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calebt3 writes:
The Article:
A postcard featuring a color drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl was mailed in 1914, but its journey was slower than Christmas. It just arrived in northwest Kansas.
The Christmas card was dated Dec. 23, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, apparently from her cousins in Alma, Neb.
It's a mystery where it spent most of the last century, Oberlin Postmaster Steve Schultz said. "It's surprising that it never got thrown away," he said. "How someone found it, I don't know."
Ethel Martin is deceased, but Schultz said the post office wanted to get the card to a relative.
That's how the 93-year-old relic ended up with Bernice Martin, Ethel's sister-in-law. She said she believed the card had been found somewhere in Illinois.
"That's all we know," she said. "But it is kind of curious. We'd like to know how it got down there."
The card was placed inside another envelope with modern postage for the trip to Oberlin — the one-cent postage of the early 20th century wouldn't have covered it, Martin said.
"We don't know much about it," she said. "But wherever they kept it, it was in perfect shape."
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DarkNemesis618 writes:
A U.S. Representative has proposed that NASA keep the shuttle fleet flying past its 2010 retirement date. The move would help prevent NASA from relying on Russian rockets during the gap between the Space Shuttle retirement and the start of the Orion program. One proposal would keep the shuttle fleet flying from 2010 to 2013 while another would keep the fleet alive until the Orion program is ready in about 2015. In 2011, the exemption that has allowed NASA to purchase Soyuz rockets for trips to the Space Station ends, and they would need an extension to keep using Russian rockets until the Orion program is ready. NASA's other option lies in the private sector, but so far, the private sector's progress does not look like it will meet the 2011 deadline. Keeping the shuttle fleet flying for a couple more years seems like it would help keep American presence in space without having to rely on the Russian space program.
