The Bizarre Mail Rule the U.S. Put in Place 106 Years Ago Today

Imagine walking into a post office more than 100 years ago and mailing a package-only to find out the "package" wasn't a package at all. Instead, inside the box was a living, breathing child. Yes, you read that right.



Believe it or not, this actually happened, and it eventually led the U.S. Post Office to create a very unusual rule.

The Post Office's Parcel Post officially began on January 1, 1913, allowing Americans to send and receive items in a new and exciting way. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, some parents actually tried to ship their children-perhaps to their grandmother's house.

"Just a few weeks after Parcel Post began, an Ohio couple named Jesse and Mathilda Beagle 'mailed' their 8-month-old son James to his grandmother, who lived just a few miles away in Batavia. According to Lynch, Baby James was just shy of the 11-pound weight limit for packages sent via Parcel Post, and his 'delivery' cost his parents only 15 cents in postage (although they did insure him for $50). The quirky story soon made newspapers, and for the next several years, similar stories would occasionally surface as other parents followed suit," the outlet reported.

After a few instances, officials stepped in. On June 13, 1920, the post office decided that children could not "be classified as harmless live animals that do not require food or water," and therefore they could not be shipped, according to The Square PHX.

It's one of those moments in history that sounds like a myth, but the paper trail proves it really happened. And thankfully, it's a piece of postal history that stayed in the past.

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This story was originally published June 13, 2026 at 12:45 PM.