Welcome to Scoop, where you get the scoop on this week's news. My name is Jenna, and this is

Smarter News.

Well, hi, everybody. Welcome to the Scoop, where you get the scoop on all the news you need for the week ahead. It is Monday, July 21st, and I'm so happy to see you as we're right smack in the middle of summer. We're six months in to this new administration. Six months. Does it feel like six days or six years? Where do you fall? Just, do you feel like six months? A lot's happened in the last six months. We're right smack sort of in the middle of the year. We're six months into this new administration, right in the heat of summer. So hopefully wherever you are, you're having a great day. I do have a fun sort of historical facts to start off our broadcast today. It's something that we're going to be marking this week on Saturday and a little

bit of a quiz to get started. I'm curious if any of you who are joining us live know the answer to this.

Who was the first postmaster general of the United States of America? Who had that job? In 1775?

Who was it? I'm very curious if you know the answer. I feel like this is an

answer that I've heard before. And then I was like, oh, yeah, that's right. Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin was the first postmaster general for the United States in 1775. And we are going to be

marking 250 years of the Postal Service

on, this is Saturday, I believe it's Saturday, I got to get my dates correct here, yes, on Saturday.

Interesting to think about that, because next year is the big celebration, 250 years of the United

States of America, 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, 1776 gets all

the attention. But we really have to keep looking at 1775. And I know we did that a little bit

going into July 4th this year, thinking about what was George Washington doing July 3rd,

4th of 1775. He took command of the Continental Army. So he's giving his first commands as

general. And we may not think that he does that until later because the Declaration of Independence

is so important to American history. But what this shows us is that in 1775, there was all

this preparation taking place because it was clear that we were

leading towards war. There was already battles that were happening between the soon to be

Americans and the British military. And this is just a sign. You know, the Continental Congress was

thinking about, okay, well, let's set up a postal service. Who's going to lead that? Oh, Benjamin Franklin, here he go. Benjamin Franklin wore a lot of hats. I had a lot of different

opinions. And this was just one of the jobs that he held. He didn't hold it for a long time.

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