内容提要：美国邮票历史。
A postage stamp is put on a letter to pay the United States Postal Service (美国邮政服务）to deliver投递 it. Before postage stamps were used, people had to take their mail to a post office. The postmaster would collect money for the delivery.
On July I, I 847, the U.S. Post Office sold its first postage stamps. From then on, people could glue粘贴 stamps onto their letters and just drop them into a mailbox.
The first U.S. stamps were a five-cent stamp honoring纪念 Benjamin Franklin and a ten-cent stamp with George Washington’s picture on it. Since then, all kinds of designs have been put on stamps.
Anyone can suggest a stamp design. The Citizens' Stamp Advisory咨询的 Committee looks at thousands of ideas given each year. They choose the ones they believe would be the best new designs. The Postmaster General (邮政局长）makes the final decision. It takes at least three Years for a new stamp to be approved批准 and made.
Stamp collecting has become one of the most popular collecting hobbies in the world. Sometimes collectors trade stamps or sell them to each other. Rare稀有的 stamps can be very valuable. One of the five-cent Ben Franklin stamps issued发行 in 1847 sold for $200,000 in 1975. It was sold again in 1981 for $1,000.000
Sometimes errors are made in printing stamps. The 24-cent airmail stamp is an example. The first 100 were printed with the airplane upside down. Collectors love misprinted stamps.
Stamp lists, catalogs, and a great many books about stamps are published. Today, there are over 200,000 different kinds of stamps.
本文内容选自上海外语教育出版社引进出版的《听读美国小故事》第7册（7月）。如需购买，可到当当、亚马逊、京东等网上书城去看看。
如果觉得《Postage Stamps（July 1：美国历史上的今天）》对你有帮助，请点赞、收藏，并留下你的观点哦！
