Speaker 1: Guess what mango was? That will all right? So I
Speaker 1: was reading this story from a couple years ago, and
Speaker 1: it was about this three year old boy whose dog
Speaker 1: Moe had passed away. So to help the boy cope
Speaker 1: with Moe's passing, the boy's mom would get him to
Speaker 1: write these letters to Mo and then they address them
Speaker 1: to Moe Westbrook, Doggie Heaven Cloud one. And each time
Speaker 1: they put the letter in the mailbox, she'd sneak back
Speaker 1: out and remove the letter. And one day she forgets
Speaker 1: to do this, and she just assumed the postal worker
Speaker 1: would get it and throw it away. But a few
Speaker 1: weeks later, they go out to the mailbox and there
Speaker 1: was a letter with the return address on it from MO.
Speaker 1: And the letter read, I'm in Doggie Heaven, I play
Speaker 1: all day, I'm happy, thank you for being my friend.
Speaker 1: I love you, Luke.
Speaker 2: That's pretty screwt.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And here's the thing. So anywhere I've lived, the
Speaker 1: mail carrier has been one of the nicest people in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. I mean, we chat with ours any time
Speaker 1: we see him. And they're not only so many more
Speaker 1: good stories about heartwarming moments like this, but there are
Speaker 1: just so many fascinating stories in the history of the
Speaker 1: US Postal Service. That's what we're diving into today. Hey,
Speaker 1: their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Speaker 1: Mangesh Ticketter and on the other side of the soundproof
Speaker 1: glass the man who always delivers, Tristan McNeil. And on
Speaker 1: today's show, we're shining the spotlight on one of the
Speaker 1: great unsung heroes of our society, and that's the US
Speaker 1: Postal Service. Of course, everybody's aware of the USPS, but
Speaker 1: many of us tend to take it services for granted,
Speaker 1: and you know, not really think about the ridiculous amount
Speaker 1: of planning and work that goes into processing and delivering
Speaker 1: more than half a billion pieces of mail a day.
Speaker 1: In fact, the only time we devote much thought to
Speaker 1: the postal Service at all is when we need something
Speaker 1: from it, when something's gone wrong, and we want to
Speaker 1: blow off steam by griping about it. So today we're
Speaker 1: trying to break that bad habit by sharing some of
Speaker 1: the most interesting pieces of postal history, as well as
Speaker 1: some of the craziest stories to ever make it out
Speaker 1: of the mailbag.
Speaker 3: Definitely and to make sure we don't miss any of
Speaker 3: the good stuff, we'll be talking to the keeper of
Speaker 3: postal history or itself, Nancy Pope. Nancy Pope's the top
Speaker 3: historian at the National Postal Museum, so we'll talk to
Speaker 3: her about what it takes to be a postal historian
Speaker 3: and find out what she considers to be the most
Speaker 3: interesting pieces of postal office history.
Speaker 1: All right, So I want to start with one of
Speaker 1: the things that really stood out to me while doing
Speaker 1: our research, and that's the immense scope of the Postal
Speaker 1: Services operations. I mean, we're talking about the largest retail
Speaker 1: network in the nation. So there were thirty one thousand
Speaker 1: active US post offices and just to put that in perspective,
Speaker 1: that's more than all the domestic McDonald's, Starbucks, and Walmart's combined.
Speaker 1: And to staff all those locations and handle the deliveries
Speaker 1: between them, the Postal Service employees over half a million
Speaker 1: people and maintains a lead of two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: seven thousand vehicles. That's one of the largest civilian fleets
Speaker 1: in the world. The US Postal Service is a gargantuan,
Speaker 1: NonStop delivery machine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the scope of what all that manpower and
Speaker 3: tech can achieve is equally impressive. So the USPS is
Speaker 3: actually responsible for the delivery of nearly half the mail
Speaker 3: volume in the entire world.
Speaker 2: That's forty seven percent.
Speaker 3: But I think the most amazing thing about the whole
Speaker 3: crazy operation is that for almost fifty years now, it's
Speaker 3: cost taxpayers virtually nothing. There aren't a whole lot of
Speaker 3: government departments or agencies you can say that about.
Speaker 1: It is impressive. But I noticed you said costs virtually
Speaker 1: nothing for taxpayers, And I always wondered whether like things
Speaker 1: like the postage sales and products and all their special
Speaker 1: services like express mail, you know, covered those costs. So
Speaker 1: are you saying it actually does receive some government funding though?
Speaker 3: Well, you're definitely right that stamp sales and stuff like
Speaker 3: that pays for the agency's operating costs, but they do
Speaker 3: receive less than one percent of their budget from the government.
Speaker 3: According to PolitiFact, Congress gives the Postal Service one hundred
Speaker 3: million dollars a year to compensate the agency for providing
Speaker 3: free mailing privileges to blind people and overseas voters.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, that that's pretty interesting. It's actually a pretty
Speaker 1: good return on what I would say, overall is a
Speaker 1: small investment from each taxpayer.
Speaker 3: And honestly, that's always been the case with mail delivery
Speaker 3: in America, even before the US became a country.
Speaker 1: Before but became a country. So how is that?
Speaker 3: Well, during the Second Continental Congress in seventeen seventy five,
Speaker 3: this is a year before the colonies would declare their
Speaker 3: independence from England, the delegates established this postal system and
Speaker 3: appointed Ben Franklin as the first Postmaster General. And the
Speaker 3: great thing about that is that Franklin's appointment was this
Speaker 3: act of rebellion in itself. Like he'd previously served as
Speaker 3: the Postmaster General and the Colonies for the British Royal
Speaker 3: Mail system, but he'd been dismissed because of his involvement
Speaker 3: in the Revolution. So he was actually appointed as the
Speaker 3: first postmaster General twice.
Speaker 1: It's impressive. It's a good thing we rehired in from
Speaker 1: our side, because you know, Franklin really helped establish the
Speaker 1: whole basis of the postal system as we know it today.
Speaker 1: He surveyed thousands of miles of post roads and made
Speaker 1: adjustments so that routes would be more efficient. He also
Speaker 1: instituted the idea of having postal riders travel day and night,
Speaker 1: they'd use lannerns to light the way for their horses.
