This July marked one of the most important anniversaries in the founding of the United States of America.

On July 26, 1775 Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first United States Postmaster General.

Isn’t that a great measure of the importance of the post?

Benjamin Franklin knew that a new nation needed the best postal service possible so that ideas could move as fast as the new printing presses.

Franklin is one of the most important figures of the American Independence movement, a vital Founding Father. And he’s known as much for his interest in the cutting edge science of the time as for his politics. He was an enthusiast for printing and its role in developing a modern democratic, and from Franklin’s point of view, moral, state.

The post was all part of that.

So, as the United States Postal Service celebrates 250 years here are 25 incredible facts from its history.

1. The post is in the US Constitution.

We the people are going to get a continental postal service.

Routinely described as one of the most important political documents in history, the United States Constitution, operating since 1789, the definition of the role of the new government included (in section 8, alongside weights and measures, coinage, and the right to declare war):

"To establish Post Offices and post Roads,"

2. Franklin didn’t remain in post for long

Franklin’s role as Postmaster General predated the successful conclusion of the War of Independence. He’d held postal roles under British colonial rule since 1737 (he was sacked after controversial letters from officials were published), and made significant improvements in systems and services.

Ebenezer Hazard was the Postmaster of New York City before the nation.

As the war was still grinding towards a victorious conclusion for the US, the governing Continental Congress put Franklin in charge of the first Constitutional Post on July 25, 1775. Sixteen months later, Franklin was sent to France to seek support for the US. His son-in-law Richard Bache took on the job, before New York-based published Ebenezer was appointed in January 1782, remaining in post until 1789 when the US Constitution was enacted and Samuel Osgood was appointed by George Washington as the first Postmaster General under the Constitution.

3. The first American stamps weren’t issued by the USPS (and were sort of British)

Britain’s Penny Black, the world’s first adhesive stamp in a universal postal system, was an innovation admired around the world.

Not least in New York City, undergoing the explosive growth that would make it one of the world’s great metropolises, where Alexander M Greig was approached by his British friend Henry Thomas Windsor about the comparatively poor state of the US’s postal system.

New York in 1842, a city expanding to become one of the world's most important urban centres.

Windsor proposed a city-wide penny post, with Greig’s name over the door to give it local weight. They went ahead and in February 1842, the first American adhesive stamps, with a George Washington portrait on them, came off the presses, 42 at a time.

The Penny Post became a 3-cent post, and the business was so successful that the Government bought it for themselves.

4. The earliest known used US stamps are one of the great philatelic treasures

The US Government wasn’t too far behind the privateers, and the first American official-issue stamps were valid from July 1, 1847.

Benjamin Franklin adorned the 5c stamp needed to send ½ ounce of mail up to 300 miles, with George Washington on the 10c stamp for bigger packages and longer distances.

The first known used US stamp cover from July 2, 1847. Image courtesy of National Postal Museum.

The following day, two of those stamps, affixed to an envelope addressed to the clerk of the Marion Circuit Court in Marion County, Indianapolis, Indiana, were sent from New York City.

And that’s the oldest known US used stamp cover. It’s in wonderful condition, a star item at the United States Postal Museum in Washington DC, where it is on loan from the William H Gross Collection, the third complete collection of US postage stamps ever assembled.

5. When America was torn apart by civil war, its postal system was divided too

The American Civil War was a great and bloody tragedy, costing hundreds of thousands of lives in battle and from associated hunger and disease.

As the slavery supporting states of the Confederacy left the Union they started to assemble the machinery of their own state, including a postal service. From June 1, 1861, a Confederate Post Office operated, and when the Confederated States wrote their own Constitution it included postal services, which were run by John Henninger Reagan.

A battlefield grave at Antietam, by Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner. The conflict reached into every area of life in the divided nation.

One of Reagan’s first acts was to try to poach - successfully as it turns out - any staff of the US Postal Service in Washington (now a front-line city in a country divided) he could reach.

The anomalies and chaos of war have produced some of the most famous rarities in US stamp collecting history, including postmaster provisionals (improvised stamps used during gaps in postal provision), blockade runner stamps, and British-printed stamps showing Jefferson Davis, the rebel states’ president.

Jefferson Davis, the President of the Conferated States of America on an 1861 stamp.

In 2016, an 1861 postmaster provisional from Baton Rouge, Louisiana was sold for $108,000, and the whole Civil War period is a gold mine of valuable rarities for US collectors.

6 - Part of the US had its own Postal Service for around a year

Puerto Rico is still in something of a limbo. It’s not a state of the United States. And it’s not an independent nation.

Until the 1898 Spanish American War Puerto Rico was a Spanish territory, and Spanish stamps for telegraphic use were issued for the island.

An 1899 Puerto Rico overprint stamp.

The war put a Stars and Stripes over the island. And bought postal services.

So, from March 15, 1899 Puerto Rico had its own independent postal service. It didn’t print its own stamps, but overprinted the Anglicised “Porto Rico” onto US stamps, correcting it to Puerto Rico for some of 1900.

But Puerto Rico’s brief independence (really a US military government) didn’t last, and the Foraker Act of 1900 brought the island - and its stamps - fully under US control, though in the sort of limbo it remains in today.

The stamps issued during that period are rare, but not hugely valuable, and an interesting oddity of America’s history as an imperial power.

7 - Around 75 living people have appeared on US stamps

George Washington is on the most US stamps. He was on the first.

It was American tradition to not show living figures on stamps. And since 1866, it’s been (probably, this is US written law remember) against the law.

The men on this 1945 issue were featured against a customary rule against showing living US citizens on stamps.

In time, the USPS started to interpret the rule as applying only to stamps that honour someone. So, living people started to appear, sort of tangentially.

So, identifiable known people, like the Iwo Jima flag raisers or baseball players in big games, have been shown on stamps that honour the events in which they took part.

Fiction has allowed actors like Harrison Ford to appear in the guise of Hans Solo to celebrate Star Wars.

The Beatles were commemorated, but a Yellow Submarine stood in for them.

People have been featured as models for more generic portraits, like William Haliday Williams, who was shown as a rural mail carrier on stamps in 1912.

Although from 2011, the USPS started to sound out the idea of putting living celebrities on stamps they haven’t yet gone ahead.

8. The most famous and valuable US postage stamps were errors and failed experiments

The USPS, like most post offices, has a pretty good record for accuracy.

And like all of them they have made mistakes.

Two of the most famous are the most valuable of all US philatelic items.

The Ben Franklin Z-Grill. It's appropriate that the first postmaster should feature on the most valuable single US stamp.

The 1918 Inverted Jenny is perhaps the most famous stamp in the world.

It’s an error, because of a two-stage printing process, an upside down plane flies through a frame.

One hundred of this error were accidentally sold into circulation and instantly became one of the most sought-after stamps in history.

In 2014 a block of four of them sold for $4.8 million.

That block had previously been used in a swap deal to secure an 1868 Z-Grill Benjamin Franklin 1c stamp.

There are just two known Z Grills (there may well be more out there), and they’re so rare because they represent a failed experiment.

The grills were patterns pressed into the paper of the stamp in order to make the ink of the cancellation that marked the stamp as used to soak in more quickly.

The method turned out to be more troublesome and expensive than it was worth.

In June 2024, Bill Gross (again) sold his Z-Grill for $4.4 million.