ZIPs

I admit that I'm a little bit of a trivia buff. (have you played the AWorldDiscovered Trivia quiz today?) One thing that always catches my eye is when I see websites, etc that lowercase ZIP code (or don't allow international Postal Codes for that matter). Most people have no idea that ZIP is really an acronym (so I guess it should be Z.I.P. code technically) for Zoning Improvement Plan. It was an attempt to optimize the mail delivery in the US. It essentially broke the US into sectors that could be coded into a 5 digit code. That code can be easily decoded as well. This zipdecode site shows a cool way to present the ever decreasing size of the ZIP codes. Type in the first digit of the ZIP code and it'll show you the area of the US that code covers. Add the second digit and you see the sub-section of the first are, etc all the way down to the specific city that the code covers. There are other sites that will show you what area a ZIP code covers, but this is the most visually appealing.