Nathan Hale, whose famous career as America’s first spy lasted less than two weeks, emerges from the shadows as the subject of today’s #stampoftheday because on September 10, 1776 Hale volunteered to spy on British forces on Long Island that were preparing to attack American troops in Manhattan. Hale, who is pictured on 1/2-cent issued […]

Believe it or not, chicken is the focus of today’s #stampoftheday, which is a posting I’ve been looking forward to since I first saw this stamp in my late father’s albums. A 3-cent stamp, issued on September 9, 1948, it commemorates 100 years of the poultry industry. (I have no idea how they concluded that

“Law and Order” is one of the most contentious – perhaps even one of the most noxious – political phrases of the last few decades. So I was stunned, when, while looking for something else in one of my late father’s stamp albums, I found it on a 6-cent stamp issued in May 1968. The

Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross but was later pushed out of that organization, is the focus of today’s #stampoftheday, a3-cent stamp issued on September 7, 1948. (It’s not clear why the stamp was issued on September 7; the day is not her birthday, the anniversary of when she died, or linked to

The Marquis de Lafayette, who was both one of the first foreigner to meddle in US domestic affairs and also one of the first foreigners to be inspired by American ideals, sails onto the scene as the subject of today’s #stampoftheday. Issued on September 6, 1957 in honor of Lafayette’s 200th birthday, the 3-cent stamp

The diminished importance of the American labor movement, the declining economic fortunes of working-class white Americans, and the ominous rise of violent ethnic nationalism can all be found in today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp marking Labor Day issued on September 3, 1956. Like most of the stamps from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that I’ve

John Tyler, who by actively supported the Confederacy became the first—and perhaps the only—president to commit a public act of treason against the U.S. government, emerges from his well-deserved obscurity as the subject of today’s #stampoftheday. A 10-cent stamp issued on September 2, 1938, the stamp was a part of the “Prexies,” – a series

  On September 1, 1939, 1.5 million German soldiers and more than 2,500 tanks invaded Poland, while more than 2,000 German airplanes began bombing Polish cities, air bases, fortifications, bridges, and railroad lines. Two days later, Great Britain and France, which a year earlier had acquiesced to the German takeover of Czechoslovakia, declared war on