1639 A Boston tavern is chosen as the site for processing overseas mail.

1673 Monthly mail service between New York and Massachusetts is initiated with the first trip on the Boston Post Road.

1775 The Continental Congress appoints Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general.

1792 Congress makes mail theft a capital offense.

1839 Envelopes come into use for enclosing mail.

1845 The letter informing Zachary Taylor that he has won the presidential nomination lands in the dead letter office - 10 cents postage due.

1847 The Post Office Department issues the first stamps: a 5 cent issue depicting Benjamind Franklin and a 10 cent issue featuring George Washington.

1839 The Post Office issues its first commemorative stamps to publicize the World's Columbian Exposition. Each of the 16 stamps depicts an incident in the life of Columbus.

1897 One year after Rural Free Delivery is established, Sears Roebuck and Company says it is selling four suits and a watch every minute, and a buggy every 10.

1911 Earl Ovington, the first U. Sl. Airmail pilot, flies mail from Garden City to Mineola, N.Y.

1913 Parcel post is inaugurated.

1917 An open-air post office with a roof and a pink stone floor, but no walls, opens in St. Petersburg, Florida.

1819 The Post Office issues a sheet of stamps with biplane inadvertently printed upside down. A sheet bought for $24 sells six days later for $15,000.

1920 Post Office Department approves the use of postage meters.

1942 V-Mail - letters on microfilm for U.S. servicemen, is introduced.
- Discovering America's Past ©

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do,
A house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.
Poem by Joyce Kilmer