Today #stampoftheday journeys to sea with the 3-cent stamp issued on June 10, 1957 to commemorate the 1957 International Naval Review, on June 12. The review was based in Hampton Roads was scheduled to coincide with the 350th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent white settlement in the U.S. It featured about […]

Doctors are the subject of today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued on June 9, 1947 commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the American Medical Association (AMA) in May 1847. I’m not sure why they waited until June to issue the stamp. Perhaps they were running late. The stamp pictures of Sir Luke Fildes’

Digging into today’s #stampoftheday – a 4-cent stamp, issued on Jun 8, 1959, that commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Comstock Lode in Nevada – I unearthed a story that starts with mining, continues to bitter fights over national economic policy, and ends with an infamous trial in which a leading political figure took issue

Political leadership, for good and for ill, is one of the messages I receive from today’s #stampoftheday, a 10-cent stamp picturing Daniel Webster, who in the first half of the 19th century was one of the nation’s leading politicians and one of its best lawyers as well. Webster, who was known as one his era’s

A seemingly banal, classic mid-20th century image of a white mail carrier that is today’s #stampoftheday turned out deliver a timely lesson about the ways that the government, particularly the federal government, can be used to both further oppression and foster opportunity. The stamp is a 15-cent stamp special delivery stamp issued on June 6,

Today’s #stampoftheday, a $1 stamp picturing Admiral David Farragut that was issued on June 5, 1903, is yet another old stamp that in some ways connects to today’s turmoil, albeit in less insightful ways than some of the other recent stamps. Still, it reminds us that even in the face of real obstacles and danger

The odd ways that old stamps can illuminate current issues is again the theme for today’s #stampoftheday, the 5-cent Swedish Pioneer Centennial stamp, which was issued on June 4, 1948. The stamp , which commemorates the 100th anniversary of Swedish pioneers traveling to the Midwest, pictures a Swedish pioneer’s covered wagon traveling westward. On either

Today’s #stampoftheday, which is a 1938 2-cent stamp picturing John Adams, the second president of the United States, offers yet another opportunity to use the past to better understand our present predicament. The stamp was one of series of 29 stamps issued in 1938 honoring all the presidents from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge, a

For the past several days, my #stampoftheday discussion has used the day’s stamp to delve into deeper issues including what’s not shown on the stamp in question, often by exploring the backstory (and the untold backstory) behind whatever was being honored in the day’s stamp. Doing this has made me think a lot about the

Kentucky and Alaska are the subjects for today’s #stampoftheday. The first is a 3-cent stamp issued on June 1, 1942 to mark the 150th anniversary of Kentucky, which had been part of Virginia, becoming America’s 15th state on June 1, 1792. Kentucky joined the nation as a slave state but because its land didn’t lend