Telephonists in the 1870s noticed that spoken letters got misheard over the line, so they started substituting whole words. Western Union’s 1910s version ran Adams, Boston, Chicago; the British Army’s WWI take was odder still — Beer, Monkey, Nuts, Orange, Pip, Yorker. By WWII every armed service had its own, until the newly formed International Civil Aviation Organization spent years testing words for one trait: staying distinguishable to non-native ears. ICAO locked the list in 1956. We’re still spelling out Papa and Quebec.