Secrets of the Post Office! with Nancy Pope

Guess what mango was? That will all right? So I was reading this story from a couple years ago, and it was about this three year old boy whose dog Moe had passed away. So to help the boy cope with Moe's passing, the boy's mom would get him to write these letters to Mo and then they address them to Moe Westbrook, Doggie Heaven Cloud one. And each time they put the letter in the mailbox, she'd sneak back

That's pretty screwt.

Yeah. And here's the thing. So anywhere I've lived, the mail carrier has been one of the nicest people in the neighborhood. I mean, we chat with ours any time we see him. And they're not only so many more good stories about heartwarming moments like this, but there are just so many fascinating stories in the history of the US Postal Service. That's what we're diving into today. Hey,

Definitely and to make sure we don't miss any of the good stuff, we'll be talking to the keeper of postal history or itself, Nancy Pope. Nancy Pope's the top historian at the National Postal Museum, so we'll talk to her about what it takes to be a postal historian and find out what she considers to be the most interesting pieces of postal office history.

All right, So I want to start with one of the things that really stood out to me while doing our research, and that's the immense scope of the Postal Services operations. I mean, we're talking about the largest retail network in the nation. So there were thirty one thousand active US post offices and just to put that in perspective, that's more than all the domestic McDonald's, Starbucks, and Walmart's combined.

Yeah, and the scope of what all that manpower and tech can achieve is equally impressive. So the USPS is actually responsible for the delivery of nearly half the mail volume in the entire world.

That's forty seven percent.

But I think the most amazing thing about the whole crazy operation is that for almost fifty years now, it's cost taxpayers virtually nothing. There aren't a whole lot of government departments or agencies you can say that about.

It is impressive. But I noticed you said costs virtually nothing for taxpayers, And I always wondered whether like things like the postage sales and products and all their special services like express mail, you know, covered those costs. So are you saying it actually does receive some government funding though?

Well, you're definitely right that stamp sales and stuff like that pays for the agency's operating costs, but they do receive less than one percent of their budget from the government. According to PolitiFact, Congress gives the Postal Service one hundred million dollars a year to compensate the agency for providing free mailing privileges to blind people and overseas voters.

Okay, well, that that's pretty interesting. It's actually a pretty good return on what I would say, overall is a small investment from each taxpayer.

And honestly, that's always been the case with mail delivery in America, even before the US became a country.

Before but became a country. So how is that?

Well, during the Second Continental Congress in seventeen seventy five, this is a year before the colonies would declare their independence from England, the delegates established this postal system and appointed Ben Franklin as the first Postmaster General. And the great thing about that is that Franklin's appointment was this

It's impressive. It's a good thing we rehired in from our side, because you know, Franklin really helped establish the whole basis of the postal system as we know it today. He surveyed thousands of miles of post roads and made adjustments so that routes would be more efficient. He also instituted the idea of having postal riders travel day and night, they'd use lannerns to light the way for their horses.

That's crazy.

So I had no idea that the postal riders were round the clock. And I guess that mentality is the same one that gives it like the post office creed about neither snow nor rain.

Yeah, there's the whole thing that people always talk about that, you know that neither snow nor rain or heat nor gloom, YadA, YadA, YadA. But actually it's pretty interesting. There's no such thing as a postman's creed. I was looking at this, and so people always associate that phrase with the postal Service because it's engraved on the outside of a famous post office in New York, But there's really no official motto for the USPS. In fact, the phrase isn't even original to

Was, and all that gloom.

Yeah, I mean, I guess that's a bit of a letdown, but it does feel strange that we expect our electric bills to be delivered during blizzards.

I say they've actually done a pretty decent job of meeting these, you know, admittedly high expectations. Because there's one other thing that amazed me while doing the research, and that's just how versatile an organization the USPS is. So it's grown right along with the country for hundreds of years, and it's had to evolve the fifth expanding needs of the public.

