The American postal service celebrates its 250th anniversary this weekend, and you will not have to check your mailbox for the invitation.
The agency semi-cection will be marked by an event at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington, DC, on Saturday, two and a half centuries since its foundation. Two newly announced commemorative stamps will also mark the opportunity.
USPS was founded as the Department of US post offices on July 26, 1775 by decree of the second continental congress. In 1970, the Congress reorganized the USPOD of a firm’s level department in an independent agency – Modern USPS. Historians see the creation of a national postal service as a crucial factor to ensure that the young country has remained unified during the revolutionary war.
One of the new commemorative stamps, announced Wednesday by USPS, presents Benjamin Franklin in a modern interpretation of one of the first two American postal stamps ever produced in 1847. Franklin, participating in the second continental congress, briefly served as a first American post master after having served in the role equivalent under British domination from 1757 to 1774.
Usps 
The other stamp celebrates the agency’s men and women with a new collection of urban landscape illustrations representing a postal post on its itinerary through the four seasons. A 32 -page booklet – Only the fourth ever published by USPS – was also announced on Wednesday and should present selected stamp illustrations in the history of the service.
David SteinerThe new American post master, said that new stamps represent lasting values that each American can learn, including perseverance, confidence and imagination.
“For the postal service in the United States, this is an important 250-year stage today,” said Steiner in a statement on Wednesday. “These stamps will serve as a window on our shared history.”
The museum does not comment on current or political events.
The celebration on Saturday occurs for months after sources said that President Trump was thinking of folding USP in the trade department. Trump also said in December that his next administration “considered” “to potentially privatize postal service.
The White House does not actively consider or does not advance such a proposal, said a White House official on Saturday.
Post master, Louis Dejoy, announced that he would leave the post in February, and Steiner, a former member of the Fedex board of directors, took over this month in the post.
Steiner told USPS employees that he “did not think that postal service should be privatized or that he should become an appropriate part of the federal government”.
Smithsonian National Postal Museum 
But Saturday, the family postal party of the National Postal Museum will celebrate. The museum will present activities, professions and games, as well as a reconstruction of Franklin, allowing children to learn postal history directly from the founding father. The other historical points of contact that should be highlighted during the event include Owney, the 19th century burrow which served as an unofficial postal service mascot, and The Stinson connecting, a aircraft carrier model at the end of the 1930s.
The event is not content to look to the past, however. Anne Matlock, the director of the museum’s youth and family programs, said that the event “looks back and awaits impatiently, all at the same time”, with exhibitions on the future of the postal service.
“We often do not think in all ways in which postal service connects us through our family, our community, in other spaces,” said Matlock. “We want people to somehow think of these links, see them in their own lives and share things with all postal services.”
The museum is also associated with other Smithsonian institutions for the event, which will include an aeronautical delivery game with the National Air and Space Museum, a creative design activity focused on Franklin with the National Museum of American History and time with the DC public library.
The free event will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
