Today is a special day. People are taking off work all over the Earth to celebrate World Brain Tumor Day. So plan to spend the evening munching popcorn and watching John Travolta in Phenomenon.Unless of course you plan instead to celebrate World Oceans Day, which is also today. You know, we don't have a lot of worldwide holidays, do we? Couldn't we at least give separate days to the holidays we DO have? If I were the oceans, I'd feel a little ripped off having to share a world day with brain tumors. Especially since John Travolta never made a movie about developing superhuman powers from the ocean depths.
And on this day in 1959, the USS Barbero (a name that's completely in between macho/intimidating and Italian opera) attempted Missile Mail. Yes folks, air mail should not be the fastest way to get your letters to your loved ones. It should be E-mail.
But second to E-
mail only, is the speed of Missile Mail!Unfortunately, in past attempts to get rocket mail going strong, half of the mail ended up in flaming shreds when the missiles exploded (not very surprising after seeing this picture on the left). Then somebody came up with the good idea of NOT having the rockets blow up.
More ticks against using rocket mail include the fact that it costs $8000/ounce and that it really doesn't speed anything up because it still has to get sorted/delivered/lost/destroyed by the post office at the destination.
So sadly Rocket Mail is pretty much dead and gone, having left a mark on history that's hardly visible anymore. Or is it?
RocketMail was the name of one of the first major, free webmail services and fought against Hotmail for the number 1 spot for a while. RocketMail was bought out by Yahoo! in 1997. So for all those of you who use Yahoo! to send E-mails, you're essentially using RocketMail's old system. Which means you should be paying $8000/ounce for each E-mail you send out.
Pictures:
Phenomenon
Missile Mail
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