Speaker 1: And all these changes greatly improve the speed of the mail,
Speaker 1: by some estimates, cutting delivery times in half.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 3: So I had no idea that the postal riders were
Speaker 3: round the clock. And I guess that mentality is the
Speaker 3: same one that gives it like the post office creed
Speaker 3: about neither snow nor rain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's the whole thing that people always talk about that,
Speaker 1: you know that neither snow nor rain or heat nor gloom, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: But actually it's pretty interesting. There's no such thing as
Speaker 1: a postman's creed. I was looking at this, and so
Speaker 1: people always associate that phrase with the postal Service because
Speaker 1: it's engraved on the outside of a famous post office
Speaker 1: in New York, But there's really no official motto for
Speaker 1: the USPS. In fact, the phrase isn't even original to
Speaker 1: our own postal system. It's actually a translation of the
Speaker 1: Greek historian Herodotus and his description of the ancient Persian
Speaker 1: male courier. So apparently they did all of this through
Speaker 1: neither heat nor rain or whatever it.
Speaker 2: Was, and all that gloom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess that's a bit of a letdown,
Speaker 3: but it does feel strange that we expect our electric
Speaker 3: bills to be delivered during blizzards.
Speaker 1: I say they've actually done a pretty decent job of
Speaker 1: meeting these, you know, admittedly high expectations. Because there's one
Speaker 1: other thing that amazed me while doing the research, and
Speaker 1: that's just how versatile an organization the USPS is. So
Speaker 1: it's grown right along with the country for hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: and it's had to evolve the fifth expanding needs of
Speaker 1: the public.
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Speaker 3: One of the first major transitions took place back in
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety three when the USPS first started delivering mail
Speaker 3: by train, and so prior to that most deliveries had
Speaker 3: been made on horseback or by horse drawn wagon. And
Speaker 3: when the mail volume increased, that's when things changed. But
Speaker 3: the burgeoning railroad with its hubs in major cities that
Speaker 3: all allowed the mail to be delivered up and down
Speaker 3: the East Coast, and the tech change is only increased
Speaker 3: from there. So like cars and trucks arrived on the
Speaker 3: mail scene in eighteen ninety nine and airplanes soon followed
Speaker 3: suit in nineteen eleven, I.
Speaker 1: Believe, yeah, yeah, And you know you can still see
Speaker 1: that kind of versatility today. According to the Postal Service,
Speaker 1: they use every transportation method available to them while making
Speaker 1: their rounds. I was looking at a list of the
Speaker 1: different ways they deliver mail that include planes, trains, trucks, cars, boats, ferries, helicopters, subways,
Speaker 1: float planes, hovercraft, mules, bicycles, and of course feet.
Speaker 3: I feel like I should be stunned by hovercrafts, but
Speaker 3: it's really mules that's confusing to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still on the list. There's actually one mail
Speaker 1: by mule route left in the US, and it's this
Speaker 1: eight mile trail that leads down to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon where the Havasupai tribe. They've lived there
Speaker 1: for over eight hundred years, and so six days a
Speaker 1: week the mule train carries about four thousand pounds of mail,
Speaker 1: food supplies, and even furniture down these steep walls of
Speaker 1: the canyon. I was trying to look to see how
Speaker 1: long this took. It takes about three hours for the
Speaker 1: team to get down there, but it's a five hour
Speaker 1: trip coming back up. And this happened six days a week.
Speaker 3: That's so crazy, And it's amazing that the mail really
Speaker 3: does go everywhere. But you know, there's a one delivery
Speaker 3: method that I'm kind of bummed is missing from the
Speaker 3: current list.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what's that?
Speaker 2: Pneumatic tubes?
Speaker 3: All right, So before mail trucks took to the streets
Speaker 3: the six major cities, I've got these rutten downs. I
Speaker 3: was at Philadelphia, Saint Louis, Boston, Brooklyn, New York, and Chicago.
Speaker 3: They all made use of underground networks of pressurized air
Speaker 3: tubes to deliver their mail, and at the system's peak
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifteen, the cities had a combined total of
Speaker 3: over fifty six miles of pneumatic tubes, all zigzagging beneath
Speaker 3: their surface.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And while these tubes systems start popping up in the
Speaker 3: US during the eighteen nineties, it had actually been used
Speaker 3: in Europe for almost forty years by that point. Apparently
Speaker 3: they were first put to use in stock exchanges so
Speaker 3: that traders could communicate messages to buy or sell stocks
Speaker 3: at you know, a faster rate than telegraph.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it makes sense as a way to get
Speaker 1: messages across and the noumatic tubes or what the banks use,
Speaker 1: and those are really fast. But you know, we're talking
Speaker 1: about one hundred and twenty pl plus years ago. So
Speaker 1: were they actually fast in the eighteen nineties. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The weird thing is they were pretty fast. Like the
Speaker 3: mail tubes in the US could move a canister holding
Speaker 3: up to six hundred letters and an average speed of thirty.
Speaker 1: Five miles per hour. Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So as one example, and there are stories of
Speaker 3: postal workers who worked the tubes that they were known
Speaker 3: as rocketeers. But these rocketeers in downtown New York City
Speaker 3: actually ordered sandwiches from this deli up in the Bronx,
Speaker 3: and apparently they'd receive their orders via a pneumatic tube within
Speaker 3: twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: I want to order a sandwich by nomadic. I knew
Speaker 1: that that was pretty awesome, although I'm guessing ordering lunch
Speaker 1: wasn't officially sanctioned for the use of the tubes. But so,
Speaker 1: did you come across any other weird stuff that was
Speaker 1: sent by these tubes, definitely so.
Speaker 3: According to an article had written by Robert Cohen for
Speaker 3: the USPS website, there was this bizarre opening ceremony where
Speaker 3: the first tubes were installed at the General Post Office
Speaker 3: in New York City, and the higher ups there basically
Speaker 3: wanted to show the employees what their new toy could do.
Speaker 3: So the very first mail canister to travel the tubes
Speaker 3: contained a Bible, a flag, and a copy of the Constitution,
Speaker 3: which is super patriotic, and the second contained this imitation
Speaker 3: peach in honor of Senator Chauncey Depew. Apparently he was
Speaker 3: fondly known as the Peach.
