this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
26 points (93.3% liked)

No Stupid Questions

47707 readers
13 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Back in the day, if you were to give a letter to a carrier pigeon, how would the pigeon know to deliver the letter to Maggie McDoodle over at 24-102 MacFerggle Street (or whatever)? How did the pigeon know who the proper recipient of the letter was? And was it common for pigeons to accidentally deliver a letter to the wrong contact?

all 11 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 50 points 1 week ago (3 children)

You would raise the pigeon and the pigeon would know how to fly back there always. They weren't sent to addresses, rather, to one particular spot.

Say you have five pigeons. You put a ring on them that says the town and owner. You send them in a cage via cart or boat etc. to five different towns, to people you know can also keep pigeons. Those people receive your pigeon, as well as pigeons from other locations.

When they need to send a message to you or your town, they find your pigeon and attach a message. Then they release it. The pigeon flies back to you. If you want to reply, you need to have a pigeon raised in that particular town. Tough luck otherwise.

You keep your pigeon for a while again, then you cage it and send it elsewhere - the cycle repeats.

Bear in mind pigeons can't carry very long messages. The paper scroll can't be too large or the pigeon won't fly properly/the wind drag will tear the scroll away if too large. Think of them as a primitive telegram of sorts. Messages longer than a telegram of course, but nowhere near anything like a regular letter. So they were usually reserved for stuff like "we're under siege, help", "this important person passed away", "we got the plague, keep out", or any other short messages of importance.

[–] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

I think you underestimate how long a telegram can be.

Not everyone who sent telegrams was as poor as Victor Hugo inquiring about the English sales of Les Miserables by sending a single '?"

[–] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It could grip it by the husk

[–] kmartburrito@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

The cylinder must remain unharmed

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

That makes sense, thanks for explaining it

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The pigeons were trained to fly home. You'd have to bring one with you if you wanted to send a message home.

[–] HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A greas example of this is the Lost Battalion of WWI.

They had with them, a carrier pigeon (since walkie talkies weren't widely available yet). They communicated with their command because command held the "home" cages for all the carrier pigeons.

A not so fun fact, miscalculation of a supporting artillery birrage was firing upon the batallion's position. How did they communicate for them to stop? They had to convince the pigeon to fly scared shirtless by all the explosions to tell command to fucking stop firing.

[–] shweddy@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

If you wanted to send me a letter you'd visit me and borrow one of my pigeons. Attach the letter to the pigeon and it'll fly back home to me