Tech that thankfully never was: rocket mail

Admittedly, we've been guilty of complaining about the speed of the U.S. postal service now and again (usually when waiting for a check of some sort to arrive), but we're pretty glad the U.S. Navy's solution to speedier mail was never implemented. File this securely under 'news of the weird,' but in the late 50's the U.S. submarine Barbero conducted the first pilot test of the proposed fast mail solution: sending postal containers via warhead-less Regulus cruise missiles. The USPS/Navy-conducted "Missile Mail" was half experiment, half PR stunt and, needless to say, never quite caught on in the Cold War-gripped U.S. We just thank (insert favored deity here) that Al Gore came along and invented the internet to save us from such silly non-virtual mail "solutions," though it would have given new meaning to the phrase "fire off a letter."