Speaker 1: Even more patriotic, and the third carrier is the weirdest.
Speaker 3: It had a black cat in it.
Speaker 1: A black cat. Oh wow, that's pretty weird. And as
Speaker 1: much as I dislike cats, I really hate the idea
Speaker 1: of somebody stuffing a cat into a tube. Was the
Speaker 1: cat okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, well the cat was fine.
Speaker 3: It was a little dazed according to witnesses, but otherwise
Speaker 3: all right. And sadly though, this was just the first
Speaker 3: of many animals to be shot around New York City
Speaker 3: through a pressurized tube, so Kenneth Stewart. He's the author
Speaker 3: of a Pneumatic Male Tubes and Operation of Automatic Railroads.
Speaker 3: He says that plenty of other animals made the journey too,
Speaker 3: including dogs and mice and roosters, guinea pigs, monkeys, even
Speaker 3: some goldfish.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and in one of those cases it actually involved
Speaker 3: sending a sick cat to the animal house.
Speaker 2: So it was a good use.
Speaker 3: But the rest we mostly just examples of postal workers
Speaker 3: showing off.
Speaker 1: I'd said, it's not this perstal service's proudest moment, but
Speaker 1: I actually don't get it. So animal cruelty aside. I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds like the tubes worked pretty well in these
Speaker 1: sprawling cities, so why don't we see New Yorkers and
Speaker 1: others still using them?
Speaker 3: Yes, there are actually a few reasons. One was that
Speaker 3: the mail volumes kept increasing and it was simply too
Speaker 3: much for the tubes to handle, especially considering the systems
Speaker 3: pipes were only between two and eight inches wide.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that poor cat. I can't step thinking
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the main reason is that most of the tube
Speaker 3: systems were built and owned by private companies, and they
Speaker 3: merely rented to the post Office. So these rental costs
Speaker 3: just got too high in the long term. And according
Speaker 3: to Kate Ascher, who's the author of the works Anatomy
Speaker 3: of a City, let me just find this quote. She wrote,
Speaker 3: by nineteen eighteen, the federal government considered the annual rental
Speaker 3: payments seventeen thousand dollars per mile per anim made by
Speaker 3: the Post Office be exorbitant, and they endorsed a new
Speaker 3: alternative with greater capacity, the automobile, as the delivery method
Speaker 3: of choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, as sad as it is to see this
Speaker 1: go away, I guess it makes sense. And I can't
Speaker 1: deny the nomatic tubes and mule trains. They do add
Speaker 1: this pop of color to the Postal Service's history, though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: And in fact, well, why don't we get a historian
Speaker 3: online and see what other weird stories are lurking in
Speaker 3: the USPS archives?
Speaker 1: Sounds like a plan. So our guest today has been
Speaker 1: with the Smithsonian Institution for over three decades now, which Mango.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that makes her super smart if I'm
Speaker 1: not a mistaken so. But more importantly for today's episode,
Speaker 1: she's been curating exhibits at the National Postal Museum since
Speaker 1: it opened in nineteen ninety three. She's now the head
Speaker 1: curator of the history department there. Nancy Pope, welcome the
Speaker 1: part time genius.
Speaker 4: Thank you. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: So, Nancy, we've had so much fun digging into the
Speaker 1: history of the postal service, and we've talked about all
Speaker 1: the things, like, you know, delivery by mule and pneumatic
Speaker 1: tubes and all kinds of stuff. But do you have
Speaker 1: a favorite delivery method that's actually no longer being used.
Speaker 4: I have a favorite method that was used once.
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 4: It's missile mail. On June eighth, nineteen fifty nine, the
Speaker 4: US Navy fired a Regulus one missile off the USS Barbaro,
Speaker 4: which was floating out in the Atlantic, and they directed
Speaker 4: it to land at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Mayport, Florida.
Speaker 4: And instead of having a nuclear weapon on board, they
Speaker 4: had two blue and red metal containers that held three
Speaker 4: thousand letters.
Speaker 1: Wow, So why were they doing this?
Speaker 4: Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield was a man who really wanted
Speaker 4: to modernize his post office and he was doing anything
Speaker 4: and everything he could do to kind of try that.
Speaker 4: I was trying a lot of silly things. He thought
Speaker 4: about missile mail, and he talked to the War Department,
Speaker 4: and they had their own little idea that they wanted
Speaker 4: to make sure the Russians knew that we were so
Speaker 4: good with our missiles that we could direct them to
Speaker 4: land anywhere we wanted, and they were so useful that
Speaker 4: we could use them to I don't know, Carrie mail.
Speaker 4: The letter that Summerfield sent and was one of the
Speaker 4: three thousand letters, They were actually all the same letters
Speaker 4: inside the missile. He says that this is just the beginning,
Speaker 4: but he's smarter than that, and I think it was
Speaker 4: a pr sent from beginning to end for both the
Speaker 4: war and the Post Office Department.
Speaker 1: Actually, one of the other exhibits I saw was the
Speaker 1: railway mail crane, which doesn't seem that exciting at first,
Speaker 1: but can you explain how that worked in terms of
Speaker 1: the trains passing through towns pretty quickly.
Speaker 4: In the days of railway mail, most of the times
Speaker 4: the trains would actually stop and exchange the mail at
Speaker 4: a train station, but they couldn't stop at every single one,
Speaker 4: you know, most trains were not milk runs, and so
Speaker 4: to exchange the mail at some of these towns. They
Speaker 4: had to figure out a way to hit the mail
Speaker 4: bag off and a mail bag onto the train while
Speaker 4: the train was moving, and they came up with these cranes,
Speaker 4: and the postmaster would go up and hook a mail bag,
Speaker 4: a leather mail bag to this crane, so it was
Speaker 4: fastened at top and bottom stretched out so it was
Speaker 4: very tight. And then the train would come along and
Speaker 4: the clerk on the train would be looking out his
Speaker 4: door and he had a long iron crane that was
Speaker 4: attached to the door, and he'd swing that out. And
Speaker 4: you could never swing it out too early because then
Speaker 4: you knocked the telephone poles down. So you had to
Speaker 4: watch out and be very very careful until you saw
Speaker 4: the crane and you swung your iron crane out and
Speaker 4: the crane would actually grabbed the mail bag and you
Speaker 4: would pull the train back in. And while you're doing this,
Speaker 4: you would kick the mail bag full of mail for
Speaker 4: that station off the train. So you do it all
Speaker 4: of this at once, and you had to kick really
Speaker 4: hard because if you didn't, it got stuck under the
Speaker 4: train and mail bag would explode, letters everywhere, and they
Speaker 4: called that a snowfall.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's pretty It actually sounds like it'd be pretty
Speaker 1: dangerous at the same time. But that's that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: So I know, the main vehicle used by the postal service,
Speaker 1: this Grunman LLV or the Long Life Vehicle. I read
Speaker 1: somewhere recently that it gets an average fuel economy of
Speaker 1: about ten miles a gallon. If and if that's the case,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on, you know, why that vehicle
Speaker 1: was chosen and why we haven't seen a move away
Speaker 1: from that vehicle given how much fuel must be used
Speaker 1: in you know, a given week.
