A cautionary 19th century tale about the nature and pace of technological improvements is conveyed by today’s #stampoftheday, a 1944 stamp commemorating the voyage of the SS Savannah, which, on June 19, 1815, (sort of) became the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. The ship was originally designed to only be a sail-powered packet that […]

For at least two reasons, it seems appropriate that my father’s collection lacks the stamp I want to highlight as the #stampoftheday on Juneteenth, which marks the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in the Confederacy was announced in Galveston, Texas, the last holdout of the rebel forces. With that announcement, slavery

  The busiest lock system in the world (by cargo tonnage) is featured on two stamps that are today’s #stampoftheday. The locks in question aren’t part of Panama Canal but are instead the Soo Locks in Sault St. Marie on the border between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the province of Ontario. They connect Lake Superior

  A brutal, all but forgotten scorched earth campaign that led to one of our country’s first “refugee crisis” is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday, a 2-cent stamp issued on June 17, 1929 honoring “Sullivan’s Expedition” a major offensive in the Revolutionary War against Loyalist soldiers and tribes that were part of the Iroquois Nation.

One of America’s greatest and most paradoxical presidents and leaders is featured on today’s #stampoftheday, which is a 3-cent stamp showing Thomas Jefferson that was issued on June 16, 1938. Jefferson, of course, was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from

A multi-year effort to find a vaccine and treatment for a much-feared disease is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday, which was issued on June 15, 1957. The disease was polio, a virus that paralyzes muscles and destroys nerve cells that was common in the US during the first half of the 20th century. The first

Oklahoma, “where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain” (and where many strange and unsettling things also have happened), takes center stage as today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp, issued on June 14, 1957, to mark the 50th anniversary of Oklahoma becoming the nation’s 46th state. Issued in conjunction with Oklahoma’s Semi-Centennial Exposition, which ran from

An obscure, slaveholding plantation owner who played a major role in making the Bill of Rights part of the Constitution and in the electoral system that produced a president who has been working to undermine those rights gets the spotlight for today’s #stampoftheday. Issued on June 13, 1958, the 3-cent stamp features Gunston Hall, the

A 5-cent stamp picturing Ulysses S. Grant that was issued on June 11, 1895 “should” be today’s #stampoftheday. But since Grant was the subject of the May 28 #stampoftheday I’m going to reach back a few days to the wonderfully illustrative, 4-cent “American Women” stamp that I overlooked on June 2nd, which was the 60th