The first postboxes appeared in the 18th century in Paris. No one knows for sure how they looked but it is well-known why they did not stick: the couriers, afraid of losing their jobs, threw mice in the postboxes, and those ate the letters.
The first postboxes emerged in Russia on December 13, 1848, on the streets of Saint Petersburg. Before that, the urban dwellers themselves took the letters to street-corner shops. We know exactly how those postboxes looked: they were made from wood panels and were coated with iron on the outside. There was a problem with them as well: people stole them, as they were easy to carry under one’s arm. The post office took measures: first, they started making the postboxes from cast iron about 40 kg in weight, and later, they had the idea to nail them to houses. In 1910, the engineer Shabarov constructed a blue postbox that survived through the whole 20th century in Russia, and only several years ago was changed for a new one.
