Put Your Stamp on This Postal Service Quiz

Known for films such as "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and for his iconic role as Michael Scott in American TV's "The Office," Steve Carell is a popular funnyman with some serious acting chops. Before his big break in Hollywood, Carell was a correspondent for "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, and before that, he worked as a mailman. Carell's mail route was in rural Massachusetts, his home state.

There are two places in the U.S. where mail is still delivered by mule, and both locations — Phantom Ranch and Supai Village — are located in the Grand Canyon. To get to Supai Village, it's an 8-mile trek from the nearest road, and postal workers take mules down into the village and back. Mail mostly consists of postcards from tourists, as well as some supplies for the village.

The earliest transcontinental airmail route, established in 1920, used a combination of day flights and night trains, and coast-to-coast delivery took nearly four days. The first test-service to include nighttime flights began in 1924, cutting the total journey time to 33 hours. That trip, from New York to San Francisco, required 15 stops and six changes of pilots and planes.

"Mochila" means "knapsack" in Spanish, and it’s the name given to the mailbags used on the Pony Express. They were leather with four pockets and hung over the saddle. The pockets were always kept locked; three of them contained mail and could only be opened at military posts, and the fourth contained a timecard.

Mongol leader Genghis Khan knew communication was key for maintaining his vast empire. One of his first actions as khan was to establish an international courier system, known as the “Yam.” Riders traveled between post stations by horse, allowing both goods and information to travel quickly.

Booker T. Washington became the first Black American to grace a U.S. postage stamp in April 1940, when the Post Office Department included him in its Famous Americans series. A former slave turned activist and educator, Washington advocated for self-improvement and self-reliance to help Black Americans rise above racial injustice and get ahead.

The B. Free Franklin Post Office & Museum is a colonial-themed post office located in Philadelphia’s historic Old City. It doesn't fly the American flag because the flag didn't exist in 1775, when Philadelphia native Benjamin Franklin was appointed postmaster general. The post office sits in a house once owned by Franklin, with a museum upstairs that features postal memorabilia.

The U.S. Forest Service introduced Smokey Bear in the 1940s, as a symbol for wildfire prevention. The character was fictional, but he later became associated with a real bear cub found in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico. People began sending letters and drawings to the bear, and by 1964, Smokey was so popular that the Postal Service decided he needed his own ZIP code, 20252.

In 1902 Martha Washington became the first American woman to appear on a postage stamp. The 8-cent stamp honored her as the nation’s original First Lady. However, she wasn't the first woman on U.S. stamps — that honor belongs to the Spanish Queen Isabella, who funded Christopher Columbus’s voyage and first appeared on a U.S. stamp in 1893.

In October 1861, the first transcontinental telegraph system was finished and became officially operational. It was a death knell for the Pony Express because messages no longer needed to be carried by mail. With the telegraph, messages could reach across the country in moments through Morse code.

The world's first postage stamp was known as a "Penny Black" because it was black in color and cost one penny. The stamps were introduced in England in 1840 and revolutionized the postal service. Before stamps, letters were very expensive to send; the cost was calculated by how many pages long the letter was and how far it was being sent. After the introduction of the Penny Black, thousands of cards, letters, and postcards were sent each year.

In the early 19th century, mail delivery to the West Coast of the United States was inefficient, expensive, and unreliable — not to mention difficult and even dangerous. Enter: the Pony Express, a system that used horse-and-rider relays to cover hundreds of miles in a matter of days. The route started in St. Joseph, Missouri, and ended in Sacramento, California, with relay stations at various points along the way.

The U.S. Postal Service doesn't have an official motto, but many believe it does. The line that comes to mind is the one chiseled over the entrance of the James A. Farley Building, the main USPS office in New York City: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." The quote is from "The Persian Wars" by the Greek historian Herodotus, which describes the Persian system of postal couriers.

On July 26, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed Ben Franklin the first postmaster general of the newly created federal mail system that would become the U.S. Postal Service. He occupied the position for a little over a year before leaving for France to secure that country's support in the American Revolution.

The United States Post Office Department introduced ZIP codes in 1963 to allow for faster and more efficient mail delivery as the volume of mail was rapidly increasing. The numbers in a "Zone Improvement Plan" code refer to a specific area, noting the state and region. To encourage people to use the codes, the post office developed an ad campaign featuring a friendly cartoon character named "Mr. Zip."

The first postage stamps in the United States were issued on July 1, 1847, and displayed the likenesses of Benjamin Franklin (on the five-cent stamp) as well as George Washington (on the 10-cent stamp). Originally, the five-cent stamp was going to feature former President Andrew Jackson instead of Franklin, but the switch was made because Franklin was considered a more unifying figure.