Interesting that these are called "cab numbers" - I was expecting 1729 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1729_(number)#As_a_Ramanujan_n...), based on the story of circa 1919 involving Ramanujan. It looks like Dudeney (1917) predates these - the original source is his "Amusements in Mathematics" (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16713/pg16713-images.ht...) and he poses there a different puzzle involving numbers on taxis. I guess this is just a common source of integers appearing in one's environment.