Today in 1963, the US Postal Service officially started using ZIP codes as a way to quickly sort huge amounts of mail and get it to where it needed to go. How did they get Americans to adopt ZIP codes? A mascot named Mr. Zip and a jingle sung by Broadway legend Ethel Merman.
On this day in 1849, Henry Brown escaped slavery from a Virginia plantation in a very unusual way: he arranged it so he could hide in a small wooden box that was sent to Pennsylvania. Here's some of his story.
Mary Fields was the first Black woman to receive a Post Office contract to deliver the mail, and in the Wild West, no less. Here's a little more about a pioneer who definitely made some history. Plus: the story of a sibling who found a practical use for her identical twin.
There are lots of human efforts to help bees out, but there’s also some new research out that says bees help themselves by taking steps to get plants to flower earlier than usual.
It was on this day in 1914 a family in Grangeville, Idaho sent a four year old through the mail to her grandmother in Lewiston, 73 miles away. And she wasn’t the only kid to travel this way.
Kryptos is a puzzle sculpture that’s been on the grounds of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia since 1990. Three of its four coded messages have been solved - and now we have a clue that might reveal the fourth. Plus: the story of the J.W. Westcott II, the only ship that has its own ZIP code.
Who says snail mail is declining?
The National Postal Museum in Washington, DC, has an exhibit telling the story of Owney, the dog who loved the mail so much that he helped deliver it all over the world.
