Linn’s Stamp News reports here that Indians and Indian-Americans were very excited to hear that veteran Bollywood actor Akkineni Nageswarara Rao was going to be honored with a U.S. stamp on September 20th.

Unfortunately for them, the U.S. Postal Service says it has no knowledge of such a stamp. (Of course, given communications within the USPS, maybe there will be such a stamp.)

Bill McAllister of Linn’s says U.S. Postal Service press rep Mark Saunders isn’t able to contact the Akkineni Foundation of America, the source of the story. I “googled” the Foundation, and found no web listing for it — just loads of South Asian news stories about the upcoming Rao stamp. Even Wikipedia now says he was “conferred with U.S. post stamp!” (reproducing the agency name error  in all the news reports.)

It sounds like a hoax to me, one that took in Wikipedia, the Times of India, The Hindu newspaper and more.

Myself, I have no idea who Rao is other than a star of Indian cinema, commonly called “Bollywood,” but I would support a Rao stamp just for the fun of seeing all the American first day cover cachetmakers misspell “Akkineni Nageswarara Rao.”

It reminds me of a stamp for a baseball star in 1984. Since this was pretty much before personal computer printers, a number of Washington, DC-area cachetmakers had given their designs to a collector and professional printer for production. He brought their boxes of envelopes to a Robert C. Graebner (AFDCS) chapter meeting. The cachetmakers eagerly opened the boxes… to find that the printer had “corrected” the text in all their designs so that they were commemorating Pittsburgh slugger Roberto Clemento.

—Lloyd de Vries