Today is the 245th anniversary of the ratification of the Franco-American Alliance. This is a First Day Cover for a stamp dedicated in York, Pennsylvania forty-five years ago today on the bicentennial of that ratification. The Continental Congress was meeting there because they were basically on the run from the British, who still controlled Philadelphia. That says something about the tenuousness of the American position three full years into the war. Here is an excerpt from the Congressional journal as posted on Yale’s important Avalon Project website. The stamp itself is an interesting piece of material culture. I was having a conversation yesterday with someone about the upcoming 250th. This person was born in the 1980s and thus unaware of the cultural significance of the 1970s Bicentennial. The stamp is a reminder that the commemorations of half a century ago stretched beyond 1976.