1900 and Later

The Blog

Joseph Steinmetz and the U.S. Army's Round-the-World Flight of 1924

In 1923, the U.S. Army Air Service decided that it would attempt to become the first group to circumnavigate the globe by airplane. This...

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An Air Mail First in Milwaukee

On August 1, 1928, the U.S. Post Office Department lowered the airmail rate to 5-cents for the first ounce. This was a significant...

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An Air Mail Plane Crash, John N. Luff, Harry Houdini: This Cover Has It All

(This post has been published in two places: A postal history journal named La Posta for the 4th quarter of 2024 and in the December...

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Contract Air Mail: The Catalyst of Commercial Aviation

I gave this presentation at the Great American Stamp Show in Hartford, Connecticut on August 16, 2024, and to the Greater Philadelphia...

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One-Page Exhibits

Some stamp societies invite collectors to submit one-page exhibits that are then displayed on their websites. These are noncompetitive...

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Celebrating 50 Years of Airmail Service to Bermuda

Update: This post was published in First Days , July-August 2024, pp. 60-69. The layout by editor Martin Kent Miller is fantastic. The...

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V-Mail and "Free" Franks from World War II, 1944

During World War II, just like every conflict from the Civil War forward, the delivery of mail from the home front to the battlefield and...

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Trans-Pacific Mail to New Zealand and Australia Early 1940s

One of the major milestones in postal history was the establishment of transpacific airmail routes. The first route to be established was...

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First Transcontinental Airmail Involving Night Flying

Update: This article was published in the American Air Mail Society's Air Post Journal for June-July 2024. A copy of this article is...

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Advertising Covers - A Fascinating Collectible

Attached is a presentation that I delivered at the Philatelic Gathering on March 23, 2024. It's the final version of a presentation that...

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Holes in Stamps That Are A-OK

Stamp collectors do not like stamps with imperfections, such as holes, but there is an exception and that is for stamps that purposefully...

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Signed First Day Covers from the Wisconsin Tercentenary Issue of 1934

(This post was published in the May-June 2023 issue of First Days (No. 470, pp. 42-49), the journal of the American First Day Cover...

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Cover Postmarked on D-Day, June 6, 1944

This cover was postmarked in Augusta, Georgia on June 6, 1944. That was the date Allied forces landed at Normandy, a day known as...

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Cover Sent from the USS Iowa Anchored in Tokyo Bay at the End of World War II

(This article was published in the Airpost Journal, April 2024, Vol. 95, No. 4, Whole No. 1126, pp. 144-146. A PDF of the published...

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"How Many Hides Has a Cow?" A DuPont Ad Cover from 1918

Not many American companies can trace back their roots more than 200 years. DuPont is one of those. Organized in 1802 in Delaware - where...

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Airmail, Registered, Special Delivery First Day Washington Bicentennial Cover, 1932

This first day cover from 1932 has a lot going on. Let's start with the stamps. On January 1, 1932, in celebration of George Washington's...

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"Hitler is a Schickelgruber!", 1943

In addition to fighting on the land, in the air, and on the sea during World War 2, the combatants also were engaged in a propaganda war...

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American Armed Forces in Siberia, 1919

While World War 1 was still raging in Europe in mid-1918, President Woodrow Wilson decided to send American troops to Siberia. Russia was...

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"DECEASED" - A Letter to a Soldier Arrives Too Late, 1918

World War 1 - "The Great War" or "The War to End All Wars"- was a bloody, awful affair. Estimates range from 15 to 22 million military...

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Rural Free Delivery Cover from an Ex-Farmer Minister, 1907

We take for granted the delivery of mail to our home and business addresses, but that was not always the case, especially in rural areas....

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