Today in 1934, a big day in the history of sending mail by rocket.
There’s actually a lot of history when it comes to sending mail by rocket, though most of that history is a series of attempts that, postally speaking, didn’t quite get off the ground.
The idea of turning packets of mail into projectiles and launching them toward their recipients is actually more than two centuries old.
In 1810, German newspaper editor and poet Henrich von Kleist wrote about how the mails could move much more quickly if they were packaged inside artillery shells and sent by big military batteries.
If the postal system had enough batteries spread out in enough places, he figured, they could move letters and parcels huge distances over incredibly short periods of time.
The idea remained just an idea for decades.
In 1870, J. D. Schneiter of France patented a similar system that he thought would help “enlighten” soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War, but by the time his patent was approved, the war was over.
The first actual mail launch came in the south Pacific Ocean.
The Tongan island of Niuafo’ou was remote enough that the only way they could get mail was for passing ships to throw it overboard in tin cans.
In 1902, the place known as Tin Can Island got mail by flare rocket, launched by several ships.
Occasionally these launches were accurate; other times the rockets overshot the island, or undershot it, or blew up en route, spoiling all the messages with fire and/or salt water.
But no matter how many parcels sank or blew up or both, the dream of rocket mail lived on!
There were several serious attempts in the 1920s and 30s to launch mail, though for every successful delivery, there was at least one (and often many more) that ended with letters turned to ashes.
World War II put the rockets and missiles toward other purposes than mail; after the war, there were only a few more attempts, since airplanes could deliver mail way more accurately and cost-effectively.
But the era of rocket mail is one that stamp collectors still talk about.
And that’s appropriate, since it was that community that funded a lot of these early launches.
Collectors were hoping that rocket mail would make it easier for them to get unusual stamps and postmarks from all over the world.
Today in 2017, the birth of a calf in Kerrville, Texas.
That’s the kind of thing that happens all the time, except this calf went viral because its black and white face markings looked a lot like the stage makeup of KISS bassist Gene Simmons!
The ranch named the calf Genie.
The rise and fall of rocket mail (Engadget)
Texas calf resembles Kiss rocker Gene Simmons (BBC)
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Image by US Postal Service via Wikicommons
