June 13, 1920: Only 53 cents to mail your kid!

On this day in 1920, the U.S. Post Office Department ruled that children could not be sent by parcel post.

Before the practice was banned there really are circumstances when children were sent by mail. In 1914, going through a divorce, a mother shipped her baby from Stillwell to its father in South Bend, Indiana. The child traveled in a container marked “Live Baby” for only 17 cents. That same year another case was recorded where parents shipped four-year-old May Pierstroff from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents to another part of the state for 53 cents (the going rate for mailing chickens). Instead of being shipped in a box she rode in the mail car with postage stamps attached to her coat. These, and other cases, prompted the Post Office Department to forbid sending humans by mail.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) was created under Benjamin Franklin on July 26, 1776 by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia (yes, we had a postal service before we had D.C.). Today, the USPS is a self-sustaining agency (i.e. does not receive tax money) and delivers more than 212 billion pieces of mail every year. If you think that is a lot, it is. The U.S. Postal Service handles about 46% of the world’s card and letter mail volume, delivering more mail to more addresses in a larger geographical area than any other post office in the world. No wonder it is the third largest employer in the US (after the US Department of Defense and Wal-Mart). The Department operates the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world with more than 219,000 vehicles driving more than 1.2 billion miles each year and using about 121 million gallons of fuel (so that’s where all the gas is going). Competition from e-mail and private companies (UPS, FedEx, DHL) has forced the USPS to modernize its products and services (who said competition was a bad thing?).

Source for USPS Facts

June 10, 1752: Franklin's Kite

On this day in 1752, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm to prove that lightning was an electrical force found in nature. As one of the Founding Fathers of the United States one would think that he would be smarter than to test this theory out on himself, but nonetheless he carried it out. Franklin did not invent electricity with this experiment; he just discovered that lighting was a form of electricity and not some mysterious force sent as a punishment from God (as most people back then thought).

To reach high enough into the storm clouds Franklin used a kite. In order to produce a current he attacked a small piece of metal to the top of his kite and a metal key to the base of the string. He then tied the kite string to an insulating piece of ribbon to the knuckles of his hand. When the lightening struck the kite it traveled down the kite string to the key. When Franklin touched the key with his knuckle there was a spark of electricity between the two of them. His son William was the only witness to the experiment. The first record of the experiment was fifteen years later by another man, which has caused some theories to emerge saying that he never actually performed it (I just think they’re jealous).

Franklin’s fascination with electricity began in the mid-1740s, resulting in almost a decade spent conducting electrical experiments (and countless electrical shocks). He developed the single-fluid theory of electricity and introduced many of the terms used to descried electricity today: battery, conductor, condenser, charge, discharge, positive, negative, electrician, and electric shock.

Understanding the power and danger of lightning, he went on to invent the lighting rod. This metal conductor is attacked to a high point on usually a building or ship and leads to the ground, protecting the object from destruction by lightning.

As a prominent scientist, inventor, and politician it is no surprise that Franklin was one of the most well known and widely recognized people of his time, and still so today. Creating such items as the bifocals, day light savings time, fire departments, and political cartoons he is still most widely known for his crazy experiment of flying a kite in the middle of a thunderstorm.