This week sees the return of our popular look at sets we know to have been issued in the month of March, and, yet again, I have been able to find cards that relate in some way to that month, though I am not sure I will be able to sustain that all week.
We started the week on Saturday the 28th of February, with this card of footballer F.R. Hammond, and the March links with him are both curious ones, his birth, on the 31st of December, 1902, not being registered until March 1903 - and his death, on the 19th of January, 1982, not being registered until March, 1982.
There is also a rather doom-laden fact from modern history, as it was on the second of March, 2010, that Huddersfield received their worst score, five goals to nil against, whilst playing Southampton.
Our second clue, of Sunday the 1st of March, showed this man, and his March link also related to his death, aged eighty-seven, on the 12th of March, 1983 - for at that time he was the oldest surviving winner of the Victoria Cross.
That honour is currently held by Flight Lieutenant John Cruikshank, V.C., who died on the ninth of August, 2025, aged a hundred and five. He won his V.C. in July 1944 for continuing to attack a U-Boat despite his own appalling injuries, which were such that he was never able to fly again.
And thirdly, on Monday the 2nd of March we had this card, in a month when it is true to say they first start to be useful, because before March the sun is not about that much, and when it is it is seldom strong enough to cast a shadow, let alone one with which you can tell the time.
I have to say this is a most excellent sundial !
On which note, if anyone else would like to send us any information from their collection which relates in any way to our theme of the week, please do.The e-mail is webmaster@card-world.co.uk - and this is the same for any corrections, or for general cartophilic correspondence and chat.