Q 01/05

The United Kingdom, issuer of the first postage stamp, is the only nation whose stamps may leave off what?

A) The currency symbol

B) The country's name

C) The year of issue

D) The word 'postage'

Answer · why

B) The country's name

The country's name was never needed on the first stamps, which were for home use only, and foreign post offices later agreed Britain could go on omitt...

Q 02/05

On the 1918 Inverted Jenny, the most famous error in American stamp printing, what is printed upside down?

A) A steam locomotive

B) An airplane

C) A sailing ship

D) A US flag

Answer · why

B) An airplane

An airplane, a Curtiss JN-4 mail biplane, is upside down because each two-colour sheet went through the press twice, and one misprinted pane of 100 sl...

Q 03/05

Whose profile, copied from an 1834 William Wyon cameo, appears on the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive stamp?

A) Queen Anne

B) King William IV

C) Queen Victoria

D) King William III

Answer · why

C) Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria was a 15-year-old princess when William Wyon modelled the head in 1834, and that girlish profile stayed on British stamps until her dea...

Q 04/05

Which singer’s 1993 US stamp design was picked by 1.2 million mailed ballots, the young image beating the older one?

A) Buddy Holly

B) Frank Sinatra

C) Bruce Springsteen

D) Elvis Presley

Answer · why

D) Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley's young likeness took more than 75% of the vote after ballots went out in post offices and in People magazine, and the stamp was unveile...

Q 05/05

Licking the gum on cheap wedding-invitation envelopes proves fatal for a bride-to-be in a 1996 episode of which sitcom?

A) Seinfeld

B) Mad About You

C) Frasier

D) Friends

Answer · why

A) Seinfeld

Seinfeld's Susan Ross collapses after licking hundreds of envelopes that George had picked for being the cheapest, and the hospital blames their toxic...