DETAILS: The Postal Service is holding five simultaneous ceremonies on July 13 in five different states for the issuance of five New England Coastal Lighthouse Forever Stamps. In addition to the Boston Harbor Lighthouse in Massachusetts, the featured lighthouses include: Portland Head in Maine, Portsmouth Harbor in New Hampshire, Point Judith in Rhode Island, and New London Harbor in Connecticut. Take a video tour of the lighthouses at: 
http://about.usps.com/news/events-calendar/ne-lighthouses/welcome.htm .

Boston Harbor Light, North America’s first true light station, was built in 1716. Three years later a cannon—America’s first fog signal—was added to the light station. During the Revolutionary War, as British forces abandoned the area in 1776, they demolished the lighthouse by blowing it up. A new rubblestone tower, 75-feet tall, replaced the destroyed lighthouse in 1783; it was raised an additional 14 feet in 1859, when its current second-order Fresnel lens was also installed. After large cracks appeared in the east wall in 1809, iron hoops were installed for support; aluminum bands replaced the corroded iron in 1973–74. The lighthouse was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. Standing on Little Brewster Island within the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreational Area, it was the last lighthouse in the United States to be automated—in 1998—and is the only remaining American lighthouse to have a resident keeper employed by the federal government.

Customers may purchase the New England Coastal Lighthouses Forever stamps at http://usps.com/stamps, at 800-STAMP-24 (800-782-6724) and at Post Offices nationwide on July 13.

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Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at http://about.usps.com/news/welcome.htm.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation: 152 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With more than 31,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world's mail. If it were a private-sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 42nd in the 2012 Fortune 500. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for seven years and the fourth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

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