. Captain Vancouver led the Vancouver Expedition through this part of the Pacific Coast in the late 1700s.  Trade goods from London would arrive at Fort Vancouver and the Indigenous people would trade furs pelts for them. Some of the furs collected at Fort Vancouver were shipped to the Qing dynasty through Guangzhou where they were traded for Chinese manufactured goods for sale in Britain. At its peak, Fort Vancouver controlled 34 outposts, 24 ports, six ships, and employed 600 men.  In 1946 Great Britain and the United States signed a treaty ceding the land around Fort Vancouver to the United States. Although the Hud...

Hemer and the neighbouring towns of Deilinghofen and Iserlohn were home to Canadian military bases. Deilinghofen was home to the barracks of Fort Macleod and Fort Prince of Wales, while Iserlohn has Fort  QuèAppelle and Beausejour. Hemer was home to Canadian soldiers and their families. In 1970 the Canadians were transferred to based in the Black Forest region. and Canadian holdings were transferred to British.

Aalsmeer is a town of 32 000 and is home to the largest flower auction in the world. The Aalsmeer Flower Auction ( Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer) is found in a building that almost covers a million square metres. Flowers from all over the world are traded every day and about 43 million flowers are sold daily. This goes up by about 15% around Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. Flowers are quality checked about 30 times so they can be graded on a scale.  The auction is a Dutch auction, which means the price starts high and works its way down. Bidders only get a few seconds to bid. 

A great Chinese zodiac card that shows the Pig 豬 - the twelfth of the 12-year cycle of animals. There are five types of Pigs and they are named after Chinese elements Metal 辛亥  (xīnhài) ,  Water 癸亥  (guǐhài), Wood  乙亥  (yǐhài) , Fire  丁亥  (dīnghài);  and  Earth  己亥  (jǐhài) .  From 5 February 2019 to 24 January 2020 was Earth Pig. According to the myths, the Pig was the last to arrive when the Jade Emperor called for the great meeting. Other sources said that Buddha called for a great meeting when he was about to leave the Earth. The Pig arrived last. Yet another legend has it that The Emperor organized a race to ascertain the order of the animals in the Zodiac. The pig not having arrived long after all of the other animals, he was about to call it a day when an oink and squeal were heard. The term "lazy pig" comes from this incident; the Pig had become hungry during the ra...

 

Albbruck is a small municipality of 7500 located on the High Rhine, which is also the national border with Switzerland. 

The sender is from Gifu  岐阜市, a city of about 400 000 people. It was an important city historically - "Control Gifu and you control Japan" was a common phrase during the Sengoku period (15th - 17th century). It is a centrally located city. For those who were trying to unify the country, Gifu was a desirable located to do it from.  The sender writes: Have you hard of Japanese onigiri? They are also called omusubi. They are made by squeezing rice into triangle and putting various ingredients in between. It is delicious!

The sender writes the following: There is a tradition here for families to make Christmas cookies, like the ones on the card, and give little gift bags to them as presents. The cookies are called  Plätzchen  here in Bavaria. Garching bei München is a city of almost 18 000 located just outside of Munich. There are several research institutes and university departments located at Campus Garching. The Free State of Bavaria decided that science research should be clustered north of Munich. They wanted to cover urban functions of industry, habitation, and research.  The Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics was established in Garching in 1960. In 1964, Technical University of Munich moved the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Institute for Radiochemistry here. In 1966 the Bavarian Academy of Science and Humanities established the  Walther Meißner Institute for Low Temperature Research. Technical University of Munich and the Ludwig Maximillian Uni...