Speaker 4: The LLV was selected after a test run. What happened
Speaker 4: was the post office department was tired of just buying
Speaker 4: their vehicles off the rack. They said, we have very
Speaker 4: special needs. We're going to list our needs and then
Speaker 4: we're going to say build a vehicle to those needs.
Speaker 4: They were put over, you know, horrible ditches. They were
Speaker 4: put over cobblestones. They had to stop and start, stop
Speaker 4: and start stop, all the things that a male vehicle
Speaker 4: has to do that our regular cars don't. And the LV,
Speaker 4: the GRUM and LV won the test. And because they
Speaker 4: won that test, that's why they were selected. And they
Speaker 4: were also selected because they could last twenty five years.
Speaker 4: A bigger problem right now is twenty five years has
Speaker 4: expired for most of that fleet, and the Post Office
Speaker 4: Department very much wants to get new cars, and they
Speaker 4: have started bringing in new vehicles bit by bit, but
Speaker 4: it's going to be you know, millions of dollars to
Speaker 4: replace the total LLV fleet that's left.
Speaker 3: So let's talk stamps for a second. Are there any
Speaker 3: historical figures you feel are overdue for a recognition on
Speaker 3: a stamp?
Speaker 4: I think Arthur Summerfield should be on a stamp if
Speaker 4: he hasn't been yet. And that was the postmaster general
Speaker 4: who did the missile mail, just because he came up
Speaker 4: with the whole concept of modernizing the post office department
Speaker 4: in the fifties because it had been stuck in the
Speaker 4: thirties with no money because of the depression in the forties,
Speaker 4: with no money because of World War Two. So by
Speaker 4: the fifties they were using thirty year old trucks that
Speaker 4: were barely being held together by you know, spit and glue.
Speaker 4: There systems of moving the mail inside a post office
Speaker 4: were just antiquated. Everything was old and i'm stupid and rotten,
Speaker 4: and nothing was working well and he came in and
Speaker 4: basically convince Congress to give him a lot of money
Speaker 4: to modernize things, and he kick started a whole lot
Speaker 4: of stuff in the post office department, got automation going,
Speaker 4: computerized sorting systems, the zip code system, all of that
Speaker 4: would have never existed if it wasn't for Summerfield. So
Speaker 4: get him out of stamp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll start the petition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Well, for all of our listeners that are
Speaker 1: visiting the Smithsonian Museums anytime in the near future, we
Speaker 1: hope you'll check out the National Postal Museum. It is
Speaker 1: a fascinating place to visit. But Nancy, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us on Part Time Genius.
Speaker 5: That was my pleasure.
Speaker 3: You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about
Speaker 3: the fascinating evolution of the US Postal Service. So will
Speaker 3: we've mentioned a few times now that an increase in
Speaker 3: mail volume was the main reason for a bunch of
Speaker 3: the mail system's major changes, Like it's the reason we
Speaker 3: switched from horses to carriages and then from tubes to trucks,
Speaker 3: and it's also why the number of post offices bloomed
Speaker 3: from you know, just seventy five way back in seventeen
Speaker 3: ninety to over twenty eight thousand and eighteen sixty and
Speaker 3: in fact, this ever increasing mail volume became the accepted
Speaker 3: status quo for over two hundred years. No matter what
Speaker 3: changes came in the form of new transportation styles or
Speaker 3: competing communication systems like telegraphs or telephones or radios or
Speaker 3: TVs like, the one truth for the Postal Service was
Speaker 3: that mail volume just continued to go up and up.
Speaker 3: But all of that changed in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 3: when for the first time in history, mail started to decline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was the year that the effects of
Speaker 1: the Internet really started to catch up to them. And
Speaker 1: ever since then, the net mail volume flowing through the
Speaker 1: system has decreased every single year, and it's a big
Speaker 1: problem for the agency, especially being a self funded agency,
Speaker 1: because any decrease in may as a decrease in revenue exactly.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, the public still expects to
Speaker 3: receive mail every day of the week at any address
Speaker 3: in the country. This has led to the Postal Service
Speaker 3: having to increase its number of delivery points, which opposites
Speaker 3: operating costs even as profits steadily shrink.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not all gloom and doom, though I was.
Speaker 1: I was reading this article on upworthy that proposed an
Speaker 1: interesting solution. You know, they were looking at their financial
Speaker 1: woes and trying to come up with things to do,
Speaker 1: and there's the idea for post offices to start offering
Speaker 1: financial services things like check cashing and payday loans. Roughly
Speaker 1: thirty five million American households rely on alternative financial services
Speaker 1: like that instead of traditional banking, and since they currently
Speaker 1: have to go through private institutions, you know, for these
Speaker 1: different kinds of services, it can wind up costing way
Speaker 1: more money than it should. In fact, according to a
Speaker 1: report released by the USPS, Americans spend a total of
Speaker 1: about eighty nine billion dollars on interest and fees from
Speaker 1: these alternative financial services. This was from back in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, which is crazy, right, it really is. But see,
Speaker 1: if post offices were allowed to compete in that market,
Speaker 1: they could undercut the competition, save millions for Americans and
Speaker 1: secure this nice new revenue stream in the process. At
Speaker 1: least that's the hope, and.
