The Sunnyvale Library will be closed on Monday, February 16, 2009, for the Presidents’ Day Holiday. We will reopen with regular hours on Tuesday the 17th.
This year’s holiday is particularly special as the nation celebrates the bicentennial of the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, born on this day in 1809 near Hodgenville in Hardin County, Kentucky. Lincoln would become the 16th President of the United States in 1861 and is particularly remembered for his leadership through the years of the Civil War and his untimely assassination at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, barely a month into his second term in office.
This year, President Lincoln will be honored in two extremely visible ways, as the United States Mint will be releasing a commemorative series of four pennies with scenes depicting Lincoln’s life on the reverse (tails) sides, and the United States Postal Service will release a series of four postage stamps also featuring scenes from his life.
Lincoln has long been a popular subject on postage stamps and any history buff or philatelist will be fascinated by a new exhibition from the National Postal Museum available online entitled From Postmaster to President: Celebrating Lincoln’s 200th Birthday Through Stamps and Postal History.
