Berlin, June 8th 2018 – Vacation time is postcard time! In the coming months, tons of travellers will send postcards to friends and family home from their holiday destinations worldwide. On this occasion, MyPostcard, the postcard app with the world’s largest assortment of postcard designs, has compiled ten curious facts around the subject of “mail-order”.
1. Girl Sent by Mail
In 1914, five-year-old May Pierstorff was sent for 53 cents by mail to her grandmother from Grangeville, Idaho, to Lewiston, Idaho. At the time, the price of sending chickens – or all animals weighing less than 50 pounds – was lower than the cost of a train ticket. May was brought to the destination personally by the postman. In 1920, the US banned sending people by post.
2. Chocolate Stamps
In Belgium, 500,000 stamps were produced in 2013 that smelt of chocolate and tasted good.
3. Floating Post Office
The “JW Westcott II” boat in Michigan is the only floating post office in the world. It has been used as an official post office since 1949 and brings the post office to ships passing the Detroit River. The 14-meter boat even has its own postal code; the US Postcode, 48222. Anyone wanting to mail the crew of such a ship should address them as follows: “Name of the vessel, Marine Post Office, Detroit, Michigan, 48222.” The mail is delivered to the ships as they pass through the Detroit River – usually, ropes and buckets are used for this.
4. Musical Stamps
In 1973, Bhutan produced a stamp that could play the national anthem when placed on a turntable.
5. Feline Mailmen
In Liege, Belgium, cats were trialed as postmen in 1870 to carry bundles of letters from the city to the surrounding villages – within a radius of 30 kilometres. This experiment was, unsurprisingly, unsuccessful.
6. Valuable Stamp
A rare one cent British Guiana stamp was auctioned in New York in 2014 for $ 9.5 million. The previous owner died in jail in 2010; he was arrested for murdering an Olympic wrestler.
7. Calories per Stamp
Every time you lick a stamp; you’re eating one-tenth of a calorie.
8. Underground Storage
In Kansas City, Missouri, there is a stamp service located in a limestone cave 150 meters underground. The cave is home to perfect conditions for ensuring the excellent preservation of the stamps. There are stamps worth 400 to 600 million US dollars here.
9. The Stamp-Wetter
In the Victorian era, it was actually considered necessary to invent the so-called “stamp licker”, a machine for moistening stamps. Although it was essentially a mechanical device, not a machine, for wetting the stamps which was developed.
10. Criminal Stamp Reusers
In 1849 France it was forbidden to wash or clean stamps which had been already used. In the six years that followed, a total of 15,000 people were prosecuted in France for violating this law – including some stamp collectors.
About MyPostcard
The postcard of tomorrow: MyPostcard allows you to send your personal photos as a real, printed postcard anywhere in the world – taking care of the worldwide shipping, printing, and posting. The app is available in ten languages and provides the world’s largest design selection with over 10,000 designs.
Oliver Kray, a designer and Serial-Entrepreneur, is CEO and Founder of MyPostcard, headquartered in Berlin with a New York office and 25 employees.
For more information and questions:
Maria Gomelskaia
MyPostcard.com GmbH
Hohenzollerndamm 3
10717 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 – 403 64 54 25
maria@mypostcard.com
www.mypostcard.com
Henriette Herfeldt
Wilde & Partner
Franziskanerstraße 14
81669 München
Phone: +49 (0)89 -17 91 90 -21
Fax: +49 (0)89 -17 91 90 – 99
henriette.herfeldt@wilde.de
www.wilde.de
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