French stamps of the 1870s
Always frustrating to get home from a vacation and find that the postcards mailed to friends and grandchildren haven't arrived yet. But this story from northern France tops that one. A postcard mailed on January 27th, 1877 was delivered last week.
Amazingly, La Poste was able to find the 80-something Therese Pailla, great-granddaughter of the addressee living in the same small town, Trelon. It had been mailed from Sains-du-Nord, only 10 km away.
The card to her great-grandfather, who died in 1897, is about an order for yarn made by the recipient's company.
It's not clear how the card turned up, and no one knows yet just how it was delayed, but La Poste is investigating. A spokesperson for the regional postal service said "It can sometimes happen that a letter gets lost when a locker is dusted, tidied or moved. A letter can fall accidentally and is found years later. But, generally, it's quite rare. A decade or so, that's possible, but a century..." C'est la vie, non?
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