Sending a letter is so easy these days with the advent of the internet and email. Parcel? There are delivery companies that take care of it, and you can send it around the world for completely commensurate prices.
But that is the story of today. In the past, the post office was the only place people could trust to deliver mail in the cheapest and safest way. The problem is that the things sent by the ancients were not only letters, but sometimes very strange items that no one thought could be sent.
One of the most monstrous parcels came in 1914. The item was named after Mary Pierstoff, then a 4-year-old girl.
This little girl’s parents turned her into a postman, sending her own child to visit her grandmother from Grangeville to Lewiston, Idaho. The reason was said that the price of sending by post is cheaper than having to buy a train ticket.
The reason for this confusing case was because Mary at that time weighed only 48.5 pounds (under 22kg), while the maximum weight of a package was less than 50 pounds (about 22.6kg). Plus, there weren’t any regulations regarding sending people at that time, so the post office had no choice but to bring her to where she needed to go.
The Hope diamond is one of the most famous and precious jewels in history, with an estimated value of about 1 million USD (23 billion VND). But few people know that its owner in the past was so subjective that he sent a whole fortune by post, like a bunch of vegetables and fish.
It happened when Harry Winston – gem broker and owner of this 45.52 carat diamond died. Before his death, he decided to wrap the diamond in a simple brown box and send it to the National Museum of History by post.
No one knows where his confidence comes from, only knowing that the cost of sending this million-dollar box only costs about .44, plus 2.85 in insurance if lost. Fortunately, the postmen responsible for shipping did everything from A to Z themselves, ensuring the parcel was delivered to Leonard – the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at the time.
In the list of the strangest things sent in the mail, animals cannot be missing – both living and dead. Many times, postal workers in the US have to deliver rotten fish that cannot be refused, because they are properly stamped.
An interesting case involving sending animals occurred in December 1954. At that time, a man in Fostoria (Ohio) sent a letter to the Orlando (Florida) post office, with the package being a gecko.
In the letter, this person said the gecko needed a new place, because Fostoria was too cold for it to live. This person expressed his wish that the post office would release the gecko back into the wild, and tried to notify him if the animal was safe or not.
Happy ending: the Orlando post office did just that, and sent him a Christmas card.
In 1912, the world witnessed the most terrible disaster in maritime history named Titanic. The ship sailed from the port of Liverpool (UK), headed to the north Atlantic Ocean when it sank, killing more than 1,500 people.
But there are also many interesting stories surrounding the disaster shipwreck. For example, up to 90 tons of wreckage from the Titanic washed up on beaches in Italy, and then sent to the US via … postal service.
For those who don’t know, the pieces are estimated to cost between and million.
It happened in the late 19th century and was reported by the New York Times. Accordingly, in this era, doctors took advantage of the post office to transport disease samples – from plague, smallpox to dead birds and mice… for research purposes.
Of course, this is a very dangerous method, capable of causing the epidemic to spread uncontrollably. That’s why later legislators had to make regulations prohibiting the careless transportation of such items.
At present, the phrase “pneumatic system” – pneumatic system may be strange to us. But in the early 1800s, this was a system installed throughout New York City buildings, to deliver mail up the floors at the fastest speeds. These tubes are usually located in basements, and the people who operate them are often referred to as “rocketeers” – rocket launchers.
Of course, the pneumatic tubes worked well, improving the city’s mail speed at the time. But one fine day in 1897, a rocketeer came up with the idea to test the speed of this system for living things, by testing… a cat.
Fortunately, this wild play phase did not have any unfortunate consequences. The cat is still alive, and that proves you can send a live animal through the system, as long as it fits.