Sunday, March 3, 2013

40: A Very Important Number

Guys, I have a very very VERY special announcement for all of you!!!! This is the fortieth ever DP post! Five times my favourite number, 8 (random)! And for a long while I've wanted to do a post that says some cool facts about a specific number, so a few weeks ago I realised that the upcoming post number 40 would be a perfect opportunity!

It's a wonderful word, forty. And it's unique, because of all the numbers in the world it's the only one to have its letters arranged in alphabetical order. So wonderfully unique is 40 that Christianity chose it to be the number of days Jesus fasted for AND the length of the Biblical floods. Tennis has decided to make 40 significant in its scoring (the reason for this isn't known), and whoever invented temperature scale decided to make 40 Celsius and 40 Fahrenheit uniquely equal. The stuff that makes up our bones (calcium) is mass number 40,  and the stuff in zirconium (fake diamond) is atomic number 40. And the UK Top 40 is 40 rather than 100 like in other countries because of the 40-record storage limit on early jukeboxes!

Some pretty notable stuff happened 40 years ago in 1973 as well, hard though it is to believe for an impressionable 12-year-old like me. We (by that I mean UK for those of you who don't what country I live in), along with Denmark, joined the EEC, and the iconic Sydney Opera House was opened. The Bahamas gained independence, and the Vietnam War ended, to name but a few important 40-year-old events. Also in 1973 people like Heidi Klum, Gwyneth Paltrow and Eminem came into the world (all 40 this year, unbelievably).

On a sadder note, some other famous people have died seriously young. Glenn Miller, John Lennon, Edgar Allan Poe and Jack London all died aged 40. However, XL, 40 in Roman numerals, is either extra-large, or more cheerfully, excellent!

Still not yet convinced by all of this that forty is an awesome number? Well, take a look at these beautiful fireworks!





-DP :)

PS BLOG MAINTENANCE POINT! I have added a new animated pageview record, that moves one higher every time someone looks at my blog! Oh, and the firework image isn't mine.

3 comments:

  1. Brilliant post...though strangely didn't get the email. Such a cool new gadget!!
    HG :p

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  2. Hey! Just wanted to say that I really like your blog!
    -Dare
    http://bright-eyes-and-beautiful-lies.blogspot.ca/

    ReplyDelete