8. Pan American Inverts
Transportation was the key theme of the six commemorative stamps—featuring the bridge at Niagara Falls and a steam engine, among others—issued in 1901 to commemorate the Pan American Exhibition held in Buffalo, NY. Because these stamps were printed in two colors, the opportunity was ripe for error, and pictorials on the sheets of the 1, 2 and 4-cent denominations were inverted.
The Pan-American Expo is less remembered for its stamps or Jumbo—the 9-ton elephant, a hero of Britain’s wars in Afghanistan (who turned on his owner and was later executed for it)— than for the assassination of President William McKinley on September 6. McKinley was shot twice at close range by anarchist Leon Czolgosz as he greeted admirers at the fair. He died from his injuries eight days later (his vice president, Teddy Roosevelt, had been so confident of the president’s recovery, he went camping in the Adirondacks).
