ISO 3166 (country codes) Maintenance Agency Web pages move

[John Cowan]

Alain LaBonté  wrote:


> [Alain]  What about phone numbers, postal codes, street numbers, to 
> quote but the most obvious meaningful identifiers?


I'm confused.  Do you mean "meaningless identifiers"? They look
meaningless to me.  House numbers in North America (and in France
also, it seems) have a few bits of meaning: the least-significant
(numeric) bit tells you which side of the street the house is on,
and it's often the case that you can deduce the cross street
from the house number.  Similarly with the others.

Just how old are house numbers, anyway?  Not the *concept* of
numbering houses (which seems to be 18th century), but actual unaltered
house numbers?  Anyone know?

ObFact: the "4711" on bottles of cologne (the real stuff) is a
house number in Koeln, as established by the Napoleonic occupiers.

-- 
John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_