Stamp of the Day

A bizarre and troubling stamp honoring the group behind many controversial monuments honoring the leaders of the Confederacy is today's #stampoftheday. Issued in 1951, the 3-cent stamp commemorates the final reunion of last gathering of the United Confederate Veterans - that is the last surviving soldiers who fought to preserve slavery in the United States. Not …

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, 1955. …

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 greatest …

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 …

Baseball, which is near and dear to my heart, takes the field as today's #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued on June 12, 1939, issued in conjunction with the opening of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown NY. The stamp commemorates what was alleged to be the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of …

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 …

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 major …

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 radical idea that the federal government can and does use science and facts to address potentially fatal threats to people's health is the message sent by today's #stampoftheday, which also reminds us about the powers likely to resist this approach. The stamp itself is a 3-cent stamp issued on June 27, 1956 to commemorate the …