paper with no easy way to separate them
from each other. People had to cut the
stamps apart with scissors. In the 1850s
stamp makers started punching rows of
The stamps of
the United
Kingdom
always include
a picture of
the king or
queen as part
of the design.
In 1918 the U.S. Post Office printed an airplane
picture on a stamp upside down by
mistake. It sold only 100 of these stamps.
Today each one is worth thousands of dollars.
BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA Stamp 177
holes called perforations between the
stamps.
Until the late 20th century people licked
stamps to make them sticky before
attaching them to letters. Then postal
services started making stamps that
stuck without being licked.
#More to explore
Postal Service
Stanton,
Elizabeth Cady
Elizabeth Cady Stanton helped to start
the women’s rights movement in the
United States. She led the fight to give
women the right to vote in elections.
Early Life
Elizabeth Cady was born in Johnstown,
New York, on November 12, 1815. She
was a good student, but she could not
go to college. Colleges did not accept
women then. Instead, she attended Troy
Female Seminary in New York. In 1840
she married a lawyer named Henry
Stanton.
Career
Stanton thought it was unfair that
women had fewer rights than men. In
1848 Stanton and her friend Lucretia
Mott held a meeting in Seneca Falls,
New York. It was the first women’s
rights meeting in the United States.
Stanton helped to write a statement that
called for many kinds of rights for
women, especially voting rights.
After 1851 Stanton worked closely with
another women’s rights activist named
Susan B. Anthony. Stanton and
Anthony gave speeches, talked to politicians,
and wrote books and pamphlets
on women’s rights.
After the American CivilWar (1861–
65), the 15th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution gave voting rights to men
of all races. Stanton was angry that
women were not included. She organized
and led clubs for people who
wanted voting rights for women.
Stanton had other interests besides voting
rights.Women then found it hard to
divorce their husbands. She wanted to
make it easier. Married women also had
to give everything they owned to their
husbands. Stanton wanted married
women to keep their own money and
property.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
178 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA
Stanton died in New York City on
October 26, 1902.Women in the
United States gained the right to vote in
1920.
#More to explore
Anthony, Susan B. • Mott, Lucretia
• Voting •Women’s Rights
Star
Stars are huge, glowing balls of gases.
The closest star to Earth is the sun.
Most of the pinpricks of light that shine
in the night sky are also stars. Countless
more stars are too far from Earth to be
seen without a telescope. Most stars are
incredibly far away.
Stars are found in huge groups called
galaxies. The sun and its solar system,
including Earth, are part of the Milky
Way galaxy. That galaxy alone contains
hundreds of billions of stars. There are
many billions of galaxies in the universe.
Source of Energy
Nearly all stars are made up mostly of a
gas called hydrogen. A star’s core is very
hot. Great pressure squeezes the core,
causing some of the hydrogen to change
into a gas called helium. This process
produces huge amounts of energy and
makes the star shine.
Physical Features
Stars vary in size, temperature, brightness,
and color. A star’s temperature, as
well as its chemicals, makes it shine in a
certain color. The bluer stars are usually
hotter, while the redder stars are cooler.
The sun is somewhere in between. It
Stars are found in large groups called galaxies.
A galaxy may contain millions or
even hundreds of billions of stars, plus gas
and dust.
A time line shows the stages in the life of a medium-sized star.
BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA Star 179
gives off yellow light. The sun is a fairly
average star in terms of its brightness
and size.
Life of a Star
Stars probably begin as clouds of hydrogen
and dust. This material slowly pulls
itself together into clumps. As the material
gets packed in tighter, the clumps
get hotter. Pressure builds up. Eventually
the star begins changing hydrogen into
helium—and so begins to shine brightly.
After shining for billions of years, a star
uses up all its hydrogen. Small and
medium-sized stars slowly cool down
and stop shining. This will happen to
the sun billions of years in the future.
Large stars end with a violent explosion
called a supernova. After that the material
gets crushed much smaller. It no
longer shines. Huge stars may end up as
objects called black holes. The crushed
material is so heavy for its size that it
develops a powerful inward pull. This
pull, called gravity, is so strong that it
sucks in anything that gets near the
black hole.
#More to explore
Black Hole • Constellation • Energy
• Galaxy • MilkyWay • Sun • Universe
Starfish
Starfish are animals that live in all the
world’s oceans. They have five arms and
look like stars. But they are not fish. Fish
have backbones; starfish do not.
There are about 1,800 species, or kinds,
of starfish. They can be brown, red,
orange, pink, or other colors. Most starfish
