WASHINGTON, July 5, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
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Profile America - Saturday, July 5th.The month of July has put its stamp on U.S. Postal Service history. At the beginning of the month in 1847, the first Post Office issued stamps went on sale. A five-cent stamp pictured Benjamin Franklin, while one costing 10 cents honored George Washington. Before then, there were no uniform stamps - a haphazard system of private postal services around the country had issued their own. And in 1963, the Postal Service introduced the five-digit zone improvement plan - or ZIP Code - to help speed mail service. That year, Americans sent nearly 68 billion pieces of mail. Lately, the Postal Service handles 160 billion pieces of mail annually, while nearly a half-million Americans work in over 10,000 non-Post Office courier and express delivery establishments. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov.
Sources:
http://www.1847usa.com/ByYear/1847.htm
http://pdxretro.com/2011/07/post-office-zip-codes-introduced-on-this-date-in-1963/
Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, p. 804 https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/decade-of-facts-and-figures.htm http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=BP_2011_00A1&prodType=table NAICS 492110
Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button).
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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau