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Well.

One of the first major transitions took place back in eighteen ninety three when the USPS first started delivering mail by train, and so prior to that most deliveries had been made on horseback or by horse drawn wagon. And when the mail volume increased, that's when things changed. But the burgeoning railroad with its hubs in major cities that all allowed the mail to be delivered up and down the East Coast, and the tech change is only increased

Believe, yeah, yeah, And you know you can still see that kind of versatility today. According to the Postal Service, they use every transportation method available to them while making their rounds. I was looking at a list of the different ways they deliver mail that include planes, trains, trucks, cars, boats, ferries, helicopters, subways, float planes, hovercraft, mules, bicycles, and of course feet.

I feel like I should be stunned by hovercrafts, but it's really mules that's confusing to me.

Yeah, it's still on the list. There's actually one mail by mule route left in the US, and it's this eight mile trail that leads down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon where the Havasupai tribe. They've lived there for over eight hundred years, and so six days a week the mule train carries about four thousand pounds of mail, food supplies, and even furniture down these steep walls of the canyon. I was trying to look to see how

That's so crazy, And it's amazing that the mail really does go everywhere. But you know, there's a one delivery method that I'm kind of bummed is missing from the current list.

Oh yeah, what's that?

Pneumatic tubes?

All right, So before mail trucks took to the streets the six major cities, I've got these rutten downs. I was at Philadelphia, Saint Louis, Boston, Brooklyn, New York, and Chicago. They all made use of underground networks of pressurized air tubes to deliver their mail, and at the system's peak in nineteen fifteen, the cities had a combined total of over fifty six miles of pneumatic tubes, all zigzagging beneath their surface.

Wow.

And while these tubes systems start popping up in the US during the eighteen nineties, it had actually been used in Europe for almost forty years by that point. Apparently they were first put to use in stock exchanges so that traders could communicate messages to buy or sell stocks at you know, a faster rate than telegraph.

And yeah, it makes sense as a way to get messages across and the noumatic tubes or what the banks use, and those are really fast. But you know, we're talking about one hundred and twenty pl plus years ago. So were they actually fast in the eighteen nineties. Yeah.

The weird thing is they were pretty fast. Like the mail tubes in the US could move a canister holding up to six hundred letters and an average speed of thirty.

Five miles per hour. Oh wow.

Yeah, So as one example, and there are stories of postal workers who worked the tubes that they were known as rocketeers. But these rocketeers in downtown New York City actually ordered sandwiches from this deli up in the Bronx, and apparently they'd receive their orders via a pneumatic tube within twenty minutes.

I want to order a sandwich by nomadic. I knew that that was pretty awesome, although I'm guessing ordering lunch wasn't officially sanctioned for the use of the tubes. But so, did you come across any other weird stuff that was sent by these tubes, definitely so.

According to an article had written by Robert Cohen for the USPS website, there was this bizarre opening ceremony where the first tubes were installed at the General Post Office in New York City, and the higher ups there basically wanted to show the employees what their new toy could do. So the very first mail canister to travel the tubes contained a Bible, a flag, and a copy of the Constitution, which is super patriotic, and the second contained this imitation

Even more patriotic, and the third carrier is the weirdest.

It had a black cat in it.

A black cat. Oh wow, that's pretty weird. And as much as I dislike cats, I really hate the idea of somebody stuffing a cat into a tube. Was the cat okay?

Yeah?

Well, well the cat was fine.

It was a little dazed according to witnesses, but otherwise all right. And sadly though, this was just the first of many animals to be shot around New York City through a pressurized tube, so Kenneth Stewart. He's the author of a Pneumatic Male Tubes and Operation of Automatic Railroads. He says that plenty of other animals made the journey too, including dogs and mice and roosters, guinea pigs, monkeys, even some goldfish.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, and in one of those cases it actually involved sending a sick cat to the animal house.

So it was a good use.

