We all know that geocaching can take us to interesting and weird places that we might have never heard of otherwise. I figured that events could be used in a similar manner to point out curious events and stories, various odds and sods, that I stumbled upon while wandering around in internet rabbit holes.
On this day
in 1879
The last plate (225) of the Penny Red stamps was put to press.
The Penny Red succeeded the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system, which lasted less than a year. A red ink was used to cancel Penny Black stamps. The red cancellation was difficult to see on the black design, and the ink was easy to remove which made it possible to re-use cancelled stamps. When the stamp colour was switched to red, the ink for cancellation was changed to black which was more effective and difficult to remove. However, people still re-used stamps by combining the uncancelled parts of two stamps to form an unused whole.
The Penny Red was superseded by the Penny Venetian Red printed by De La Rue, which was in use for a little over a year before being succeeded in turn by the long-lived Penny Lilac.
