Happy 66th birthday, IGY

Today marks the 66th anniversary of the beginning of the IGY. 

An earlier post discussed the role of President Eisenhower in the IGY, including a video of his speech for its opening,

The Eisenhower Library lists a number of online docuuments about the IGY. That web page also excerpts a quote from President Eisenhower's speech in a video from the post above, that "the most important result of the International Geophysical Year is that demonstration of the ability of peoples of all nations to work together harmoniously for the common good. I hope this can become common practice in other fields of human endeavor."

Apropos of the international aspect of the IGY, I recently bought  my first IGY-related cover with United Nations stamps.

Cover IN245 in my collection

The stamps are United Nations (New York) 49 and 50 in the Scott catalog, representing weather satellites launched by the World Meteorological Organization. The role of the WMO in the IGY was mentioned in a previous post .

The postmark was from the USS Wyandot, dated during the IGY, and the cachet lauds its roll during Operation Deep Freeze, which provided critical infrastructure in support of the IGY program in Antarctica.

As Eisenhower hoped, if only that IGY and United Nations spirit of international cooperation in the name of scientific advances for the good of humanity were more widespread today!