But the rest we mostly just examples of postal workers showing off.

I'd said, it's not this perstal service's proudest moment, but I actually don't get it. So animal cruelty aside. I mean, it sounds like the tubes worked pretty well in these sprawling cities, so why don't we see New Yorkers and others still using them?

Yes, there are actually a few reasons. One was that the mail volumes kept increasing and it was simply too much for the tubes to handle, especially considering the systems pipes were only between two and eight inches wide.

Oh my god, that poor cat. I can't step thinking about that. Yeah.

But the main reason is that most of the tube systems were built and owned by private companies, and they merely rented to the post Office. So these rental costs just got too high in the long term. And according to Kate Ascher, who's the author of the works Anatomy

Yeah.

I mean, as sad as it is to see this go away, I guess it makes sense. And I can't deny the nomatic tubes and mule trains. They do add this pop of color to the Postal Service's history, though.

Yeah, totally.

And in fact, well, why don't we get a historian online and see what other weird stories are lurking in the USPS archives?

Sounds like a plan. So our guest today has been with the Smithsonian Institution for over three decades now, which Mango. I'm pretty sure that makes her super smart if I'm not a mistaken so. But more importantly for today's episode, she's been curating exhibits at the National Postal Museum since it opened in nineteen ninety three. She's now the head curator of the history department there. Nancy Pope, welcome the part time genius.

Thank you. It's good to be here.

So, Nancy, we've had so much fun digging into the history of the postal service, and we've talked about all the things, like, you know, delivery by mule and pneumatic tubes and all kinds of stuff. But do you have a favorite delivery method that's actually no longer being used.

I have a favorite method that was used once.

What's that?

It's missile mail. On June eighth, nineteen fifty nine, the US Navy fired a Regulus one missile off the USS Barbaro, which was floating out in the Atlantic, and they directed it to land at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Mayport, Florida. And instead of having a nuclear weapon on board, they had two blue and red metal containers that held three thousand letters.

Wow, So why were they doing this?

Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield was a man who really wanted to modernize his post office and he was doing anything and everything he could do to kind of try that.

Actually, one of the other exhibits I saw was the railway mail crane, which doesn't seem that exciting at first, but can you explain how that worked in terms of the trains passing through towns pretty quickly.

In the days of railway mail, most of the times the trains would actually stop and exchange the mail at a train station, but they couldn't stop at every single one, you know, most trains were not milk runs, and so

Wow, that's pretty It actually sounds like it'd be pretty dangerous at the same time. But that's that's very interesting. So I know, the main vehicle used by the postal service, this Grunman LLV or the Long Life Vehicle. I read somewhere recently that it gets an average fuel economy of

The LLV was selected after a test run. What happened was the post office department was tired of just buying their vehicles off the rack. They said, we have very special needs. We're going to list our needs and then we're going to say build a vehicle to those needs. They were put over, you know, horrible ditches. They were put over cobblestones. They had to stop and start, stop and start stop, all the things that a male vehicle has to do that our regular cars don't. And the LV,

So let's talk stamps for a second. Are there any historical figures you feel are overdue for a recognition on a stamp?

I think Arthur Summerfield should be on a stamp if he hasn't been yet. And that was the postmaster general who did the missile mail, just because he came up with the whole concept of modernizing the post office department in the fifties because it had been stuck in the thirties with no money because of the depression in the forties, with no money because of World War Two. So by the fifties they were using thirty year old trucks that were barely being held together by you know, spit and glue.

Yeah, we'll start the petition.

Yeah, yeah, Well, for all of our listeners that are visiting the Smithsonian Museums anytime in the near future, we hope you'll check out the National Postal Museum. It is a fascinating place to visit. But Nancy, thanks so much for joining us on Part Time Genius.

That was my pleasure.

