The Ice House Lincoln

Readers might know that Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Mass., was once "harvested" for winter ice, which was shipped regularly to Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras in the 19th century. If you didn't know about this fascinating trade, or the crazy entrepreneur Frederic Tudor who started it, you can read a review of "The Frozen-Water Trade" here.

But that trade is a gift that keeps on giving. Last Saturday a rare Lincoln stamp was sold for over four hundred thousand dollars. The stamp was on an envelope sent by a New England ice merchant to India:

Markings on the envelope reveal that it traveled across the Atlantic, by train through Germany and Italy, by ship to Egypt and again from Suez to Bombay, and then by train across India.

(see article in today's NYT here). Cheers.