Original photo by Valerie Loiseleux/ iStock
While almost all other objects are required to be boxed up before being mailed, the U.S. Postal Service makes a specific exception for potatoes and coconuts. Both foods can be mailed unwrapped, so long as you write the destination and return address either directly on the product or on a label affixed to the skin or husk. Simply take the item to the post office, where it’ll be weighed to determine appropriate postage, stamped, and sent off to be delivered just like any other package.
The U.S. Postal Service doesn’t explicitly say why this is permitted, but there is some precedent for sending strange items through the mail, so long as they’re paid for and don’t endanger the carrier. In an experiment conducted for a 2000 edition of Annals of Improbable Research, researchers successfully mailed a ski, a deer tibia, a rose with a card tied to the stem, and other unusual objects.
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It's a factCleveland was the first U.S. city to offer free mail delivery to its residents. The Free City Delivery Service was the brainchild of postal employee Joseph Briggs. The service began in 1862, and by the end of the 19th century had grown to more than 400 cities, employing 10,000+ mail carriers.
Mailing coconuts is especially popular on the Hawaiian island of Molokaʻi, where the Hoʻolehua post office established the Post-a-Nut service in 1991, allowing people to mail coconuts to the mainland U.S. and around the world — no box required. Post-a-Nut ships roughly 3,000 coconuts annually (around 700 of which are sent to international locations), generating 40% of that post office’s total revenue. Dedicated businesses for mailing potatoes also exist, including Mail a Spud — a service that ships out russet potatoes adorned with personalized messages.
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A coconut was investigated for its role in rigging a Maldivian presidential election.
In 2013, Maldivian police detained a suspicious coconut discovered near a polling place on Guraidhoo Island. The coconut was initially thought to be evidence of black magic — a practice that had purportedly been used to influence the outcome of local elections in the past. In this case, the kurumba (young coconut) featured a Quranic verse written on its husk, which was believed to possibly be an instance of fanditha (black magic).
Police enlisted the help of a ruqyah (white magic practitioner) to deduce whether the coconut actually possessed black magic. It was determined to be fake, and as one source told a Maldivian news outlet, “It seems like it was a joke, just a prank, so that people will become aware, learn the moral, and not do it again.” In the wake of this event, police ramped up surveillance of the polling place in question to be sure no black magic was used on election day.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism Media, and previously contributed to television programs such as "Late Show With David Letterman" and "Impractical Jokers." Bennett is also a devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
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