Posted on 09/04/2020 11:21:46 PM PDT by nickcarraway
To help ensure it didn’t accidentally fall out of the pocket, he did, at the least, use a safety pin to secure the pouch inside the pocket.
The famed 45.52 carat Hope Diamond — estimated to have formed around 1.1 billion years ago — after about four centuries of various private ownership was donated in 1958 by Harry Winston to the National Museum of Natural History for their gem collection.
Rather than personally transporting the incredibly valuable diamond to said the institution, Winston simply boxed it up and put it in the regular mail, trusting that the US postal service would get it where it needed to go without issue.
After it was safely delivered, Winston said “It’s the safest way to mail gems. I’ve sent gems all over the world that way.”
This wasn’t the only time the diamond was sent with such limited security. In 1962, the National Museum of Natural History lent the diamond out for use in a Louvre exhibition. To get it there, they simply gave it to Smithsonian mineralogist George Switzer, who in turn put it in a pouch his wife made which was placed in a pocket in his pants.
To help ensure it didn’t accidentally fall out of the pocket, he did, at the least, use a safety pin to secure the pouch inside the pocket.
You can’t send a five dollar bill nowadays. It’ll disappear every time.
That was then.
That’s the whole point about this story (and the timing).
“If we can trust the mail with the Hope diamond, we can trust it with our ballot.”
I like the counter-argument of “Okay - take $1,000 cash and mail it to yourself!”
Silly comparison. Ballots are recognizably marked on the outside as ballots. I’m sure the package with the diamond was not marked.
In 1966 I put a hard earned $1.25 (dollar and quarter) in the mail to order an item, never received the item. My dad chastised me after I told him saying I should have asked him for a check.
Sent a very large check to Alabama in July USPS overnight mail, the post office confirms it made it to the right post office, but according to them is still in the postal system. Luckily the bank acknowledged the deposit. The USPS has a form to get refunds for undelivered overnight mail, so I got a refund.
Almost three years ago, I needed to pull some investment money out to purchase a car so my financial advisor sent me a check for $5,000.
They confirmed it went out. Registered mail.
Still waiting.
Obviously I canceled it.
It’s not the ballot that is the issue, or even the postal service for that matter.
It’s about the opportunity for fraud.
We know that the IRS mailed thousands of checks to people who were dead simply because their records were not up to date. We also know that vote rolls have not been cleaned up for years.
What happens to all those ballots mailed out to people who are dead, who moved away, who are now ineligible to vote?
Are you willing to assume they will be safely discarded, or will you at least recognize the potential for a ‘ballot harvestor’ to collect them, vote them, and return them?
Illegal? Yes, but since when did the Democrats follow the law?
Wash and blow dry for Nancy, anyone?
Because you know it was labeled Hope Diamond: Handle with care.
That was before the days of 3-D scanning of all mail, when there was still the Lord’s prayer in schools, and before Ted Kennedy’s anti-European, Third-World immigration act.
I remember reading of this maybe sixty years ago in either Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, or Elsie Hix’ Strange As It Seems.
Actually, my ballot is far more valuable than a piece of carbon.... That’s why I demand to vote in person.
Did you cancel your financial advisor also?
If it was important, then his mailing a check was foolish.
It was mailed by the parent company that he’s franchised with.
No reason to fire him. Six months ago when everyone’s accounts tanked, I only lost 11%.
In the last five years I’ve had at least four books fail to arrive from Amazon. Before that only one package went astray since 2001. The four always seemed to make it to the local Post Office and...vanish.
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