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Did you know that the world's first official airmail delivery took place in India in 1911, only 8 years after the invention of airplanes?
On February 18, 1911, French pilot Henri Pequet carried the first official mail flown by airplane. Pequet carried a sack with about 6,000 cards and letters on his Humber biplane. The flight covered a distance of five miles, from Allahabad polo field to Naini across the Yamuna river. All mails received a special parcel depicting an airplane, mountains, and- "First Aerial Post, 1911, U.P. Exhibition Allahabad" written on it.
On October 1 2024, India Post celebrated 170 years of service. Originally started by the British East India Company and known as 'Company Mail', India Post was brought under the Crown as a service in 1854 by Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856. However, the history of postal systems in India goes back to the Maurya period, particularly the reign of Chandragupta Maurya circa 300 BCE.
Some historians believe that Chandragupta introduced an early postal system in India, using carrier pigeons to communicate between the different provinces of his vast empire stretching from Karnataka in the South to Afghanistan in the North, and Nagaland in the East to Eastern Iran in the West.
This early postal system was most probably introduced to India by Alexander III of Macedon, who used it widely during his military campaigns after adopting it from the ancient Persians, who trained and used carrier pigeons as messengers as early as the 5th Century BCE. Carrier pigeons remained the primary mode of long-distance communication in India over the next thousand years. They were used extensively by rulers from the Maurya emperor Ashoka (302-234 BCE) to the Mughal emperor Babur (1483-1530 CE).
Que.- Four statements about the world's first official airmail delivery are given below. Choose the incorrect option.
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