The fragility of our constitutional form of government is the message I get from today’s #stampoftheday. A 3-cent stamp, issued on September 17, 1937, it commemorates the 150th anniversary (or the sesquicentennial) of the Constitutional Convention’s vote to approve the proposed US Constitution on September 17, 1787. The proposed constitution, which the delegates had been […]

Bizarrely, a violent procession of almost 100,000 angry poor, indigenous farmers and others in Mexico, is implicitly celebrated in today’s seemingly benign #stampoftheday., a 4-cent stamp, issued on September 16, 1960, that honors the 150th anniversary of Mexican Independence. The stamp pictures the bell that Father Miguel Hidalgo supposedly rang on September 16, 1810 when

The last president to have visible facial hair (not including Richard Nixon’s 5 o’clock shadow), the “heaviest” president (in terms of body weight) and the only man to serve as both president of the United States and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, weighs in as the subject of today’s #stampoftheday. The honoree is

A medical expert employed by the U.S. government who more than a century ago used data and experiments to help address a major public health crisis is the focus of today’s #stampoftheday. A 5-cent stamp issued in 1940, it portrays Major Walter Reed, a physician and researcher who did groundbreaking work on both yellow fever

While yesterday’s #stampoftheday focused on the World Trade Center, which was built on landfill in the Hudson River, today’s #stampoftheday focuses on the river itself because on September 12, 1609, explorer Henry Hudson first reached the river that would bear his name. The stamp itself, is a 2-cent stamp, issued in September 1909, as part

Today, on the 19th anniversary of four coordinated terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 airplane terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center (WTC), the #stampoftheday, is reminder that the WTC was the result of an ambitious effort to make lower Manhattan a hub of economic activity. The stamp that introduces this theme – a

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

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

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