DID YOU KNOW?

Some amazing facts from The No.1 Book of Numbers

Very young babies already have a sense of number.

The first ever no. 1 in the pop music singles charts on 14 November 1952 was ‘Here in My Heart’ by Al Martino.

One-eyed giants exist in many cultures but most famous are the Greek Cylopes, headed by Polyphemus who liked to eat his victims raw.

Two is the first even number the first prime and the only prime that is an even number. And any number multiplied by 2 is the same as that number added to itself.

Any map can be coloured using only 4 colours.

Six is a perfect number – all the numbers by which it can be divided (1,2,3) add up to 6, the number itself.

Seven is a number occurring in all aspects of life, from luck to religion. Think Snow White, colours of the rainbow, deadly sins and Hindu Chakras.

To the Chinese 8 is the luckiest number (because it sounds like the word for prosperity) and it’s no coincidence that the Beijing Olympics began at 8 seconds and 8 minutes past 8 pm on 8/08/2008.

Austria has borders with 8 other countries.

Fear of the number 13 is called triskaidekaphobia. It may relate to the number at table at the Last Supper.

87 is the unluckiest number for Australian cricketers – 13 away from 100. Wherever Mandarin is spoken, 4 is unlucky because the word for it sounds very similar to ‘death’.

The luckiest male is believed to be the seventh son of the seventh son. 10 Rillington Place was once London’s most notorious address, home of mass murdered Reginald Christie, but no longer exists.

John Shapherd-Barron, inventor of the PIN originally envisaged it being 6 numbers but reverted to 4 when his wife found 6 impossible to remember.

57 was never an exact number of Heinz products. Henry J. Heinz chose the number in an advertising campaign of 1896 because 5 was his lucky number and 7 his wife’s.

Coco Chanel chose ‘5’ for her iconic perfume which was, to her, an almost sacred number.

The Chicago song ‘25 or 6 to 4’ refers to the efforts of Robert Lamm, founder member of the group, to write in the early hours of the morning at 25 or 26 minutes to 4 in the morning.

‘99 Red Balloons’ originated as an anti-war protest song in a divided Germany in 1983.

The first footballer to be literally worth his weight in gold was ‘Jackie’ Sewell bought by Sheffield United from Notts County in 1951 for £34,500. That money would have purchased 78 kg (172 lb) of gold.