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Rocket Mail of the Worldfuel when it exploded, killing all three. Tiling was only 30 years of age. There is a crater on the moon named after him.Gerhard ZuckerBorn in 1900 in Germany%u2019s Harz Mountains, Zucker was a butter and cheese maker. In 1925 he first began shooting off fireworks-type rockets locally on %u201crocket post%u201d flights. Over the next few years, he traveled around Germany promoting his designs, and praising their suitability to transport mail. But many of his demonstration flights turned out to be embarrassing failures. In 1933, he showed a 13-foot rocket to a large crowd of Nazi officials, and boasted that it was %u201cthe largest rocket ever built on earth.%u201d Rather than give him the 10,000 Deutschmarks he wanted to develop his idea, they sent him to a lunatic asylum for a psychiatric evaluation. He was locked up for two hours before a friendly psychiatrist declared him sane.In 1934, Zucker emigrated to Britain and tried to interest that government in Rocket Mail. After a successful launch (with dummy letters) on June 6th, the General Post Office realized that Rocket Mail might be useful in areas that were otherwise hard to reach. So they asked for another demonstration in Scotland, which Zucker attempted the next month. The rocket was to travel a mile from the Scottish mainland to Scarp Island, but unfortunately exploded as soon as the fuel ignited. He tried another test in December, but it also failed. Unimpressed, the British government branded him a %u201cthreat to the income of the Post Office and the security of the country,%u201d then had him deported. As soon as he arrived back on German soil, the Gestapo arrested him on suspicion of being an ally of the British.After being released by the Nazis on the condition he stop all rocket experiments, he lived the next 30 years in relative obscurity. Then, on May 10, 1964, he held another public rocket demonstration, which was another failure%u2014and two schoolboys were killed. This led West Germany to ban private rocket launches. But Zucker continued feeding his obsession throughout the 1970s. He died in 1985, and in 2004 the film The Rocket Post memorialized his early blunders in Great Britain.Rocket Mail Covers and StampsBroadly speaking, Rocket Mail covers consist of envelopes or cards, with the cards being made of either standard post-card stock or merely slips of paper. Styles and sizes vary widely.Two types of stamps were used on Rocket Mail covers. One kind was produced by the rocketeer to be decorative or informative. They are referred to as rocket stamps, while most other philatelists call non-postage stamps either labels, Cinderella stamps, or poster stamps. Rocket stamps were not valid for postage, and sometimes a cover would be affixed with more than one. If the item was meant to actually be mailed, there also needed to be a postage stamp, issued by the local postal system. Rocket Mail covers also often have other markings, cachets, etiquettes, text, or signatures to add interest to the fronts or backs.Because of the inability to guide rockets accurately, Rocket Mail was generally not blasted directly to a destination. Instead, after being flown a short distance, the mail was recovered. If it was addressed to someone (sometimes the rocketeer) and to be actually mailed, it was then taken to a nearby Post Office where the postage stamp was cancelled and the mail was forwarded to the addressee. Rocket Mail pioneer Gerhard Zucker in May 1932.