When a Florida mailman landed a gyrocopter with a USPS logo on the lawn of the Capitol today, I’m sure you were asking yourself the same question I was: Does the postal service really deliver mail via gyrocopter? Not today. But it turns out they did, back in the 1930s.

Crooks will co to many lengths to steal your details—from USB sticks to cameras on subways—but now they're even cropping up on Postal Service stamp kiosks, too.

When United States Post Office planes took to the skies in the 1920s, they had their own version of the roadway's yellow line. A series of giant concrete arrows and gaslight beacons helped point the way from New York to San Francisco.

Every day, millions of people enjoy the simple luxury of a blue and grey-clad letter carrier showing up at their house and dropping the day's mail on their doorstep. But if some Republican lawmakers get their way, this luxury may be short-lived.

Your email and phone call metadata certainly isn't private, but maybe you were holding out hope that good old fashioned snail mail somehow avoided big brother's living gaze. The Smoking Gun broke the bad news a month ago, and now the New York Times is confirming that nope, that's all being tracked too. Surprise…

The Post Office is dying, kids, hemorrhaging money while you fritter away your time with those emails. Don't you know that paper mail is safer? Friendlier? And can't be hacked... by terrorists?! That's what the USPS's new ad campaign wants you to think.

The Post Office is going to die, so says the old pony express. They're strapped for cash, probably defaulting on a $5.5 billion payment due this month and will shut down entirely this winter unless Congress stabilizes its finances. Sad. But we don't really need it anymore.

Here at Paleofuture we often take a look at the most fantastical visions of the future: jetpacks, flying cars, meal pills, robot gigolos...

How often do you weigh parcels at home and then print out the postage, so you can pop it in a post-box and avoid a lengthy queue at the post-office? Now there's an even easier way to pay for postage—in Sweden and Denmark at least, where customers will be able to pay via SMS.

The UK's Royal Mail may've been kicking around in some shape or form since 1516, but they've become the first postal service to create an "intelligent stamp," readable like a QR code by an Android or iPhone app.

The USPS is having a rough time lately, sending billions fewer pieces of mail each year and shutting down hundreds of thousands of mailboxes. They're in such dire financial straits they may need a bailout. And it's all our fault.

This image appears in the 1979 book Future Cities: Homes and Living into the 21st Century and illustrates the living room of the (paleo)future.