The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

Was this the old Jet-Stream Delivery option? Hold the postcard up in the air at a predetermined location on the west coast, and your receipient can grab it somewhere east of you?

Pigeons, some place in Europe, some war.

Well, there goes my pigeon answer.

Why green paper?

I'll say the Austro-Hungarians used the Danube river to deliver mail, because the winters were too harsh to travel.

W.A.S.T.E., and you know perfectly well why.

Pneumatic tubes?

Actually, one of you sort of has the right idea, kind of.

A hint as to the reason: a war between two major powers was the ultimate cause.

Also, the color of the paper is an incidental and unhelpful detail.

Unhelpful and incidental details. On the wombatfile. Now I've seen everything.

Swiss diplomats on their lunch hour, Austria-Hungary, the war thing.

Messages were carried by trained bears in specially constructed carrying cases (the messages not the bears) across the frozen tundra during the war between Siberia and Kamchatka that lasted for four months in 1870-71. The 10% of messages that didn't make it were unfortunately exchanged for honey from enemy spies.

I remember the Owny the Mail Dog exhibit from our fair postal museum in Washington DC vividly. First of all, the postal museum has an inexplicable amount of chain link fencing within it. Second of all, it's boss. You all should go. W/R/T Owny the Mail Dog's place in the sun, well, it's huge, and maudlin. Apparently Owny wasa the biggest thing to ever happen to the US Postal Service. I recall he was more of a companion to postal workers but he must've got his start somewhere----probably as an unreliable mail carrier himself.

Really, though, the WASTE answer was much funnier.

Trans-tundra Ursine Delivery, Oedipa Maas, and Owney the Dog (I didn't believe you, Bootsy, until I looked it up:

http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/2c1f_owney.html).

All better than the real answer, which is itself not bad: during the siege of Paris in 1870-71, the postal service sent 62 postcards to points outside Paris by "Balloon Mail" -- that is, the cards were tied to balloons and released into the air. The hope was that they would land somewhere in France outside of the city, and that a citizen with the interests of the Republic at heart would take the postcard to the nearest post office. The postcard would then find its way to the recipient via a more conventional delivery method.

Given that so many of you turned in answers which, while being incorrect, were actually better than reality, you are all deserving of prizes. Details concerning these can be found by performing a careful mathematical analysis to the classic song "867-5309" using the methods given here:

http://www.luttrell.org.uk/pi/