25 Days of Holiday Songs 2022: “Mail Early For Christmas” by Jack Webb
The irony of a troupe singing that you’ll “be a mellow fellow,” while Jack Webb is getting tough on holiday laggards!
The First Cars Licensed As London Taxis Were Electric Vehicles (Cool Weird Awesome 898)
Today in 1897 is said to be the day that London first licensed motor vehicles as taxicabs. They were nicknamed "hummingbirds" and they were battery-powered.
The “Parcel Post Bank” Was Mailed To Its Construction Site, A Few Bricks At A Time (Cool Weird Awesome 882)
This day in 1916 was an important day in US Postal Service history - a rule change that came after the community of Vernal, Utah basically had a bank mailed to them, in installments of bricks.
New York City Used To Deliver Mail Through Pneumatic Tubes (Cool Weird Awesome 798)
Today in 2006, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens famously told his colleagues that the Internet was not a dumptruck, it was a series of tubes, figuratively speaking. But here’s a story about some literal tubes that New York City once used to deliver mail.
The “Six Triple Eight” Brought Black Excellence To The Army During World War II (Cool Weird Awesome 709)
Today in 1945, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, began heading to England for deployment. These 855 servicemembers, all Black women, took on a mission that may not have been glamorous but was considered absolutely essential to the war effort.
Why Don’t Astronauts Do Laundry In Space? (Cool Weird Awesome 569)
There was a story recently about how NASA was partnering with Tide laundry detergent to work on a way to do laundry in space. Which means we don’t already do laundry in space, and there are some pretty big reasons why. Plus: the Royal Mail delivers a letter addressed to a woman who’d been on TV, only the writer didn't exactly have the woman's address.
How Ethel Merman Helped Get America To Use ZIP Codes (Cool Weird Awesome 564)
Today in 1963, the US Postal Service officially started using ZIP codes as a way to quickly sort huge amounts of mail and get it to where it needed to go. How did they get Americans to adopt ZIP codes? A mascot named Mr. Zip and a jingle sung by Broadway legend Ethel Merman. Plus: for Canada Day, the story of a runner in Ontario who ran a moose-shaped route through downtown Toronto.
Henry Brown Escaped From Slavery By Mailing Himself To Philadelphia (Cool Weird Awesome 507)
On this day in 1849, Henry Brown escaped slavery from a Virginia plantation in a very unusual way: he arranged it so he could hide in a small wooden box that was sent to Pennsylvania. Here's some of his story. Plus: it was on this day in 2011 that a paramedic rescued a doctor from a fiery car crash, 30 years after that same doctor had helped the paramedic survive as a newborn.
“Stagecoach” Mary Fields, Montana’s One-Of-A-Kind Mail Carrier (Cool Weird Awesome 496)
Mary Fields was the first Black woman to receive a Post Office contract to deliver the mail, and in the Wild West, no less. Here's a little more about a pioneer who definitely made some history. Plus: the story of a sibling who found a practical use for her identical twin.
Bees Doing It For Themselves (Cool Weird Awesome 307)
There are lots of human efforts to help bees out, but there’s also some new research out that says bees help themselves by taking steps to get plants to flower earlier than usual. Plus: a man in Canada ordered hair cream in 2012, and it just arrived this month. Patience is a virtue!