Penny Black Black design features in the innovations section of the new British passport in 2015. Also in 2015, the search engine Google marked the 175th anniversary of the postage stamp with a Google doodle of the Penny Black. Penny Black The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was first issued in Great Britain on 1 May 1840, but was not valid for use until 6 May. It features a profile of Queen Victoria. In 1837, British postal rates were high, complex and anomalous. To simplify matters, Sir Rowland Hill proposed an
Penny debate in the United States Penny debate in the United States A debate exists within the United States government, and American society at large, over whether the one-cent coin, commonly called the penny, should be eliminated as a unit of currency in the United States. Several bills introduced in the U.S. Congress would have ceased production of pennies, but none has been approved. Such bills would leave the nickel, at five cents, as the lowest-value coin in the United States. In 1990, United States Representative Jim Kolbe [R-AZ] introduced the Price Rounding Act of 1989, H.R. 3761 to eliminate the penny in cash transactions, rounding