"Neither snow nor rain," runs the unofficial pledge, shall stay "these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." And through the history of the U.S. Post Office, these couriers on their rounds have toted a staggering volumn of items -- as well as a few astonishing ones. A resourceful farmer once shipped a ton and a half of hay by parcel post from Oregon to Idaho; a coconut was sent fourth class from Miami to Detroit with address and postage affixed to the hull; and sections of prefab housing have been mailed to building sites to save on trucking costs. When Harry Winston donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958, he kept costs down by sending the gem in a plain brown wrapper by registered first-class mail. Poisoned candy, loaded pistols, and assorted parts of the human body -- in various preservatives or simply "as is" -- also have been routed through the mail.

Occasionally, a fuss ensued. Assorted mishaps involving the escape of theoretically benign creatures, such as ladybugs, led to bans on mailing more notoriously dangerous species such as black widow spiders and snakes of any kind. And after some cheapskate shipped an entire bank building -- 80,000 bricks in all, packaged in small bundles -- from Salt Lake City to Vernal, Utah, in 1916, the postmaster general put the service's collective foot down. No more buildings, he decreed. But some 9,000 tons of gold bricks were happily transported from New York to Fort Knox between January 1940 and January 1941, a job for which the Post Office collected over $1,600,000 in postage, insurance, and surcharges.  (Source: Discovering America's Past, 1993)