Millions of Grand Canyon Stamps were Destroyed

One would think that government itself wouldn’t get basic facts wrong. Think again. In 1999, stamps were released bearing the image of the Grand Canyon. So what was the huge problem? Why did they have to be destroyed? It turns out that the 100 million stamps said that the Grand Canyon was in Colorado instead of Arizona, where it is located.

Thankfully, they were reprinted, but not without another hiccup. The image used on the stamp has been flipped, meaning that it was a mirror image of the canyon’s realistic view. However, there was no plan to recall or destroy these stamps, so they went out into circulation. To think if they had just faxed the stamp’s image to the photographer who took the picture, he could have corrected the problem.