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To mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Universal Postal Union, the Vatican City released a set of two air-mails on December 9, 1949, of the denominations of 300 and 1,000 lire. In 1862, the United States suggested a postal convention to various nations to adopt a method of simplifying the international mails. The convention met the following year in Paris and adopted a code containing thirty-one articles that was to form the basis of international postal conventions. In September 1874, twenty-two nations met in Switzerland at the Congress of Bern. As a result of this Congress, an international postal union was formed by adopting the methods used by the German Postal Administration for solving the transportation of mails between its individual states before they had been united. The Universal Postal Union thus was formed by a treaty of twenty articles, nineteen of which were ratified on May 3, 1875, and the twentieth being ratified on July 1st of the same year. Agreements are renewed every five or six years at a Congress of the U. P. U. Within ten years, eighty-six nations had joined this international organization. By the year 1900, the participating nations had jumped to one hundred thirteen. Vatican City became a member on June 1, 1929. Today the Universal Postal Union is composed of most of the nations of the world. At the twelfth Congress in Paris, it was decided to request all participating nations to issue stamps to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of this, the only international organization to exist in complete accord with the world. |
| (National Philatelic Museum, Volume VII, Number 1, 1954, pages 61-107) We are grateful to the Cardinal Spellman Philatelic Museum for allowing the Vatican Philatelic Society to use the copyrighted text on our website. |
