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Ocean, and 3:04 when he was picked up by the Noa. Less than a half-hour later, at 3:30, all the Postmasters at the 305 Post Offices were contacted by telephone, teletype, or telegraph from authorities in Washington DC, and instructed to unwrap the new commemorative stamps and place them on sale. Each package contained a flyer for the stamp that could be hung in the Post Office, and a Press Release the Postmaster could use for local publicity.The Press Release stated in part,%u201cThe U.S. Post Office Department signaled the first orbital flight of a United States astronaut today with the issuance of a commemorative stamp, placed on sale throughout the country on the exact hour Astronaut John Glenn%u2019s historic flight was completed....Designed and printed under tight security precautions at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the stamp was distributed well in advance of the flight to more than 300 large postal installations, where it was held intact until the flight was completed.%u201dNeedless to say, both the general public and stamp collectors were surprised by the release, and the demand for the new stamp was overwhelming. Baltimore Maryland sold out of its allotted halfmillion stamps in two hours, and Poughkeepsie, New York limited each customer to four stamps to make their supply last longer.On November 4, 1961, prior to the original launch date, four postal employees in Washington, DC, working clandestinely on nights and weekends, began sticking stamps to a quarter-million plain regular-sized envelopes. (One million envelopes had been ordered as %u201csupplies,%u201d and all were eventually made into First Day Covers.) Project Mercury%u2019s official first-day-of-issue Post Office was to be at Cape Canaveral, Florida, a location that, in fact, had no Post Office. The plan was to have a U.S. Air Force van converted into a Post Office, as a temporary substation of the nearby Cocoa, Florida facility.On the first scheduled launch day, George King and Leonard Pulinski, two Post Office employees were in Florida, hoping for Glenn%u2019s successful take-off and landing.