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Rocket Mail of the WorldIndiaIndia %u2014 December 19, 1992 %u2014 Department of Posts.First Day Cover for stamp honoring India%u2019s rocket pioneer, Stephen H. Smith, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.Stephen Smith was the Secretary of the Indian Airmail Society with an interest in aerophilately. He also claimed to be an aerospace engineer, but there is no evidence of any formal training. He fought in the Great War, and worked for a while as a dentist, a policeman, then a customs clerk. His interest in rocketry began in childhood when, along with some classmates, he attempted to launch a rocket containing a live garden lizard over a swimming pool. Smith launched his first Rocket Mail flight on September 30, 1934 using a rocket made locally by the Orient Firework Company of Calcutta. It made a ship-to-shore flight and carried 143 covers. Even though the rocket exploded in mid-air and scattered the mail over the sea, 140 of the covers were recovered, and taken to the nearby Sagar Lighthouse, where the keeper postmarked them.Smith was the first to successfully transport foodstuff and medicine by rocket, including one launch containing rice, grain, spices, cigarettes, and 150 covers (which he called rocketgrams), across a river to an area that had suffered an earthquake. He also launched the first rocket containing livestock (a cock and a hen named Adam and Eve) in a flight with 189 covers, and in a later flight, successfully carried a snake (named Miss Creepy) along with an apple and 106 covers.By December 4, 1944, Smith had sent a total of 270 rockets aloft, and eighty of them contained mail. Unlike the European Rocket Mail pioneers, Smith was encouraged in his experiments by governmental officials. His last series of rockets was gas propelled, and his final flight took place on December 4, 1944. Smith died on February 15, 1951 at the age of 60.