131–140 of 406 posts
Olga was a famous doorkeeper at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. Students used to send her postcards from their journeys. It became so popular that it was enough to write "Olga, Sweden" for her to get the letters [0] (source in swedish). [0]: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Boberg
I live in London too, but I really don't think this would work well for most things, Royal Mail, sure. But if I give a this to a private parcel company, theres no way they are going to figure out that, despite being the only #9 in my postcode, there are 3 streets that my postcode covers, google maps doesn't locate my house specicically if I put "9 ', it will absolutely be marked as could not locate.
I suspect there are databases that will geolocate such an address.
Loved your article! >> I wrote myself a letter, headed to the nearest postbox, and posted it. >> A couple of days later, I was very happy to find this in my postbox! To make this more robust, i'd try this exercise 10-20 times. Different dates (to test for driver). Different sources (to test for source PO)
Some brilliant examples of postal detective work in Ireland documented here https://www.quora.com/Can-you-send-mail-in-Ireland-with-the-... . eg Petra Kindler and Donal Moore Unfortunately I forgot the street name but it's near a street named *Cul de Sac* The beautiful city of Waterford, well known for its kindly postmen IRELAND
It was successfully and correctly delivered to the Dáil (the lower house of the Irish parliament).
ETA: source —- https://www.her.ie/amp/lol/unbelievable-this-letter-made-it-...
In Finland, you can send a letter to Santa Claus with only this address: Joulupukki 99999 Korvatunturi Where "Joulupukki" is the Finnish name for Santa, and "Korvatunturi" is the mountain where he supposedly lives. Postal code 99999 was reserved for this purpose.
Grandma
It looks like it went through the automated letter sorter, too (see the orange barcode that's been added to the envelope). Not surprising as the address is even more unambiguous to a machine than a human. Occasionally there are viral stories here of letters being addressed to places like "The blue house, Termonfeckin, Ireland", which looks like it conveys less information even if it's physically longer. These get man…
> It looks like it went through the automated letter sorter, too I understand the mail sorting depots can x-ray scan and read the contents of letters up to 4 pages of a4 folded, but that could have been hackers feeding me fake info in order to stop me writing letters. An example of the technique https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/02/researchers-re...
While this type of 3D X-Ray technique is indeed possible it requires expensive specialized equipment and a great deal of effort, thus it being a major achievement for this university group. Or in other words, if a research group puts out a press release lauding a first, it is not likely to be a technology in use in thousands of sorting centers for millions of mail pieces daily.
In the US, someone I know who had a Post Office box liked writing simply `box-number zip-code` as their address. It worked. Eg, if you wrote on an envelope: 1034 21240 It would get there! You might want to add a "Box" before the "1034" to be safe -- and to disambiguate between a house number, as in OP? (I'm not sure just a house number would ever work in the USA?) But it looks cooler with just two numbers. Especially…
In many cases, the PO box number becomes the suffix of ZIP+4 so you could probably write 21240-1084. I have friends use this nine digit number as their return address. Note: the real barcodes use 11 digits. There are two extra digits beyond the Zip+4 that encode the stop along the route. The Zip+4 gets you to the block but then you need two more digits to specify the house/apartment etc. If you can decide the barcode…
"I am sure some postcodes only contain one house number, in which case you could use just the postcode as your address, which would be quite cool. "
Indeed.
There are 55,540 full postcodes in England and Wales that contain only one household.
This would mean you could just send the letter to the postcode itself.
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...