Theme : Tintin (Kuifje) - 04

Belgium isn't the country that rings a bell when talking about "famous people".
In fact, most of Belgians famous inhabitants are imaginary people.
'Hercules Poirot' the detective in Agata Christy's novels; the 'smurfs' by Peyo; and of course Tintin.

Tintin, that's what this topic is about.
One of the most popular albums of Tintin, is "Destination Moon", which was followed by the album "Explorers on the Moon".
 Both albums were issued in 1953 and1954. Very remarkable, if you know that the first manned space flight occured much later, and the first man on the Moon, not less then 15 years later!

 

But since this topic is about stamps, i'll show you a belgian sheet, that was emitted in 2004.
It's dedicated to both albums, and 3 of the 5 stamps, including the sheet itself, were taken out of the albums.
The first two stamps show Hergé and a scale model of the rocket of Tintin, another stamp shows a sketch of one of the albums pictures.

The full sheet is decorated with a picture of the rocket, leaving Earth.
Hergé must have done a lot of research. Images that are 'know' to anyone of us, were not that obvious in the early 50's. As no one ever had left earth at that time.