Why is user email stored in /var/mail instead of /var/spool/mail?

What is the purpose of /var/spool? When machines are news servers, where
does the news go /var/spool/news?

It seems like spool is meant to be considerably larger than /var, so why
is mail stored by default on /var/? 

Anybody feel like explaining exactly what "spool" means, anyway? 

Just wondering. 

And while I'm here: Why do so many Unix installations that will never ever
use UUCP still come default with uucppublic drwxrwxrwx? Isn't that just
asking for abuse?
--
XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Junior, Comp. Sci.     -   House of Retrocomputing
XCOMM  mailto:kpneal@pobox.com              -   http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/
XCOMM  kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu              Spoken by Keir Finlow-Bates:
XCOMM "Good grief, I've just noticed I've typed in a rant. Sorry chaps!"