Celebrate National Postage Stamp Day – Lesson Plans

One other American vacation that’s celebrated on July 1 is Nationwide Postage Stamp Day. It commemorates the issuance of the primary U.S. postage stamp, the Two-Cent Blue, on July 1, 1847. The stamp was designed by James B. Longacre and featured a portrait of Benjamin Franklin.

The Two-Cent Blue is among the most well-known postage stamps, however it wasn’t the primary. The primary adhesive postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued in the UK on Could 1, 1840. The Penny Black was designed by Rowland Hill, a British schoolmaster who’s credited with inventing the postage stamp. Hill’s concept was to create a system the place mailers would prepay postage, relatively than having the recipient pay for it upon supply. This method made mail extra reasonably priced and environment friendly, and it rapidly caught on all over the world.

Within the early days, postage stamps have been product of paper and weren’t perforated. This made them troublesome to make use of, as they needed to be lower by hand. In 1854, the primary perforated stamps have been issued in Switzerland. Perforation made it a lot simpler to make use of stamps, and it rapidly grew to become the usual.

If you wish to have fun Nationwide Postage Stamp Day (whether or not you reside in america or not) you’ll be able to:

• go to your native publish workplace, seems to be at and purchase some stamps
• write a letter or card and mail it
• design your individual stamp with a clean stamp coloring web page (like this one from Eduprints)
• coloration in stamp coloring pages — Mr. Nussbaum has a set of the 50 states stamp coloring pages, that are simply so cute!
• begin a postage stamp assortment or take a look at the gathering of the US Postal Museum
• be taught some stamp information — for instance, do you know the most costly postage stamp ever bought was a British Guiana 1c Magenta, which bought for $9.5 million in 2014?
• do some faux play publish workplace play — little youngsters love placing “stamps” on envelopes and writing “letters”

[Photo via Kenmore Stamp]