You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about

Yeah, and that was the year that the effects of the Internet really started to catch up to them. And ever since then, the net mail volume flowing through the system has decreased every single year, and it's a big problem for the agency, especially being a self funded agency, because any decrease in may as a decrease in revenue exactly.

And at the same time, the public still expects to receive mail every day of the week at any address in the country. This has led to the Postal Service having to increase its number of delivery points, which opposites operating costs even as profits steadily shrink.

You know, it's not all gloom and doom, though I was. I was reading this article on upworthy that proposed an interesting solution. You know, they were looking at their financial woes and trying to come up with things to do, and there's the idea for post offices to start offering

It seems like a win win and not that far fetched to concept. I mean, post offices already offer some banking services like selling money orders and cashing treasury checks.

Yeah, you know, really the main thing preventing this from happening, it would be the banks themselves. They have an awful lot of clout in government, and of course they don't like the idea of a public institution muscling into their territory. But who knows. I mean, if the situation continues to worsen for the USPS, those voices of opposition might cease to carry as much sway.

Yeah, and the good news is that history is on the postal services side, so it's faced some pretty dire challenges in the past, and it's always muddled through. I mean, if you need any evidence of the resilience of the USPS, you just have to look at zip codes.

That's a good point, and there's definitely an aspect of mail we take for granted. So actually, I think we spend a little time talking about.

Zip codes, sure, so we can give a little background on it for starters. Zip codes are a much more recent innovation than you'd guess. Although they were first developed as this time saving tool to help understaff post offices, and this was during World War Two, they weren't actually put into use until twenty years later, in nineteen sixty three, and this was a time before the postal Service was

Yeah, and post offices wanted new sorting machines so they could finally automate the process instead of continuing to wage this really unwinnable war that was hand sorting at the time. But Congress thought they were making a big deal out of nothing. I mean, after all, they'd handled mail the old fashioned way for over a century at this point, so as they saw it, you know, why fix what isn't broken.

Except it was broken.

I mean.

The proof finally came in October of nineteen sixty six, and that's the month when a combination of election mailings and holiday season advertisements they totally clogged the system. It was like a male fatberg. And then the whole thing came to a stoff, like the Chicago Post Office, which was the largest in the country at the time, halted mail delivery for a full three weeks while they tried to make sense of this volume and and all these

Which I find almost as baffling that a single worker was previously able to sort three thousand of these. I know that's unbelievable, but obviously this was a huge, huge improvement. But I do think we should take a second to explain the role zip codes played in that process, because you know, as often as we're exposed to ZIP codes, I feel like most of us don't really know that much about them, or that they're actually an acronym. ZIP stands for Zoning Improvement Plan.

Yeah, and the name really does say it all.

So the numbers were part of the plan to improve the way that mail was sorted by address, and zip code specified which region or zone of the country to which a piece of mail should be sent. And instead of hand sorting letters by city address, which obviously took a good deal of time in some cases and required, you know, knowledge of geography, machines were able to electronically scan the short string of numbers and sort the mail using that coded information.

Yeah, and that's another thing that I think most of us don't really understand is what exactly those five numbers mean. So I'll just explain that. So, the first digit represents the region where the address is located. So for the purposes of zip codes, the country split into ten zones. You start on the East coast, and then you increase that number as you move across to the west coast. So you know, Maine and New York have zip codes that start with zero and one. Maryland's a two, and

That's pretty awesome, And I'm guessing the other four digits specify the location of an address even further.

Yeah, they get even more specific, so that the second two digits correspond to a smaller area of the country and the central postal facility that services that region, and then the final two digits signify the actual local post office that delivers to that given address.

But to me, the best part of it was that the USPS had this advertising campaign they launched in the sixties to raise awareness of the new system.

Oh that's right. So there was this little jingle used to promote it or something like that.

Yeah, and that's underselling it a bit. So it was actually this fifteen minute musical PSA performed by none other than The Swing in six.

Oh my gosh, I loved it. It was fifteen minutes.

My god, I know.

