The unassuming cover in Figure 1 was mailed by Doris Watkins from Cambria, Virginia on December 2, 1944. It's addressed to her husband,...

When I was growing up in the 1960s, I was captivated by the space race. I don’t remember Alan Shepard’s first Mercury flight or John...

Kevin G. Lowther penned thoughtful advice about planning for that day when we each close our stamp album for the last time in “Stamp...

What comes to mind when you think of the United States Army Air Corps during World War II? Maybe you picture the heroic pilots who flew...

Have you attended a Great American Stamp Show (GASS), an annual event sponsored by the American Philatelic Society (APS)? If not, you owe...

As most postal historians will know, the first regularly scheduled, official air mail flight in the United States took place May 15,...

The 1-cent postal card shown in Figure 1 was first issued in 1914 and was used for years (Scott UX27). It is very common, and dealers...

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...

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...

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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...

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

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

(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...

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