{"id":8654,"date":"2012-07-06T23:16:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T23:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/struth-mail-delivered-by-boot-2\/"},"modified":"2012-07-06T23:16:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-06T23:16:00","slug":"struth-mail-delivered-by-boot-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/2012\/07\/struth-mail-delivered-by-boot-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Struth! Mail delivered by boot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-AfRJsgPQfHY\/T_dx2TZFIoI\/AAAAAAAAWZc\/PKufYl6y5i0\/s1600\/Mossel%2BBay%2BPost%2BOffice%2Bon%2Bsite%2Bof%2BPost%2BOffice%2BTree-700093.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-AfRJsgPQfHY\/T_dx2TZFIoI\/AAAAAAAAWZc\/PKufYl6y5i0\/s320\/Mossel%2BBay%2BPost%2BOffice%2Bon%2Bsite%2Bof%2BPost%2BOffice%2BTree-700093.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wonderous in the world of travel, David Ellis finds South Africa&#8217;s postal service actually began 150 years before European settlement of the country \u2013 and that the first letter &#8220;posted&#8221; there was literally given the boot.<\/p>\n<p>It was back in 1500 when ships of many nations were stopping off in what is now South Africa to take-on water and whatever food they could barter, that a Portuguese bloke came up with the idea of putting mail for delivery back home in an old seaman&#8217;s boot under a tree in what is now Mossel Bay; ships heading in the opposite direction would clear the boot and deliver its contents to the countries to which it was addressed.<\/p>\n<p>The first letter was left this way by Pedro de Aitade, a naval commander, who addressed it to the King of Portugal. It was found over a year later in the boot by the Third East India Fleet, and doing the right thing, they had it delivered to Portugal and the King.<\/p>\n<p>Today a large stone replica of the original boot stands on de Aitade&#8217;s original boot site \u2013 510 years after he left the first letter there in 1500 \u2013 and mail posted in this boot-shaped Post Box is franked &#8220;Post Office Tree Mossel Bay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wonderous in the world of travel, David Ellis finds South Africa&#8217;s postal service actually began 150 years before European settlement of the country \u2013 and that the first letter &#8220;posted&#8221; there was literally given the boot. It was back in 1500 when ships of many [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[377],"class_list":["post-8654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-struth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}