Speaker 3: It seems like a win win and not that far
Speaker 3: fetched to concept. I mean, post offices already offer some
Speaker 3: banking services like selling money orders and cashing treasury checks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, really the main thing preventing this from happening,
Speaker 1: it would be the banks themselves. They have an awful
Speaker 1: lot of clout in government, and of course they don't
Speaker 1: like the idea of a public institution muscling into their territory.
Speaker 1: But who knows. I mean, if the situation continues to
Speaker 1: worsen for the USPS, those voices of opposition might cease
Speaker 1: to carry as much sway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the good news is that history is on
Speaker 3: the postal services side, so it's faced some pretty dire
Speaker 3: challenges in the past, and it's always muddled through. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you need any evidence of the resilience of the USPS,
Speaker 3: you just have to look at zip codes.
Speaker 1: That's a good point, and there's definitely an aspect of
Speaker 1: mail we take for granted. So actually, I think we
Speaker 1: spend a little time talking about.
Speaker 3: Zip codes, sure, so we can give a little background
Speaker 3: on it for starters. Zip codes are a much more
Speaker 3: recent innovation than you'd guess. Although they were first developed
Speaker 3: as this time saving tool to help understaff post offices,
Speaker 3: and this was during World War Two, they weren't actually
Speaker 3: put into use until twenty years later, in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 3: and this was a time before the postal Service was
Speaker 3: self funding. It still received the bulk of its funds
Speaker 3: from Congress, but in the mid sixties, Congress wasn't supplying
Speaker 3: enough cash to keep up with the postwar mail boom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and post offices wanted new sorting machines so they
Speaker 1: could finally automate the process instead of continuing to wage
Speaker 1: this really unwinnable war that was hand sorting at the time.
Speaker 1: But Congress thought they were making a big deal out
Speaker 1: of nothing. I mean, after all, they'd handled mail the
Speaker 1: old fashioned way for over a century at this point,
Speaker 1: so as they saw it, you know, why fix what
Speaker 1: isn't broken.
Speaker 2: Except it was broken.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: The proof finally came in October of nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 3: and that's the month when a combination of election mailings
Speaker 3: and holiday season advertisements they totally clogged the system. It
Speaker 3: was like a male fatberg. And then the whole thing
Speaker 3: came to a stoff, like the Chicago Post Office, which
Speaker 3: was the largest in the country at the time, halted
Speaker 3: mail delivery for a full three weeks while they tried
Speaker 3: to make sense of this volume and and all these
Speaker 3: letters and parcels that needed to be sorted. I mean,
Speaker 3: the whole thing led Congress back to the move to automation,
Speaker 3: and at the center of it all, it was this
Speaker 3: old zip code idea which was finally taken off the
Speaker 3: shelf and put into action. And with the new machinery
Speaker 3: and the advent of zip codes, postal workers were able
Speaker 3: to sort up to thirty thousand letters an hour, which
Speaker 3: was nearly ten times as many as a single worker
Speaker 3: could sort by hand in the same amount of time.
Speaker 1: Which I find almost as baffling that a single worker
Speaker 1: was previously able to sort three thousand of these. I
Speaker 1: know that's unbelievable, but obviously this was a huge, huge improvement.
Speaker 1: But I do think we should take a second to
Speaker 1: explain the role zip codes played in that process, because
Speaker 1: you know, as often as we're exposed to ZIP codes,
Speaker 1: I feel like most of us don't really know that
Speaker 1: much about them, or that they're actually an acronym. ZIP
Speaker 1: stands for Zoning Improvement Plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the name really does say it all.
Speaker 3: So the numbers were part of the plan to improve
Speaker 3: the way that mail was sorted by address, and zip
Speaker 3: code specified which region or zone of the country to
Speaker 3: which a piece of mail should be sent. And instead
Speaker 3: of hand sorting letters by city address, which obviously took
Speaker 3: a good deal of time in some cases and required,
Speaker 3: you know, knowledge of geography, machines were able to electronically
Speaker 3: scan the short string of numbers and sort the mail
Speaker 3: using that coded information.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's another thing that I think most of
Speaker 1: us don't really understand is what exactly those five numbers mean.
Speaker 1: So I'll just explain that. So, the first digit represents
Speaker 1: the region where the address is located. So for the
Speaker 1: purposes of zip codes, the country split into ten zones.
Speaker 1: You start on the East coast, and then you increase
Speaker 1: that number as you move across to the west coast.
Speaker 1: So you know, Maine and New York have zip codes
Speaker 1: that start with zero and one. Maryland's a two, and
Speaker 1: then you go all the way across the country. You
Speaker 1: get to California and Washington and they begin with the
Speaker 1: number nine.
Speaker 3: That's pretty awesome, And I'm guessing the other four digits
Speaker 3: specify the location of an address even further.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they get even more specific, so that the second
Speaker 1: two digits correspond to a smaller area of the country
Speaker 1: and the central postal facility that services that region, and
Speaker 1: then the final two digits signify the actual local post
Speaker 1: office that delivers to that given address.
Speaker 3: But to me, the best part of it was that
Speaker 3: the USPS had this advertising campaign they launched in the
Speaker 3: sixties to raise awareness of the new system.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. So there was this little jingle used
Speaker 1: to promote it or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's underselling it a bit. So it was
Speaker 3: actually this fifteen minute musical PSA performed by none other
Speaker 3: than The Swing in six.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I loved it. It was fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: My god, I know.
Speaker 3: And there's no way to do this thing justice by
Speaker 3: talking about it. You really need to YouTube it. But
Speaker 3: the short of it is that the Postal Service financed
Speaker 3: this incredibly campy video as a means of like selling
Speaker 3: the public on the importance of ZIP codes and how
Speaker 3: it was going to make everything speedier and more efficient.
Speaker 3: And they also created this new cartoon mascot named mister
Speaker 3: Zip and that really helped drive home the point as well.
Speaker 1: I remember mister Zip, that creepy little mailman stick figure.
Speaker 1: And they kind of went all out with this campaign.
Speaker 1: I mean, they really had no faith in the American
Speaker 1: public to write these five extra digits?
Speaker 2: Did they apparently not?
