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Three Wisconsin Neighbors on Current U.S. Issues

Harry Houdini, Edna Ferber and Lewis W. Hine have more in common than just having U.S. stamps issued for them in 2002. Amazingly, at one time, their homes were within 20 miles of each other.

Probably never in the 155 years of U.S. stamp production have three stamps been issued in less than two months to honor three people in disparate fields who lived so close together about the same time — in this case, during the last two decades of the 19th century.

The coincidence is more astounding when the size of the communities is considered. Houdini and Ferber both lived in Appleton — a city of about 15,000 at the time — on the Fox River in east-central Wisconsin. Hine grew up in Oshkosh, a city of about the same size, also on the Fox River but about 20 miles south.

Other people living in close proximity have been chosen as subjects through the years since U.S. stamp production began in 1847. Some even shared the same house. But here are three contemporaries who became famous in three very different fields, being honored within slightly more than six weeks of one another.

Houdini, the world’s most mystifying magician of his time, was known as Ehrich Weiss when he performed as a child contortionist in Appleton. His stamp will be issued July 3.

Hine, the Wisconsin native who helped create and define documentary photography, did not even own a camera until he took a teaching job in New York. His stamp is part of the the Masters of American Photography pane issued June 13.

Ferber, the greatest woman novelist of her day, showed rare talent for observation and description as a teenager, and wrote and sold her first fiction in Appleton. Her 83¢ Distinguished Americans definitive is to be issued July 29.