Amazon has nothing on the U.S. Postal Service. Think drone delivery is farfetched? On June 8, 1959, in a move that Postmaster General Arthur A. Summerfield heralded as “of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world,” the Navy submarine USS Barbero, situated off the coast, fired a guided missile carrying 3,000 letters toward the naval auxiliary air station in Mayport, Florida. The guided missile traveled more than 100 miles from the deck of the submarine to the air station in about 22 minutes. There’s no information on the condition of the letters after arrival.

“Before man reaches the moon,” Summerfield was quoted as saying, “mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles.” I wonder why that never worked out.

But that’s not the first experiment with rocket-delivered mail. On February 23, 1936, two rockets transported mail about 2,000 feet across a frozen lake toward the Hewitt, New Jersey, post office. Unfortunately, the rockets crashed, and the Hewitt postmaster had to retrieve two bags of mail and drag them the rest of the way to the post office.

Deutsche Post (Germany’s postal service) is already experimenting with drones to deliver DHL packages – so Amazon is still behind the world’s postal services.