Around the world, Mailbox birthday is celebrated on the day when this device was mounted on the street of London in 1858. It is hard to imagine contemporary life without mobile phones and the Internet. In the last century, most people used letters to find out how distant relatives were doing or to get news from another city or country.

As early as the 16^th century, sailors at the Cape of Good Hope used a stone box as a mailbox (a stone that had natural and man-made cavities in it). Some travelers would leave letters there on their way to India from Europe, and the others would pick them up on their way back. Today, this stone is the symbol of postal communication and is stored in the Cape Town Museum. In the 17^th century, Austrian postmen began carrying a shoulder bag, which was used for the same purpose as the box.

The first post box was mounted in Vienna in 1785.

The first mailboxes in Russia, which appeared in 1848 in St. Petersburg, were wooden and consisted of two compartments. One – was locked and letters were put there. The other, the open one – was intended for letters that were to be returned to the senders if their addressees were not found. The boxes were painted green – the identity color of the postal service at the time. The wooden boxes were sometimes broken into by robbers looking for envelopes containing money. Therefore, in the second half of the 19^th century, an anti-vandal model was developed. It was mould in cast iron, and a box weighing up to 48kg was very difficult to break or carry away. They were expensive and were not widely used. Only the third model was successful – it was light and sturdy, with a built-in inner case for removing letters, which was later replaced by canvas bags. Traditionally, mailboxes had a picture of an envelope on them. This tradition continued for 80 years, and it was only in 1926, when literacy became available to all segments of the population, that they were no longer painted and replaced with the inscription ‘Mailbox’. Modern mailboxes are equipped with anti-tampering systems and electronic chips that allow clear tracking of when letters are taken out.

Mailboxes in Russia today are traditionally blue in color. There are now 3,032 mailboxes in Moscow and the Moscow region. Postmen remove mail from them twice a day and send it to sorting and logistics centers. Every month, the Post handles up to 9 million pieces of written correspondence in the Moscow region alone.

A thematic album for World Mailbox Day is posted in the museum Photo Gallery.