A Letter Mailed in 1916 Finally Reached Its Destination
by Matthew Gilligan
Better late than never, right?
How about 107 years late?
I bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?
Well, neither did a man who lives in London, England named Findlay Glen, who received the letter at his residence in South London and immediately recognized that something seemed off about the letter.
Glen said he noticed the ’16 on the postmark so he thought it was 2016, but Glen added, “Then we noticed that the stamp was a king rather than a queen, so we felt that it couldn’t have been 2016.”
The man didn’t want to open the letter because tampering with mail is a crime, but when he and his girlfriend figured out how old the letter was, they decided to see what was inside.
Glen took the letter to local historian Stephen Oxford who said the letter was written by a woman named Christabel Mennel, who was on vacation in Bath, England, to her friend Katie, who was married to a prominent stamp dealer named Oswald Marsh.
A spokesperson for the Royal Mail said,
“Incidents like this happen very occasionally, and we are uncertain what has happened in this incident.
We appreciate that people will be intrigued by the history of this letter from 1916, but have no further information on what might have happened.”
Take a look at the video below about this amazing story!
What can we learn from this? I guess… never give up?
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