Murtaza, Arefa, Aaliya and Saleem came to DC because Bhai Murtaza had a conference in DC. I joined Arefa and the kids to see the Postal Museum.
The museum floor, on the lower level, has tiles that look like envelopes with a stamp in the corner. Such a smart design :)
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| Notice the Envelope-esque Tiles |
We saw a mail wagon. These were used to deliver mail. As the train pulled up at stations of smaller towns, the train would not stop, just slow down. And, the mail bags would be flung on to the platform, while other bags full of mail for delivery were picked up with the train moving!
One of the exhibits at the museum is the
PostSecret exhibit. In 2004 Frank Warren founded it. People mail in secrets on homemade postcards. This ventures has received hundreds of thousands of postcards. Some of them were displayed individually, some placed in a large pyramid, and most of them in storage.
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| PostSecret Postcard Pyramid |
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| One of the PostSecret Postcards |
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| A Heart Wrencihing PostSecret Postcard |
There were a lot of interesting stamps and mail displayed at the museum .
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| A Swedish Feather Letter |
I enjoyed seeing stamps from Oman.
There were a LOT of stamps from India, divided by state amongst other things.
Sindh Dak Post: These stamps from the Sindh District were the first issued in India, and in Asia. The 1854 the Indian government recalled all unused stamps from Sindh, making the scarce today. The red stamp is also rare because the fragile wax caused many to fall apart. Sindh is now in Pakistan
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| Sindh Dak Post |
The museums has interactive bits, where you can go through a whole bunch of stamps on a screen and email 10 to yourself. I did it, and here are the 10 I picked:
They also let you design a stamp and email it to yourself, in two version - a current version, and a historic one. Here's the one I designed:
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| Aaliya designed her stamp |
