Posted on by Willem

Saturday/ stamps from Namibia 🇳🇦

I touched up my stamp album pages for Namibia today, and noticed that there is a mineral on the R5 stamp named after me*: Willemite.

*Actually, it is named after King William I of the Netherlands 😁.
Willemite is a silicate mineral (Zn2SiO4), discovered in 1829 in the Belgian Vieille-Montagne mine. Mineralogist Armand Lévy was shown samples by a student at the university where he was teaching, and he named it after William I. It is occasionally spelled villemite.
[From Wikpedia]

These stamps were issued in 1991 and 1992, and are still denominated in South African rand. The Namibian dollar (NAD) was introduced in 1993, replacing the country’s use of the South African rand (ZAR). South African rand is still widely accepted in Namibia, though.
On Mar. 21, 1990, the territory called South West Africa became independent from South Africa, and a new country called Namibia was established. Here is the front page of the New York Times reporting on it.

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