in
New Zealand (1899) Evidence exists suggesting that homing pigeons were used for
pigeon post in
Ancient Egypt by 1350 BCE. Messages were tied around the legs of the pigeon, which was freed and could reach its original nest.
Pliny the Elder described pigeons used in a similar fashion as military messengers around the first century CE. By the 19th century homing pigeons were used extensively for military communications. The use of flying messenger pigeons was well-established as early as 3000 years ago. They were used to proclaim the winner of the
Ancient Olympics. Messenger pigeons were used as early as 1150 in
Baghdad and also later by
Genghis Khan. By 1167 a regular service between Baghdad and Syria had been established by Sultan
Nur ad-Din. In
Damietta, by the mouth of the Nile, the Spanish traveller
Pedro Tafur saw carrier pigeons for the first time, in 1436, though he imagined that the birds made round trips, out and back. The
Republic of Genoa equipped their system of watch towers in the Mediterranean Sea with pigeon posts.
Tipu Sultan of
Mysore (1750–1799) also used messenger pigeons; they returned to the Jamia Masjid mosque in
Srirangapatna, which was his headquarters. The pigeon holes may be seen in the mosque's minarets to this day. A great pigeon race called the Cannonball Run took place at
Brussels in 1818. In 1860,
Paul Reuter, who later founded
Reuters press agency, used a fleet of over 45 pigeons to deliver news and stock prices between Brussels and
Aachen, the terminus of early telegraph lines. During the
Franco-Prussian War pigeons were used to carry mail between besieged Paris and the French unoccupied territory. In December 1870, it took ten hours for a pigeon carrying
microfilms to fly from
Perpignan to
Brussels. Historically, pigeons carried messages only one way, to their home. They had to be transported manually before another flight. However, by placing their food at one location and their home at another location, pigeons have been trained to fly back and forth up to twice a day reliably, covering round-trip flights up to 160 km (100 mi). Their reliability has lent itself to occasional use on mail routes, such as the
Great Barrier Pigeongram Service established between the
Auckland,
New Zealand, suburb of
Newton and
Great Barrier Island in November 1897, possibly the first regular
air mail service in the world. The world's first "airmail" stamps were issued for the Great Barrier Pigeon-Gram Service from 1898 to 1908. In the 19th century, newspapers sometimes used carrier pigeons. To get news from Europe quicker, some New York City newspapers used carrier pigeons. The distance from Europe to Halifax, Nova Scotia, is relatively short. So reporters stationed themselves in Halifax, wrote the information received from incoming ships, and put the messages in capsules attached to the legs of homing pigeons. The birds would then fly from Halifax to New York City where the information would be published. The
Swiss army stopped using pigeons in 1994. The military had used pigeons for 77 years and said it planned to train 12 of the 30,000 birds to compete on the European racing circuit. The rest were likely to "end up on people's dinner tables". Homing pigeons were still employed in the 21st century by certain remote police departments in
Odisha state in eastern
India to provide emergency communication services following
natural disasters. In March 2002, it was announced that India's Police Pigeon Service messenger system in Odisha was to be retired, due to the expanded use of the
Internet. The
Taliban banned the keeping or use of pigeons, including racing pigeons, in
Afghanistan in the late 1990s. To this day, pigeons are still entered into competitions. ==Navigation==