Speaker 3: But mister Zip and the Swinging six like they really
Speaker 3: caught on, and mister Zip became something of a pop
Speaker 3: culture icon in his own right. He appeared on magazines
Speaker 3: and mail trucks and television and radio ads, and even
Speaker 3: on things like lunchboxes. But of course, the surest sign
Speaker 3: of mister zips success was that by nineteen seventy, which
Speaker 3: was really just seven years after the start of the campaign,
Speaker 3: zip code use had risen to let me find these
Speaker 3: numbers eighty six percent nationwide, and by seventy nine it
Speaker 3: had climbed to ninety seven percent.
Speaker 1: Wow, I know, I mean, those are pretty solid results,
Speaker 1: and it does make you feel for mister Zip a
Speaker 1: little bit. I mean, he seems that played a pretty
Speaker 1: big role in all of this kind of the I
Speaker 1: don't know, like the smoky Bear of the postal service,
Speaker 1: but you don't find him anywhere these days.
Speaker 3: I know he's hanging out with Clippy for Microsoft, right,
Speaker 3: I feel like you're appreciing the acchoir here. You know
Speaker 3: what's weird, though, is that the USPS actually did try
Speaker 3: out one other mascot before mister Zip and it's kind.
Speaker 2: Of a weird story. But before we get into it,
Speaker 2: let's break for a quiz.
Speaker 1: Okay, Mango. So when we put out a call for
Speaker 1: listeners to let us know if they wanted to come
Speaker 1: on and play a quiz, one of them wrote in
Speaker 1: and is actually a male carrier, which is perfect for
Speaker 1: today's episode.
Speaker 2: I know, it's so awesome.
Speaker 1: All right, So, Sarah Hofferbert, welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 4: Hi, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Sarah.
Speaker 1: Where are you delivering mail today?
Speaker 4: I'm in Rochester, New York today?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I assume that's where you deliver mail
Speaker 1: every day around.
Speaker 4: The city, different places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. And how long have you been in his
Speaker 1: mail carrier? The correct term? What is the official title?
Speaker 1: My job title is that I'm a letter carrier, but
Speaker 1: mail carriers just fine, okay. And how long have you
Speaker 1: been doing this?
Speaker 4: About four years?
Speaker 1: Okay? All right, Well, thank you for writing in. We're
Speaker 1: glad you're a regular listener of Part Time Genius, and
Speaker 1: so we are going to put you to the test. Mango.
Speaker 1: What is our quiz called today?
Speaker 3: It's called going postal and it's a true false quiz.
Speaker 3: If you know everything about the post office's history.
Speaker 2: It should be pretty easy.
Speaker 1: All right. Do you know every single thing about the
Speaker 1: day's history of the post office.
Speaker 4: There's nothing I don't know, all right?
Speaker 2: Right that confidence.
Speaker 1: Here we go. We're going to read your statement. All
Speaker 1: you need to do is tell us whether it's true
Speaker 1: or false. Are you ready to go? Yes? Okay? Question
Speaker 1: number one, the first post office in colonial America was
Speaker 1: in a bar. That is true, exactly, you're right.
Speaker 3: So it was set up in sixteen thirty nine and
Speaker 3: operated out of the Boston home and tavern of Richard Fairbanks.
Speaker 3: Where you like to serve glasses of strong water.
Speaker 1: Oh, excellent, all right, she is one for one, okay, Sarah.
Speaker 1: Question number two. In Luxembourg, the post office trained Saint
Speaker 1: Bernard's to carry letters to homes, but the system only
Speaker 1: lasted a month thanks to the city's squirrel population.
Speaker 4: That sounds like something I would want to be true,
Speaker 4: but I see like that's fault.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right. I mean it's not a totally crazy idea,
Speaker 3: because Belgium did try delivering mail by cats for a
Speaker 3: little bit, but that was a total disaster.
Speaker 1: Are they really wow? Okay, okay, so far Sarah you're delivering.
Speaker 1: This is great. Question number three In Victorian London mail
Speaker 1: was delivered twelve times a day.
Speaker 4: That is also true.
Speaker 2: She's amazing at this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mail was treated more like instant messenger back then,
Speaker 3: when people actually like sent immediate responses back and they
Speaker 3: get upset if you didn't respond.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, two left, She's three for three so far.
Speaker 1: Question number four, when Harry Winston donated the Hope Diamond
Speaker 1: to the Smithsonian in nineteen fifty eight, was actually sent
Speaker 1: via US mail? True or false?
Speaker 4: I want to say that's true.
Speaker 2: It is true.
Speaker 3: So they sent it by first class mail for just
Speaker 3: two dollars and forty four cents and the Smithsonian still
Speaker 3: has the packaging.
Speaker 1: Wow. And how much was that worth? Three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars A many A little bit of insurance
Speaker 1: on that. That is incredible. All right, we are four
Speaker 1: for four. Coming up with the last question. Let's see
Speaker 1: if Sarah can score perfect. Let's see all right. Question
Speaker 1: number five. Ben Franklin was so obsessed with yams as
Speaker 1: a tasty snack that in the winter he insisted that
Speaker 1: every mail carrier receive a warm, grilled yam before servicing
Speaker 1: their route. True or false?
Speaker 4: That would be delicious in the winter. But I want
Speaker 4: to say that's false.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. You went incredible five for five.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wanted that one to be true so much. But Mango,
Speaker 1: But all right, so Sarah went an incredible five for five.
Speaker 1: What is she won today?
Speaker 3: So Sarah actually gets an official part time genius certificate
Speaker 3: of Genius, which we're just and she's.
Speaker 2: Gonna be the first recipient.
Speaker 1: All right, we will send that to you. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: will send that to you and the mail safe travels
Speaker 1: on your route today. And thanks again for joining us,
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. All Right, Mango, So you
Speaker 1: were talking about this other postal mascot before the break,
Speaker 1: So what's weird about it?
Speaker 3: Well, for starters, the mascot was a dog, which is
Speaker 3: a surprising choice for postal workers given the history between
Speaker 3: the two.
