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The United States Postal Service started a dead letter office in 1825 to deal with undeliverable mail. Approximately 57 million items end up in this office every year, where enclosed items of value are removed and the correspondence is destroyed. When enclosed items are deemed to be of obviously exceptional value, efforts may be made to return them to the sender. Items of value that cannot be returned are sold at auction. Except for pornography and firearms, everything that can be lost in the mail is included at auction. The auctions also occasionally include items seized by postal inspectors and property being retired from postal service. Image File history File links Gnome-globe. ... The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independent establishment of the executive branch of the United States Government (see 39 U.S.C. Â§ 201) responsible for providing postal service in the United States. ... Opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway 1825 (MDCCCXXV) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...

These facilities are now known as mail recovery centers (MRC). Other former names include dead letter branch and dead parcel branch. These facilities are not unique to the US Postal Service, and go by different names in other countries. The USPS mail recovery centers are located in Atlanta, Georgia and Saint Paul, Minnesota. An MRC in San Francisco, California was closed on September 13, 2002.^[1]. Since 2004, the postal auctions have been held only in Atlanta. These auctions include not only material lost in the US but also material from other national postal authorities who consign them to the USPS for auction. Hotlanta redirects here. ... Nickname: Location in Ramsey County and the state of Minnesota. ... Nickname: Location of the City and County of San Francisco, California Coordinates: Country United States of America State California City-County San Francisco Government  - Mayor Gavin Newsom Area  - City  47 sq mi (122 km²)  - Land  46. ...

The Canadian equivalent of the dead letter office is located in Mississauga, Ontario. For the First Nation, see Mississaugas. ...

In culture

• One famous fictional employee of the dead letter office is Bartleby, the title-character of Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street."
• R.E.M. released a compilation of b-sides and rarities entitled Dead Letter Office.
• In the film Miracle on 34th Street, two mail sorters handle a letter addressed to "Kris Kringle" at the New York City courthouse, and decide to deliver all the Santa Claus mail now in the dead letter office to the courthouse, where a man calling himself Kris Kringle is facing a mental competency hearing. The man's attorney uses the huge volume of mail as evidence that the federal government recognizes his client as "the one-and-only Santa Claus."
• The term "dead letter office" may be used in non-postal offices, in reference to any room of disused materials resembling a dead letter office.
• Horror writer Clive Barker's book The Great and Secret Show features segments centered around the dead letter office at Omaha, Nebraska.
• Dead Letter Office are an alternative rock band based in the United Kingdom
• The Australian film Dead Letter Office focuses on a woman who gets a job at a dead letter office in order to contact her long-lost father.
• In The Simpsons episode "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday," Springfield Elementary visits their local Post Office and are treated to a piece of undeliverable mail from the dead letter office as a souvenir.
• The 1996 film Dear God, in which a character played by Greg Kinnear, working in a post office, responds to letters written to God

Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street is a short story by Herman Melville. ... R.E.M. is an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in early 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and vocalist Michael Stipe. ... Dead Letter Office is a rarities and B-sides collection by R.E.M. and released in 1987 as their fifth official album. ... Miracle on 34th Street (also titled The Big Heart in the UK) is a 1947 film which tells the story of a gentle old man, working as a Santa Claus at Macys department store in New York City, who contends that he is the real Santa. ... Bold textItalic textLink titlelink title Media:Example. ... New York, NY redirects here. ... A typical depiction of Santa Claus. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Great and Secret Show is a novel by British (although he now lives in the USA) author Clive Barker. ... Nickname: Gateway to the West Location in Nebraska Coordinates: Country United States State Nebraska County Douglas Founded 1854 Incorporated 1857 Government  - Mayor Michael Fahey (D) Area  - City  118. ... Simpsons redirects here. ... Sunday, Cruddy Sunday is the twelfth episode of The Simpsons tenth season. ... In the television series The Simpsons, the Springfield Elementary School is the school which Bart Simpson, Lisa Simpson and their fellow students attend. ... Look up souvenir in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Dear god, Hope you got the letter, And I pray you can make it better down here. ... Greg Kinnear (born June 17, 1963 in Logansport, Indiana) is an Academy Award nominated American actor. ... This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ...

Reference

External links

• Dead Letter Office Smithsonian Arago - People, Postage and the Post
• Remembering The Dead National Postal Museum
• "No return address" (Smithsonian magazine, July 2000)
• "Point of No Return: Saving Dead Letters at the Mail Recovery Center" (Failure magazine)
• USPS auction info
• What Happens to Dead Letters at the Post Office?
• Dead Letter Office fees at different points in US history