175th anniversary of the Penny Black the world’s first adhesive postage stamp

Today the 1st of  May 2015 is the 175th birthday of the Penny Black, the world’s first adhesive postage stamp issued in 1840.

How technology has changed is shown by the event being marked by a ‘Google doodle’ of the Penny Black.

The stamp that started it all – the Penny Black of 1840, Young Queen Victoria’s head

The stamp features a portrait of the very young Queen Victoria, then only twenty, newly married by months  and only  three years into her reign.

Charles Darwin was four years back from the Beagle Voyage and working on his researches, which involved a mass of correspondence, so many many Penny Blacks!

You can read more about the Penny Black at the British Postal Museum website.