Speaker 1: All Right, well, I know you're usually the tangent person,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I want to go on one
Speaker 1: here as well, because I was actually kind of curious
Speaker 1: about the deal with dogs and postal workers. So I
Speaker 1: was looking into it a little bit, and actually this
Speaker 1: psychology of having their turf invaded and understanding why they
Speaker 1: always go after the postal workers. So the situation's made
Speaker 1: way worse by the fact that the male carriers keep
Speaker 1: coming day in and day out. And that's something I'd
Speaker 1: not really thought about before. So it reinforces the idea
Speaker 1: that the dog needs to defend its territory. And you know,
Speaker 1: because the carriers do eventually walk away from the home,
Speaker 1: the dog feels rewarded and is likely to repeat that
Speaker 1: same behavior next time. It's basically the definition of a
Speaker 1: vicious cycle. And major emphasis on the vicious part here
Speaker 1: because actually I was looking at the numbers. According to
Speaker 1: the USPS, more than six thousand of its mail carriers
Speaker 1: are attacked by dogs each.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's terrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm actually glad I get to talk about
Speaker 3: this mascot now. It's a nice throwback to these days
Speaker 3: when dogs and postal workers were actually friends. But at
Speaker 3: least that was the case with this particular dog named Onnie.
Speaker 1: That was the actual dog. Is that this is a
Speaker 1: real dog, Onnie? Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Onnie was a stray mutt who started joining a
Speaker 3: mail clerk on his morning walk. This was in Albany,
Speaker 3: New York, way back in eighteen eighty eight, and this
Speaker 3: morning routine gradually led to Onie hanging out at the
Speaker 3: office during the day, and he became friends with other
Speaker 3: postal clerks, and he also developed this strange affinity for
Speaker 3: the texture of mail bags, both the texture and the smell.
Speaker 3: And once his clerk pal moved away, the other mail
Speaker 3: clerks took him in and from there Oni started following
Speaker 3: his beloved mail bags onto mail wagons and trains, and
Speaker 3: he rode with the bags and the post office train cars,
Speaker 3: traveling all over the country and later all over the world.
Speaker 1: And all these railroad workers were cool with some random
Speaker 1: dog just traveling around with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Friendly, They loved Onie.
Speaker 3: So train wrecks were really common at the time, but
Speaker 3: no train ever crashed with Ony on board. And he
Speaker 3: kind of became this good luck charm for the railway
Speaker 3: mail clerks, and this unofficial mascot whose many travels were
Speaker 3: marked by people placing metals and tags on his collar.
Speaker 1: Ah, that's really sweet. But so did he get to
Speaker 1: keep one of the mail bags when he retired.
Speaker 3: No, so this story actually has kind of a sad ending,
Speaker 3: so Onie never made it to retirement. In June, one
Speaker 3: boarded a mail train for Toledo, Ohio.
Speaker 1: And while he was.
Speaker 3: Making his rounds and you know, greeting all these people
Speaker 3: in Toledo, one postal clerk showed him to a newspaper reporter.
Speaker 1: And the full.
Speaker 3: Details have never been investigated, but supposedly one became ill
Speaker 3: tempered and he was shot on June eleventh, eighteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: Oh God, Mango, that really took a turn there.
Speaker 3: I know. But like I said, we don't really know
Speaker 3: the full details, but we do know that the mail
Speaker 3: clerks were totally devastated. They took up this collection and
Speaker 3: used the money to have Ony preserved, and today visitors
Speaker 3: to the National Postal Museum in Washington, d C. Can
Speaker 3: actually see Ony on display, still wearing his harness and
Speaker 3: some of his favorite tags.
Speaker 1: That's pretty neat. Well, I guess that's about as happy
Speaker 1: of an ending as you can get with a story
Speaker 1: like that. But honestly, I'm glad to hear they put
Speaker 1: his remains in the museum instead of just stuffing him
Speaker 1: in one of those nomatic tubes we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Onnie never traveled by two, but there
Speaker 3: are plenty of animals who make trips by mail, even today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that, Like, apparently, live scorpions are totally
Speaker 1: fine to mail, and you know, as long as they're
Speaker 1: to be used for medical or anti venom research. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you prove that, but that's those are
Speaker 1: the reasons you can mail them, and they're clearly marked
Speaker 1: as live scorpions. I also saw that baby alligators are
Speaker 1: mailable too, as long as they're under twenty inches.
Speaker 2: This all feels totally crazy to me.
Speaker 3: But by the way, my favorite animal by mail story
Speaker 3: is the one about this guy in Ohio who mailed
Speaker 3: his pet chameleon to Florida so they could have a
Speaker 3: warmer place to live. He was worried the little guy
Speaker 3: wouldn't make it through the cold winter in Ohio, so
Speaker 3: he slipped the lizard into this pre stamped envelope and
Speaker 3: mailed it off to the Sunshine State.
Speaker 1: So did this Did the chameleon make it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: The sender hood requested that he'd be informed when his
Speaker 3: pet arrived, and sure enough, Orlando's postmaster obliged. He responded,
Speaker 3: let me find this, Dear David. I received your chameleon
Speaker 3: yesterday and he was immediately released on the post office grounds.
Speaker 3: Best wishes for a merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: That's an animal. And the mail story says, you know,
Speaker 1: still as weird as mailing around chameleons and alligators and scorpions,
Speaker 1: as it's nothing compared to mailing actual people, which I
Speaker 1: know we both saw in our research has actually happened.
Speaker 2: I know I was hoping this would come off.
Speaker 3: So there's such a long successful history of people sending
Speaker 3: themselves and each other through the mail, and as far
Speaker 3: as we know, the first person to travel by mail
Speaker 3: was baby James Beagle. He was this eight month old
Speaker 3: boy whose parents mailed him to his grandmother a few
Speaker 3: miles away.
Speaker 1: God eight months old.
Speaker 2: I know, a baby Graham.
Speaker 3: And this was just a few weeks after the Postal
Speaker 3: Service began transporting larger parcels rather than just letters or magazines,
Speaker 3: so it really didn't take long for someone to try
Speaker 3: mailing a human. Apparently the main appeal was that postage
Speaker 3: was way cheaper than a train ticket. Baby James's travel
Speaker 3: apparently only costs his parents fifteen cents in stints, though
Speaker 3: to be fair, they did spring for fifty dollars in insurance.
