Some things just get lost in translation. That's my best explanation for the following head-scratcher, used widely across Russia in 1968 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Army. (Commenter Zarv from Englishrussia took a guess: "It's an ancient Russian tradition to kiss respected people, best friends three times in lips in gratitude." I'll have to side with Zarv.)

More wacky Russian stamps after the jump!

It's a tank with its treads being blown off, obviously WWII era. Where I come from, we have birds and trees on our stamps. (Maybe stamps like this are just designed to accompany really exciting letters.)

A mortar being fired from a trench. I think if more American stamps were like this, little boys would collect stamps instead of action figures.



L.L. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, "the most successful and widely-spoken constructed language in the world." That being said, the number of native Esperanto speakers in the world numbers at most in the thousands, and is as few as 200.

Yet another poofy-haired Russian intellectual, probably Marx or Lenin or ... wait a minute ... nope, that's Mark Twain, featured in a stamp dating from the height of the Cold War, no less. Go figure.