Happy World Postcard Day! This is celebrated every year on October 1, which is considered the anniversary of the invention of the postcard (by the Austrian postal service in 1869).

You may have seen my other posts about sending and receiving postcards to and from correspondents around the world, through the Postcrossing program.

Today, in honor of World Postcard Day, I sent four. Two went to the United States (Nashville and Cedar Rapids). The others were to Stuttgart, Germany, and Taipei City, Taiwan. Postcrossing members don't choose where to send a card; we request an address of a Postcrosser anywhere in the world and the site gives us one at random. Then we choose a card -- the recipient's profile might include some ideas about what kind of cards he or she prefers, or we can send whatever we want -- and write and mail it. When the card is received, the recipient registers it with the site, which puts the sender's name back in the rotation to receive another card from a different Postcrosser.

Normally I post images of postcards I receive from Postcrossers around the world. For World Postcard Day, here are the cards I wrote and mailed today:

From left: This card in the "Darth Vader & Son" series shows Darth and little Luke happily eating ice cream; I chose it for a Star Wars fan in Nashville, Tennessee. Next, this lovely portrait of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr is on its way to a Postcrosser in Stuttgart, Germany, who collects postcards of 1940s and 1950s movie stars. Third, this offbeat painting, "Witch on a Pig," by J.B. Monge, adorns a postcard heading to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And last, my only "tourist card" of the day, a stunning view of a Maine lighthouse, by photographer Christopher Arndt, is for a Postcrosser in Taiwan.