[kitd]

The Duke of Wellington's address, Apsley House, was famously:

1, London

Funny story: Back in the 1950s, my father went on a rugby tour to the Soviet Union. One of his team mates wrote a postcard back to his mum with an address of:

Mrs Williams,

Clynderwen

"Clynderwen" being the little village he came from. My dad said, "You can't just put that". He, none too bright, said "Why not? There's only one Clynderwen", and posted it.

6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia".

[fakedang]

> 6 months later, and about 5 1/2 after the end of the tour, it arrived. All over it were notes saying things like "Unknown in Hong Kong. Try Australia".

Man, that's some serious organizational ethic! If only both companies and people were as exact today...

[photojosh]

Is this not basically once-off nerd-sniping for post workers... "ooh: here's a challenge."?

I'm sure you only hear about the success stories.

[ce4]

In my case it was an embarrassing success story... my great uncles name was globally, or at least unique in Germany, i misspelled it, got the postcode wrong, forgot street and house number (sent from abroad)... and it arrived a month or so later. Boy got I laughed at. I'd rather wished it had disappeared. Thats was back in the 90's.

[kolinko]

Some other embarassing success story. My gf bought a postcard in Czech Republic, filled it with my address in Warsaw, but forgot to buy poststamps.

She didn't send the postcards and carried them to Warsaw. In Warsaw they fell out of her pocket on a street, or something like that.

Still, they arrived in our post box. We still don't have an idea how and why :)

[netsharc]

If it was already in Warsaw, it's possible some bored civilians found the postcard and decided to go to your address and put it in the mailbox...

[fakedang]

Haha, I can imagine some post-master and his workers' eyes glinting with excitement once they find a letter of this sort. "Ooooh, unmarked letter... It's showtime!"

[sseagull]

There's the story from last year of a letter being delivered that only had a description of the person and where the person used to live:

https://twitter.com/weefeargal/status/1479069076144234497

[jraph]

and also this letter / package addressed with broken encoding, decoded by the postal service.

[sideshowb]

We received a letter from a friend in France, in the 2000s, addressed to Wellington but no country specified. Also present were an nz postmark and "try great Britain".

[samstave]

This is the most british-ish written post I have ever read, and now my internal dialog is stuck on the british accent setting.

Ill never forget my great aunt amy (my grandmothers sister, they were both canadian by birth in 1923-time)

"Grandma, I didnt know Amy was british!?"

"Neither did we dear, neither did we"

(My great aunt would talk with a British accent)

Family fact - my uncle (Amy's son) went to school with Bill and Paul in Seattle and we have a pic of them together...

[sideshowb]

You should reconfigure that dialog to Welsh ;-)

[User23]

Back then Canada was still a Dominion of the British Empire so they were British, at least legally. That changed with the Balfour Declaration of 1926.

[snthpy]

Isn't this how IP addresses work?

No 8.8.8.8 here, try over there ...

[Doxin]

Not really. As far as I understand it the routing tables should always point you in the right direction for an IP address.

[DeusExMachina]

A routing table being a list pairing an address to a location. Same with addresses. You need to know where London is or the next post hub where to send the letter.