And there's no way to do this thing justice by talking about it. You really need to YouTube it. But the short of it is that the Postal Service financed this incredibly campy video as a means of like selling the public on the importance of ZIP codes and how it was going to make everything speedier and more efficient. And they also created this new cartoon mascot named mister Zip and that really helped drive home the point as well.

I remember mister Zip, that creepy little mailman stick figure. And they kind of went all out with this campaign. I mean, they really had no faith in the American public to write these five extra digits?

Did they apparently not?

But mister Zip and the Swinging six like they really caught on, and mister Zip became something of a pop culture icon in his own right. He appeared on magazines and mail trucks and television and radio ads, and even

Wow, I know, I mean, those are pretty solid results, and it does make you feel for mister Zip a little bit. I mean, he seems that played a pretty big role in all of this kind of the I don't know, like the smoky Bear of the postal service, but you don't find him anywhere these days.

I know he's hanging out with Clippy for Microsoft, right, I feel like you're appreciing the acchoir here. You know what's weird, though, is that the USPS actually did try out one other mascot before mister Zip and it's kind.

Of a weird story. But before we get into it, let's break for a quiz.

Okay, Mango. So when we put out a call for listeners to let us know if they wanted to come on and play a quiz, one of them wrote in and is actually a male carrier, which is perfect for today's episode.

I know, it's so awesome.

All right, So, Sarah Hofferbert, welcome to Part Time Genius.

Hi, thank you so much.

Sarah.

Where are you delivering mail today?

I'm in Rochester, New York today?

Okay, all right, I assume that's where you deliver mail every day around.

The city, different places.

Yeah, okay. And how long have you been in his mail carrier? The correct term? What is the official title? My job title is that I'm a letter carrier, but mail carriers just fine, okay. And how long have you been doing this?

About four years?

Okay? All right, Well, thank you for writing in. We're glad you're a regular listener of Part Time Genius, and so we are going to put you to the test. Mango. What is our quiz called today?

It's called going postal and it's a true false quiz. If you know everything about the post office's history.

It should be pretty easy.

All right. Do you know every single thing about the day's history of the post office.

There's nothing I don't know, all right?

Right that confidence.

Here we go. We're going to read your statement. All you need to do is tell us whether it's true or false. Are you ready to go? Yes? Okay? Question number one, the first post office in colonial America was in a bar. That is true, exactly, you're right.

So it was set up in sixteen thirty nine and operated out of the Boston home and tavern of Richard Fairbanks. Where you like to serve glasses of strong water.

Oh, excellent, all right, she is one for one, okay, Sarah. Question number two. In Luxembourg, the post office trained Saint Bernard's to carry letters to homes, but the system only lasted a month thanks to the city's squirrel population.

That sounds like something I would want to be true, but I see like that's fault.

Yeah, you're right. I mean it's not a totally crazy idea, because Belgium did try delivering mail by cats for a little bit, but that was a total disaster.

Are they really wow? Okay, okay, so far Sarah you're delivering. This is great. Question number three In Victorian London mail was delivered twelve times a day.

That is also true.

She's amazing at this.

Yeah, mail was treated more like instant messenger back then, when people actually like sent immediate responses back and they get upset if you didn't respond.

Okay, all right, two left, She's three for three so far. Question number four, when Harry Winston donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian in nineteen fifty eight, was actually sent via US mail? True or false?

I want to say that's true.

It is true.

So they sent it by first class mail for just two dollars and forty four cents and the Smithsonian still has the packaging.

Wow. And how much was that worth? Three hundred and fifty million dollars A many A little bit of insurance on that. That is incredible. All right, we are four for four. Coming up with the last question. Let's see if Sarah can score perfect. Let's see all right. Question number five. Ben Franklin was so obsessed with yams as a tasty snack that in the winter he insisted that every mail carrier receive a warm, grilled yam before servicing their route. True or false?

