The British Guiana 1c magenta is regarded by many philatelists as the world's most famous stamp. It was issued in limited numbers in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1856, and only one specimen is now known to exist.
It is imperforate, printed in black on magenta paper, and it features a sailing ship along with the colony's Latin motto "Damus Petimus Que Vicissim" (We give and expect in return) in the middle. Four thin lines frame the ship. The stamp's country of issue and value in small black upper case lettering in turn surround the frame.
Read more about British Guiana 1c Magenta: Background, Description and History, Controversies, In Popular Culture
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“There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous—secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will—we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books ... we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
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—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)