Under Abdülaziz's reign, Turkey's first postage stamps were issued in 1863, and Turkey joined the Universal Postal Union in 1875 as a founding member.

Polk oversaw the opening of the U. S. Naval Academy and the Smithsonian Institution, the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and the issuance of the first postage stamps in the United States.

The United States Postal Service ( USPS ) in October 2008 issued four stamps with Nutcrackers for the first time.

The first independent evidence for Chalmers ' claim is the essay and proposal he submitted for adhesive postage stamps to the General Post Office, dated 8 February 1838 and received by the Post Office on 17 February 1838.

Although a number of people laid claim to the concept of the postage stamp, it is well documented that stamps were first introduced in the United Kingdom on 1 May 1840, as a part of postal reforms promoted by Sir Rowland Hill.

Postmarks have been applied over stamps since the first postage stamps came into use.

In 1845 some postmasters in the United States issued their own stamps, but it was not until 1847 that the first official U. S. stamps were created, 5 and 10 cent issues depicting Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

Perforations began in January 1854, and the first officially perforated stamps were issued in February 1854.

When the first postage stamps premiered in the 1840s, they followed an almost identical standard in their shape, size and general subject matter.

For about the first ten years of postage stamp use ( depending on the country ), stamps were issued without perforations.

The United Kingdom was the first country to issue postage stamps with perforations, after years of struggle with the unsatisfactory cutting or tearing methods.

The first machine specifically designed to perforate postage stamps was invented in London by Henry Archer, an Irish landowner and railroad man from Dublin, Ireland.

Postage stamps are first issued on a specific date, often referred to as the First day of issue.

Postage stamp collecting began at the same time that stamps were first issued, and by 1860 thousands of collectors and stamp dealers were appearing around the world as this new study and hobby spread across Europe, European colonies, the United States and other parts of the world.

* First day covers – ( FDCs ) – envelopes with stamps attached and canceled on the first day that the stamp was issued.

* Souvenir pages – with first day canceled stamps on a page describing all design, printing and issuing details.

File: Mauritius1. jpg | One of the first two Mauritius Post Office stamps.

In 1894, San Marino issued the first commemorative stamps and since then that has been part of a large livelihood in the republic.

The first United States commemorative postage stamps are issued for the Exposition.

* May 7 – The Cook Islands issue their first postage stamps.

* July 1 – The United States issues its first postage stamps.

It was the first time in USPO history that the design was actually spread over two stamps ( one which featured White, the other his Gemini capsule, the two connected by a tether ), which was considered befitting the " twins " aspect of the Gemini mission.

Some historians also consider these postmarks to be the world's first postage ' stamps '.

To consolidate what her Navy had won, the Czarina was fortunate that, for the first time in Russian history, her land forces enjoyed absolute unity of command under her favorite Giaour.

It was probably at this period that Littlepage got his first good look at the ordinary Russian soldier.

The idea that the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages are closely related to each other was allegedly first published in 1730 by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, a Swedish officer who traveled in the eastern Russian Empire while a prisoner of war after the Great Northern War.

* 1961 – The Russian ( Soviet ) cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, in Vostok 3KA-2 ( Vostok 1 ).

* 1714 – The Battle of Gangut: the first important victory of the Russian Navy.

* 2007 – Boris Yeltsin's funeral – the first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894.

Although myths and speculation about a Terra Australis (" Southern Land ") date back to antiquity, the first confirmed sighting of the continent of Antarctica is commonly accepted to have occurred in 1820 by the Russian expedition of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev on Vostok and Mirny.

The world's first four-engined bomber was the Russian Il ' ya Muromets created in 1914 and successfully used in World War I.

Its first modern incidence in biological warfare were when Scandinavian " freedom fighters " supplied by the German General Staff used anthrax with unknown results against the Imperial Russian Army in Finland in 1916.

According to one theory, the term was loaned to Russian, where-in literary language-it first appeared in " Elysei ", a 1771 poem by V. Maikov.

The term first appeared in the Russian documents in the seventeenth century in documents from 1688, 1700 and 1714.

Russian demographer Boris Urlanis estimated in Voini I Narodo-Nacelenie Europi ( 1960 ) that in the first and second Balkan wars there were 122, 000 killed in action, 20, 000 dead of wounds, and 82, 000 dead of disease.

The founder of Russian Marxism, Georgy Plekhanov, who was at first allied with Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, parted ways with them by 1904.

Leon Trotsky at first supported the Mensheviks, but left them in September 1904 over their insistence on an alliance with Russian liberals and their opposition to a reconciliation with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Chromatography, literally " color writing ", was first employed by Russian scientist Mikhail Tsvet in 1900.

The first post-Soviet Russian Census was carried out in 2002, followed by the 2010 Census.

The party led the 1917 October Revolution that overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and claimed to have established the world's first socialist state.

The torpedo boat destroyer's first major use in combat came during the Japanese surprise attack on the Russian fleet anchored in Port Arthur at the opening of the Russo-Japanese War on 8 February 1904.

The British Parliament first guaranteed diplomatic immunity to foreign ambassadors in 1709, after Count Andrey Matveyev, a Russian resident in London, had been subjected to verbal and physical abuse by British bailiffs.

The first important frontier dispute was the Panjdeh crisis of 1885, precipitated by Russian encroachment into Central Asia.

The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian Empire and Central Europe, then in other parts of Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan.

The first large encyclopedia in Russian, Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary ( 86 volumes, 1890 – 1906 ), was a direct cooperation with the German Brockhaus.

This theory is called the endosymbiotic theory, and was first articulated by the Russian botanist Konstantin Mereschkowski in 1905.

While the Russian Orthodox Church does recognize the first seven ecumenical councils as valid, some Russian Orthodox theologians believe that the infallibility of these councils ' statements derived from their acceptance by the faithful ( and thus from the infallibility of all believers ), and not from the acts of the councils themselves.