Happy Washington's Birthday - President Eisenhower and the IGY

Thanks for the comment on the last post, dutifully answered via another comment.

Officially, today's federal holiday is Washington’s Birthday, only colloquially known as President’s Day. Technically it is a celebration of the first president of the United States. So I guess we don't have to honor all presidents if we don't want to.

But it does make me think of Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower, the first president I remember, and president during the inception and execution of the IGY. 

Thanks to Matin Modarressi who recently passed along some links related to his very interesting APS presentation on stamps and U.S. foreign policy, which I will return to in another post. One document he shared was the press release of Eisenhower's remarks on the opening of the IGY.

You can see part of Eisenhower's comments in the video below. Also, at 1:45 into the clip, you can see solar flares that look like those that are part of the IGY stamp design.

Both the news piece above and the longer video below about Eisenhower, science, and the IGY (produced by Eagle Communications with the help of the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum) note that Earth satellites were expected from both the U.S. and the USSR during the IGY, although launch dates were not announced ahead of time.

I do have a few Eisenhower postage stamps from "back in the day," meaning my casual stamp collecting era from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. They have been in my stock book for so long, without special care, that they are kind of stuck onto the pages. Any conservation tips on how to free them without too much damage?

Scott #1393 single and plate block, issued in 1970, one of five U.S. Eisenhower stamps

Eisenhower's regard as a president has generally improved over time. For what it's worth, you might wish to pursue the sortable and data-rich Wikipedia compilations of Gallup poll ratings of modern presidents, and/or historians' rankings of past presidents.