Pigeons are still (sometimes) faster than your internet - The Washington Post

Internet speeds have come a long way since the days of the dial-up modem, but sometimes you can’t beat the millennia-old method of carrier pigeon. Ancient Greeks used the so-called rats of the sky to spread results of the Olympic Games. In 1850, Reuters used a fleet of 45 pigeons to send news and stock prices 75 miles between Brussels and Aachen, Germany. The trip took two hours. (A train would have taken six.) The U.S. Army also boasted its own fleet of carrier pigeons, sending 600 to France during World War I. Racing pigeons clock an average of 40 miles per hour and typically race up to 400 miles, roughly from D.C. to Boston, according to the American Racing Pigeon Union. With the boost of a tailwind, pigeons have been recorded going as fast as 110 mph and as far as 1,000 miles. At certain data volumes and distances, the pigeon is a quicker option for large swaths of rural America, where internet speeds can lag far behind the national average. Here’s when it may be faster to wing it:

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• Jaime Redondo Yuste