Isabella Bird and her travels
Tom Topol Hours 3 August, 2014 28 February, 2022
Isabella Bird (1831-1904) was one of the 19th century's most remarkable women travelers. Her intrepid global travels and subsequent travel books made her famous at home and abroad.
Isabella Bird was born in Yorkshire County, England, in 1831. She was a sickly girl but had a forward-thinking doctor who prescribed travel as an antidote to insomnia and blues she suffered after an 1850 operation. She traveled by steamer to the eastern United States and Canada, and upon returning, published her first book, The Englishwoman in America. She hated the title, but the gig—travel, then write—felt like a fit.
In 1875, after living in Hawaii for a time, she published Six Months in the Sandwich Islands. Her third book, A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains in which she details her time in the American West—and in Estes Park—in a series of notes to her younger sister Henrietta, was an international bestseller that let her spend the rest of her life exploring and reporting.
Between then and her death in 1904, she traveled to and wrote about the people, cultures, and mysteries of countries spanning from India and Tibet to Kurdistan and Turkey.
Overcoming poor health and the restrictions of a male-dominated society, Bird traveled extensively into her old age. She visited America, Hawaii, India, Kurdistan, the Persian Gulf, Iran, Tibet, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, and China.
These travels were full of danger and wonder. Bird climbed mountains and volcanoes. She saw palaces and slums. She made great friendships with the people she met but occasionally attacked and chased. An accomplished rider, she rode thousands of miles on horseback – and even a few miles on an elephant.
Bird recorded these adventures in her famous books. Her letters to Henrietta and John Murray IV are eloquent, insightful, detailed, and long. One written from the Malay Peninsula is a remarkable 116 pages long. Her later works were beautifully illustrated with her photographs of the landscapes, buildings, and people she encountered.
Isabella Bird Bishop's Korean passport c.1894
Traveling in different countries often required Bird Bishop to have various passports and official travel documents. These were particularly necessary for Korea, where there was a lot of civil unrest when Isabella traveled there. Read more about Isabella at http://digital.nls.uk/jma/who/bird/index.html
Source: The John Murray Archive, National Library of Scotland
Irish Passport with five AMG revenue stamps
Diana, Princess of Wales
On Top Of The World – Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay
ByTom Topol Hours 23 June, 2015 18 March, 2018
On Top Of The World – Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay On 29 May 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain. Travelling as part of a British expedition, they were…
A Queens Messenger by LTC Kimmins
ByTom Topol Hours 1 October, 2014 21 December, 2022
Queens Messenger LTC Kimmins John Kimmins had an army career that started in Sandhurst, where he joined a Cavalry regiment. On retirement at 55, he became a Queen's Messenger. For those who know little more than that, there are such…
East German Passport with rare DPRK Visas
ByTom Topol Hours 15 November, 2020 11 December, 2020
Here is an outstanding GDR/DDR passport from 1960 with a visa to North Korea and a visa from the GDR Embassy in North Korea back to Berlin, East Germany! east german passport DPRK In 1989 the GDR maintained diplomatic relations…
Did you ever heard of a Seiyun passport?
ByTom Topol Hours 9 March, 2021 31 December, 2021
No, it's not a fantasy or Bogus passport – it's a real thing and pretty rare to find nowadays! Seiyun passport The Kathiri State of Seiyun in Hadhramaut was a sultanate in the Hadhramaut region of the southern Arabian Peninsula, now part of Yemen and the Dhofari…
Palestine Certificate Of Naturalization 1942
ByTom Topol Hours 26 February, 2015 3 April, 2017
Palestine Certificate Of Naturalization 1942 Without this document you could not get a British Palestine passport or ID card so it's related to passport history. To find such a document is unusual I would say. How many Palestinians will still…
Francis Gary Powers passport – the real-life Bridge of Spies
ByTom Topol Hours 11 December, 2017 1 September, 2021
Francis Gary Powers passport Francis Gary Powers A United States of America passport belonging to Francis Gary Powers, issued on December 9, 1975, includes a photograph of Powers and is signed "Francis G Powers" in blue ink on the photo….