That would be delicious in the winter. But I want to say that's false.

That's amazing. You went incredible five for five.

Yeah.

I wanted that one to be true so much. But Mango, But all right, so Sarah went an incredible five for five. What is she won today?

So Sarah actually gets an official part time genius certificate of Genius, which we're just and she's.

Gonna be the first recipient.

All right, we will send that to you. Yeah, we will send that to you and the mail safe travels on your route today. And thanks again for joining us, Thank you for having me. All Right, Mango, So you were talking about this other postal mascot before the break, So what's weird about it?

Well, for starters, the mascot was a dog, which is a surprising choice for postal workers given the history between the two.

All Right, well, I know you're usually the tangent person, but I feel like I want to go on one here as well, because I was actually kind of curious about the deal with dogs and postal workers. So I was looking into it a little bit, and actually this psychology of having their turf invaded and understanding why they always go after the postal workers. So the situation's made way worse by the fact that the male carriers keep coming day in and day out. And that's something I'd

Oh man, that's terrible.

Yeah, and I'm actually glad I get to talk about this mascot now. It's a nice throwback to these days when dogs and postal workers were actually friends. But at least that was the case with this particular dog named Onnie.

That was the actual dog. Is that this is a real dog, Onnie? Mm hmm.

Yeah.

So Onnie was a stray mutt who started joining a mail clerk on his morning walk. This was in Albany, New York, way back in eighteen eighty eight, and this morning routine gradually led to Onie hanging out at the office during the day, and he became friends with other postal clerks, and he also developed this strange affinity for the texture of mail bags, both the texture and the smell.

And all these railroad workers were cool with some random dog just traveling around with them.

Yeah. Friendly, They loved Onie.

So train wrecks were really common at the time, but no train ever crashed with Ony on board. And he kind of became this good luck charm for the railway mail clerks, and this unofficial mascot whose many travels were marked by people placing metals and tags on his collar.

Ah, that's really sweet. But so did he get to keep one of the mail bags when he retired.

No, so this story actually has kind of a sad ending, so Onie never made it to retirement. In June, one boarded a mail train for Toledo, Ohio.

And while he was.

Making his rounds and you know, greeting all these people in Toledo, one postal clerk showed him to a newspaper reporter.

And the full.

Details have never been investigated, but supposedly one became ill tempered and he was shot on June eleventh, eighteen ninety seven.

Oh God, Mango, that really took a turn there.

I know. But like I said, we don't really know the full details, but we do know that the mail clerks were totally devastated. They took up this collection and used the money to have Ony preserved, and today visitors to the National Postal Museum in Washington, d C. Can actually see Ony on display, still wearing his harness and some of his favorite tags.

That's pretty neat. Well, I guess that's about as happy of an ending as you can get with a story like that. But honestly, I'm glad to hear they put his remains in the museum instead of just stuffing him in one of those nomatic tubes we were talking about earlier.

Yeah, I mean, Onnie never traveled by two, but there are plenty of animals who make trips by mail, even today.

Yeah, I saw that, Like, apparently, live scorpions are totally fine to mail, and you know, as long as they're to be used for medical or anti venom research. I don't know how you prove that, but that's those are the reasons you can mail them, and they're clearly marked as live scorpions. I also saw that baby alligators are mailable too, as long as they're under twenty inches.

This all feels totally crazy to me.

But by the way, my favorite animal by mail story is the one about this guy in Ohio who mailed his pet chameleon to Florida so they could have a warmer place to live. He was worried the little guy wouldn't make it through the cold winter in Ohio, so he slipped the lizard into this pre stamped envelope and mailed it off to the Sunshine State.

So did this Did the chameleon make it? Yeah?

The sender hood requested that he'd be informed when his pet arrived, and sure enough, Orlando's postmaster obliged. He responded, let me find this, Dear David. I received your chameleon yesterday and he was immediately released on the post office grounds. Best wishes for a merry Christmas.

