A Chinese-born couple has successfully asked the town of Nootdorp, South Holland to change the address of their recently bought villa from 4 to 2A. They submitted their claim, explaining that in Chinese culture, the number four (Pinyin transliteration: sì) is considered unlucky by many Chinese, as it also sounds like the word ‘death’ (so I’ve heard many times), a superstition known as tetraphobia, an aversion to or fear of the number 4. The neighbour at number 2 complained about the change, but his complaint was simply ignored because he sent it in too late.

This photo, taken in a residential building in Shanghai, has no 4, no 13 (triskaidekaphobia), no 14 and a weird -1.

The story goes that “404 error” HTTP standard response code on the Internet is not a particularly appreciated error message, either.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl, photo: Photo by Chrisobyrne, used under the terms of the GNU Free Document License 1.2.)