America's mail motto is PERSIAN #history

America's favourite mail motto isn't a motto, isn't American, and was first about Persian riders racing home with the worst news of the war. Sources - Herodotus, Histories 8.54, 8.97-100 and 5.52-53, tr. A. D. Godley (Loeb) and G. C. Macaulay (1890) - Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.6.17-18, tr. H. G. Dakyns - R. T. Hallock, Persepolis Fortification Tablets (Oriental Institute Publications 92, Chicago 1969) - USPS Historian, "Postal Service Mission and 'Motto'": https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/mission-motto.pdf - James A. Farley Building: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Farley_Building - Royal Road: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): "Heroic Age", "Ibn Al-Noor", "Jaunty Gumption", "Tabuk", "Lamentation". Sound effects: Kenney (kenney.nl) and Freesound contributors (CC0).