Speaker 1: So nice the parents of the year right there. But
Speaker 1: you're right though, mailing yourself is definitely an inexpensive way
Speaker 1: to travel. I was reading about this professional javelin thrower
Speaker 1: from Australia. His name was Red Spears, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four he wanted to stranded in England after failing
Speaker 1: to make the cut for the English Olympic team. He
Speaker 1: was all set to return home and then his wallet
Speaker 1: was stolen and so he was left flat broken without
Speaker 1: any way back to Australia. His solution, well, I'll seal
Speaker 1: himself in a small crate and actually mail himself cash
Speaker 1: on delivery. So how long was he in there? I
Speaker 1: think it was like a three day trip in all,
Speaker 1: and this includes this particularly toasty layover in Mumbai where
Speaker 1: his limited provisions and makeshift bathroom slash water bottle. I
Speaker 1: mean these things were stretched to their limits on this
Speaker 1: three day trip. And in the end though, the plan
Speaker 1: worked and he made it safely back to Australia. Of course,
Speaker 1: reporters quickly caught wind of this embarrassing ordeal, but Spears
Speaker 1: even managed to turn that to his advantage. The airline
Speaker 1: itself took pity on him forgave his debt. He even
Speaker 1: went on to co author a book about the experience.
Speaker 1: It was titled of course, out of the Box.
Speaker 2: That's pretty great.
Speaker 3: My favorite story of all time of someone shifting himself
Speaker 3: in a box has to be Henry Box Brown on
Speaker 3: the slave who mailed himself to freedom.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, you should tell this story, definitely.
Speaker 3: So in eighteen forty nine, Brown escaped his master's property
Speaker 3: in Virginia and with the help of some abolitionists, he
Speaker 3: mailed himself across state lines to the free state of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: It cost him eighty six dollars, which is a little
Speaker 3: more than twenty five hundred dollars today, and the trip
Speaker 3: lasted a miserable twenty seven hours, but it actually went
Speaker 3: off without a hitch. The next day, Brown was successfully
Speaker 3: delivered to freedom, and he went on to become a
Speaker 3: well known entertainer and abolitionist speaker in his later life.
Speaker 3: And that was all.
Speaker 2: Thanks to the US mail system.
Speaker 1: Man, Well, if that's not a ringing endorsement for the USPS,
Speaker 1: I'm honestly not sure what is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but what do you say? We now honor one
Speaker 3: of our own sacred institutions with a good old.
Speaker 2: Fashioned fact off.
Speaker 3: I'll start with the story about how a stamp was
Speaker 3: used to do somere is trash talking and almost started
Speaker 3: a war. In the nineteen thirties, Nicaragua's postal service put
Speaker 3: out a stamp that featured a map of Nicaragua. The
Speaker 3: stamp also showed Honduras north of Nicaragua's border, but instead
Speaker 3: of just letting it be, the stamp labeled the territory
Speaker 3: quote territory in dispute. And this was despite the fact
Speaker 3: that the territory issues had been settled thirty years earlier.
Speaker 3: When the stamps first started arriving with mail in Honduras,
Speaker 3: people started rioting and a mob showed up at the
Speaker 3: Nicaragua embassy, and after both countries sent troops to the border,
Speaker 3: the US and Mexico actually had to interview in just
Speaker 3: to prevent the war.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, all right, this is a pretty different one.
Speaker 1: So ever, wonder where the mail goes when it's the
Speaker 1: term that it cannot be delivered and the postal service
Speaker 1: doesn't know where to return it to. It's actually not
Speaker 1: far off from where we're sitting right now. This is
Speaker 1: to the mail recovery center here in Atlanta. So sadly
Speaker 1: it took on this name in nineteen ninety four when
Speaker 1: its name was changed from what had been the Dead
Speaker 1: Letter Office, which I just love so much more. But
Speaker 1: the MRC than auctions off these items of value, not individually.
Speaker 1: They're actually sold as these big groups of things. So
Speaker 1: there have even been entire tractor trailers of books sold
Speaker 1: as an example. That's kind of awesome.
Speaker 3: So I was looking at some stats on junk mail.
Speaker 3: The amount of junk mail received by all American households
Speaker 3: in the US each year is the equivalent of about
Speaker 3: one hundred million trees, and junk mail manufacturing creates the
Speaker 3: equivalent of three point seven million cars in greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, All right, So hikers in Nevada and Utah
Speaker 1: and other areas of these vast landscapes have been puzzled
Speaker 1: by these huge concrete arrows on the ground. But if
Speaker 1: you were to fly over these arrows, you'd actually see
Speaker 1: that they're part of this cross country path of arrows.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen twenties, Congress approved the creation of
Speaker 1: a nearly three thousand mile line of these seventy foot
Speaker 1: long yellow concrete arrows, stretching from New York to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: They're about ten miles apart, and the purpose was to
Speaker 1: give pilots of the time away to navigate safely across
Speaker 1: the various thirteen stops from KOs the.
Speaker 2: Coast, which is actually awesome.
Speaker 3: So, until the nineteen sixties, most college students actually mailed
Speaker 3: their dirty clothes home to mom to wash, and this
Speaker 3: was until.
Speaker 2: Washing machines became more common.
Speaker 3: It was also expected that mom would send your clean
Speaker 3: underwear back with a fresh batch of cookies.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of hoping my mom's not listening to this
Speaker 1: because because I still send my clothes home to mom,
Speaker 1: I don't want her to know that most people don't
Speaker 1: do this anymore. But I gotta admit it. That's a
Speaker 1: great fact, So I'm going to have to give you
Speaker 1: this fact off. Congratulations. Now, if we missed any of
Speaker 1: your favorite postal service facts, you can email us as
Speaker 1: always part Time Genius at HowStuffWorks dot com or call
Speaker 1: our twenty four to seven fact hotline one eight four
Speaker 1: four pt Genius. It is still twenty four to seven,
Speaker 1: right mango, mm hmm, okay, that's great. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius is a production of How Stuff works and
Speaker 1: wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
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Speaker 2: Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
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Speaker 1: mixy sound thing. Jerry Roland does the exec producer thing.
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Speaker 2: Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
Speaker 1: And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe
Speaker 1: you could leave a good review for us.
Speaker 2: Do we forget Jason?
Speaker 1: Jason who