Addressed to Kill
Page 23
BY THE NUMBERS
The Automated Flat Sorting Machine (AFSM) sorts “machineable” flat mail at seventeen thousand pieces per hour.
In fiscal year 2014: Forensics scientists examined more than sixty-two thousand documents, fingerprints, controlled substances, audio, video, digital media, and other items of physical evidence for inspectors’ investigations, resulting in the identification of 899 criminal subjects.
Nineteen billion postage stamps were sold in 2014.
LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS
The inspection branch of the USPS serves many purposes in the prevention of crimes. They gather clues related to mail fraud and perform laboratory analyses; and they participate in the security at major public events, such as sporting and political events, by screening mail for explosives and for biological, chemical, and radiological agents.
The smallest post office in the United States is the Ochopee Post Office, a tiny shed, about fifty-six square feet, on U.S. Route 41 in the heart of the Everglades, near Ochopee, Florida.
Marc Chagall’s painting Study for Over Vitebsk was stolen in 2001 from the Jewish Museum in New York. It was found in a Topeka, Kansas, dead mail sorting facility, where letters are sent when they can’t be delivered and are without return addresses.
VALENTINE’S DAY TRIVIA
Approximately one hundred and forty-five million valentines are sent in the U.S. mail each year.
Every Valentine’s Day, the Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about a thousand letters addressed to Juliet.
Along with the Valentine’s Day postmark craze, each December many people travel long distances to postmark cards from the Christmas, Florida, post office.
FUNNY SHIPMENTS
This story is attributed to a famous popcorn maker and may or may not be true: Every now and then, someone mails him a single popcorn kernel that didn’t pop. He picks out a fresh kernel, tapes it to a piece of paper, and mails it back to them.
Not unusual among shipments Cassie has handled are livestock and human remains. Perhaps the strangest was a box of human eyeballs floating in a saline solution.
Photo © Ariana Ramos
Jean Flowers is the pseudonym for a longtime mystery writer who has published series with Berkley and Minotaur. Her Postmistress Mystery series includes Death Takes Priority and Cancelled by Murder.
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