World Post Day 2020: Interesting Facts about Postal Services

World Post Day is celebrated every year on October 9 to raise awareness about the significant role individuals occupied with postal services play in the post office.

World Post Day is an incredible chance to honor the postal administrators, postal workers, and everybody associated with delivering mails and basic things. Generally, postal services have a major contribution to the development of businesses and economic activities all around the world. The Universal Postal Union (UPU) was prepared for effective postal services and it became an agency of the United Nations in 1948.

Before the digital communication came into our lives, sending letters by post was the only alternative and on the off chance that it was an urgent message – it was the telegraph, which reformed long-distance communication. It worked by sending electrical signals over a wire laid between stations.

The purpose of World Post Day is to raise awareness of the role of the postal sector in our regular daily existences and its significant contribution to the socio-economic development of a few nations. October 9 was proclaimed World Post Day by the UPU (Universal Postal Union) Congress held in Tokyo, Japan in 1969 and has since been celebrated worldwide on this date. Numerous nations additionally use this day to present or promote new postal services and products.

26 Interesting facts about World Post Day

1. The first World Post Day was celebrated in 1969.
2. The proposal was submitted by Anand Mohan Narula, a member of the Indian delegation.
3. The Universal Postal Union was established in 1874.
4. The headquarters of the UPU is at Bern in Switzerland.
5. The highest post office in the world is at Hikkim in Himachal Pradesh.
6. The first post office in India was set up by the East India Company in 1774 in Kolkata.
7. The post office charged two annas for every 100 miles.
8. The milestone General Post Office in Kolkata was implicit in 1864.
9. India was one of the earliest members to become a part of the UPU, a United Nations agency, headquartered in Bern, Switzerland.
10. The government recently decided to digitize 1.5 lakh post offices, spread countrywide, which incorporates 1.3 lakh post offices located in rural zones.
11. The postal service has 38 heritage buildings having architectural value, including the GPO for Kolkata and Mumbai respectively.
12. The approximate remarkable balance under all the post office savings schemes is over Rs 6 crore. The approximate number of account holders is 33.03 crore.
13. India Post enables immediate international money transfer to clients in India sent from 195 nations on a real-time basis. This service is worked in a relationship with Western Union and MoneyGram across locations.
14. Postal stamps and other philatelic products are accessible on a few e-commerce sites as well as on the e-post office, an e-commerce portal of India Post. The department earned about Rs 40 crore in 2015-16 by selling postal stamps and stamp-related products.
15. The postal department has installed GPS gadgets via the post office vans to guarantee safe and ideal delivery of goods.
16. The Indian Post Office Act 1898 passed by the legislature on March 22, 1898. It became active on July 1, 1898.
17. The act was gone before by Act III of 1882 and Act XVI of 1896.
18. The world’s first official airmail flight occurred in India on February 18, 1911.
19. By 1861, there were more than 850 post offices in India which were handling almost 43 million letters and over 4.5 million newspapers annually.
20. In April 1959, the Indian Postal Department received the motto ‘Service before Self’
21. The first adhesive postage stamps in Asia were issued in Scinde in July 1852.
22. India was the first country in the Commonwealth to issue airmail stamps.
23. The first new stamp was issued in Independent India on November 21, 1947. The new stamp portrayed the Indian flag with the patriots’ slogan ‘Jai Hind’
24. On the first anniversary of Indian independence, a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi was issued in 1948.
25. After one year, the stamp portrayed India’s broad cultural heritage including Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, and Jain temples, sculptures, monuments, and fortresses.
26. Nations that have had stamps printed in India incorporate Burma, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Portugal and Ethiopia.

Toward the beginning of September this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi additionally launched the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB). IPPB offers three types of savings accounts, namely regular, digital, and basic. This will be a zero balance savings account giving an interest rate of 4% per annum.