22 nd September

1776 Nathan Hale was hung. (See June 6th entry.)

1789 The U. S. Post Office was established. (See July 1st and November 1st entries.)

1981 The world’s fastest train took its inaugural run.

The U. S. Post Office was established on this day in 1789. Delivering the mail in those years was an arduous and uncertain task. And things haven’t gotten any easier today. In fact, as we computerize communications, we seem to have just as much trouble getting messages across on the Internet as our forefathers did with horse-driven technology.

The world’s fastest train took its inaugural run from Paris to Lyons, France at 156 mph for three hundred miles on this day in 1981. Although that is far faster than passenger rail services in most parts of the world, it was soon antiquated by even speedier trains running the same routes. In 1990, France’s TGV trains attained speeds of up to 186 mph, with estimates of up to 217 mph by the year 2000.