What Is the Only State For Which the 2-Letter Postal Code Was Changed, and Why?

The codes were first adopted in 1963.

I just learned about this; you can see here for the answer.

Bonus question: What are the postal codes AA, AE, AP, FM, MH, MP, and PW?

Comments

[Tom for equal rights]

NB changed to NE to accomodate new brunswick

[Hugo S. Cunningham]

NE (Nebraska) from time to time brings confusion with the "Northeast", and, especially, with "New England". "NS" was already taken by "Nova Scotia." I was going to suggest "NK", but that could be confused with "North Korea."

[ducksalad]

1963. The Munich of postal diplomacy.

[ducksalad]

Oops, meant 1969. But I'm sure they were plotting it earlier.

[Flight-ER-Doc]

The others are military post offices

The one changed was Nebraska

[silverpie]

Some of them are. Specifically, AA is Armedforces Americas, AE is Europe, and AP is Pacific.

The others are territories in the Pacific. FM is Micronesia, MH the Marshall Islands, MP the Northern Marianas, and PW is Palau. (Bonus: they all used to use the abbreviation TT, for Trust Territories.)

[Bubba Jones]

Eugene reads reddit!

[Bubba Jones]

This was a long thread in dataisbeautiful IIRC

[David Nieporent]

An actually relevant YouTube link, unlike Kirkland's typical ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLECCmKnrys

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Does every attempt to bring some culture and joy to this disaffected, bigoted, sad blog offend you?

[Frank Drackman]

Oklahoma is OK!

[Syd Henderson]

But Maine is really ME!

[John F. Carr]

I forget the details, but I remember a court ruling against a request to consider a document legally invalid because it used old style state abbreviations (Mass., Me., Vt.) instead of two letter upper case codes (ME, ME, VT).

[Noscitur a sociis]

Okay then!

[Absaroka]

The ATF is supposedly really picky about those as well.