Longest delay in mail delivery

A bag of Indian diplomatic mail took more than 46 years to be delivered. The mail bag was found on Mont Blanc in the French Alps, near the site of an Air India plane crash from 1966. Mountain rescue worker Arnaud Christmann and his neighbour Jules Berger recovered the bag on 21 August 2012. It was stamped "Diplomatic mail" and "Ministry of External Affairs". Arnaud Christmann joked that "We were hoping for diamonds or at least a few gold ingots. Instead we got some soaking wet mail and Indian newspapers." "Some tourists came and told us they had seen something shining on the Bossons glacier," said Arnaud Christmann. He and his neighbour decided to investigate. At the wreckage site they found pieces of a plane cabin, chairs, electrical cables, a wheel and a shoe.

"On our way down, after about 100 feet, Jules and I saw almost at the same time a pouch lying on the glacier. It was a big surprise. We did not know what it was until we read on it 'Diplomatic Mail'. We could not believe it. What a great discovery, we thought. We looked inside the pouch, which was open. We only saw documents, nothing shiny, no treasure. The documents were wet and frozen. We did not want to damage them after 46 years under the ice in case there was historical value to them. It's not the sort of thing you find very often in the mountains – the mail's going to arrive 46 years late."

The diplomatic bag, which Christmann describes as "sitting as if someone had just placed it there", was later handed over to police officials in the town of Chamonix, at the base of the mountain.

The Kangchenjunga was a Boeing 707 flying from Mumbai (Bombay) to New York (USA). It crashed on the southwest face of Mont Blanc, western Europe's highest mountain, on 24 January 1966. All 117 people on board died.