That's an animal. And the mail story says, you know, still as weird as mailing around chameleons and alligators and scorpions, as it's nothing compared to mailing actual people, which I know we both saw in our research has actually happened.

I know I was hoping this would come off.

So there's such a long successful history of people sending themselves and each other through the mail, and as far as we know, the first person to travel by mail was baby James Beagle. He was this eight month old boy whose parents mailed him to his grandmother a few miles away.

God eight months old.

I know, a baby Graham.

And this was just a few weeks after the Postal Service began transporting larger parcels rather than just letters or magazines, so it really didn't take long for someone to try mailing a human. Apparently the main appeal was that postage was way cheaper than a train ticket. Baby James's travel apparently only costs his parents fifteen cents in stints, though to be fair, they did spring for fifty dollars in insurance.

So nice the parents of the year right there. But you're right though, mailing yourself is definitely an inexpensive way to travel. I was reading about this professional javelin thrower from Australia. His name was Red Spears, and in nineteen sixty four he wanted to stranded in England after failing to make the cut for the English Olympic team. He was all set to return home and then his wallet was stolen and so he was left flat broken without

That's pretty great.

My favorite story of all time of someone shifting himself in a box has to be Henry Box Brown on the slave who mailed himself to freedom.

Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, you should tell this story, definitely.

So in eighteen forty nine, Brown escaped his master's property in Virginia and with the help of some abolitionists, he mailed himself across state lines to the free state of Pennsylvania. It cost him eighty six dollars, which is a little more than twenty five hundred dollars today, and the trip lasted a miserable twenty seven hours, but it actually went

Thanks to the US mail system.

Man, Well, if that's not a ringing endorsement for the USPS, I'm honestly not sure what is.

Yeah, but what do you say? We now honor one of our own sacred institutions with a good old.

Fashioned fact off.

I'll start with the story about how a stamp was used to do somere is trash talking and almost started a war. In the nineteen thirties, Nicaragua's postal service put out a stamp that featured a map of Nicaragua. The stamp also showed Honduras north of Nicaragua's border, but instead of just letting it be, the stamp labeled the territory quote territory in dispute. And this was despite the fact that the territory issues had been settled thirty years earlier.

Oh wow, all right, this is a pretty different one. So ever, wonder where the mail goes when it's the term that it cannot be delivered and the postal service doesn't know where to return it to. It's actually not far off from where we're sitting right now. This is to the mail recovery center here in Atlanta. So sadly it took on this name in nineteen ninety four when its name was changed from what had been the Dead

So I was looking at some stats on junk mail. The amount of junk mail received by all American households in the US each year is the equivalent of about one hundred million trees, and junk mail manufacturing creates the equivalent of three point seven million cars in greenhouse gas emissions.

Oh wow, All right, So hikers in Nevada and Utah and other areas of these vast landscapes have been puzzled by these huge concrete arrows on the ground. But if you were to fly over these arrows, you'd actually see that they're part of this cross country path of arrows. So in the nineteen twenties, Congress approved the creation of a nearly three thousand mile line of these seventy foot long yellow concrete arrows, stretching from New York to San Francisco.

Coast, which is actually awesome.

So, until the nineteen sixties, most college students actually mailed their dirty clothes home to mom to wash, and this was until.

Washing machines became more common.

It was also expected that mom would send your clean underwear back with a fresh batch of cookies.

I'm kind of hoping my mom's not listening to this because because I still send my clothes home to mom, I don't want her to know that most people don't do this anymore. But I gotta admit it. That's a great fact, So I'm going to have to give you this fact off. Congratulations. Now, if we missed any of your favorite postal service facts, you can email us as always part Time Genius at HowStuffWorks dot com or call our twenty four to seven fact hotline one eight four

Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.

Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Roland does the exec producer thing. Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve.

Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.

If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review for us.

Do we forget Jason?

Jason who