[cjs_ac]

Bill Bryson claimed to have received a letter addressed to ‘Bill Bryson, Writer, Yorkshire’.

I have some cousins who live in a small town in Australia where the houses have neither names nor numbers. You just address the envelope to ‘<name>, <street>, <town>’, and it’s the postie’s responsibility to know where everyone lives. (‘Postie’ is the official job title in Australia Post because it’s gender-neutral.)

[wang_li]

Until 2025 Carmel-by-the-Sea in California had no street addresses. The houses have names or you just have to know who lives in which building. They also didn't have postal delivery, they all had to go to the town post office and pick up their mail.

[eythian]

I lived in mildly rural NZ back in the day and it was the same, addresses were "name, street, RD# (rural delivery route number), town" and your mailbox had your name on the side (and a flag you could put up if you wanted mail collected.)

Some time roughly mid-nineties we got numbers but originally they were just for emergency services, only later were they also for post, but I seem to recall the whole rural delivery system may have changed somehow around then too.

[pseudohadamard]

RD addresses are still the same. Downside is you have to pay extra for rural delivery because the posties get danger money for avoiding the sheep-eating wetas.

[gerdesj]

It works for Wal and Cooch!

(I am a Brit and a massive fan of Footrot Flats)

[KurSix]

I love these examples because they show that addressing has never really been as formal as we like to pretend

[mitxela]

Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...

[throw0101c]

And various discussions:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=mjt.me.uk