Overtime

Between 1963 and 1987, a tortoiseshell cat named Towser caught an estimated 28,899 mice in Scotland’s Glenturret Distillery. (Mice like barley.) Her prowess earned her a bronze statue and a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

Her paw prints appeared on each bottle of Fairlie’s Light Highland Liqueur.

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Misc

  • EVIAN, SEIKO, and STROH’S are all English words spelled backward.
  • Can “I apologize” be false?
  • 165033 = 163 + 503 + 333
  • Little Wymondley, in Hertfordshire, is bigger than Great Wymondley.
  • “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?” — Satchel Paige
| Language · Science & Math · Trivia

Misc

  • The smallest number name that’s typed with eight fingers is ONE SEPTILLION ONE THOUSAND.
  • Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus are all towns in Indiana.
  • 2427 = 21 + 42 + 23 + 74
  • SAN DIEGO is an anagram of DIAGNOSE.
  • “It is not customary to love what one has.” — Anatole France
| Language · Quotations · Science & Math · Trivia

Misc

  • The sum of the numbers on a roulette wheel is 666.
  • ANTITRINITARIANIST contains all 24 arrangements of the letters I, N, R, and T.
  • The Empire State Building has its own zip code.
  • 63945 = 63 × (-9 + 45)
  • “Isn’t it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most!” — Charles Lindbergh
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Confirmed

In 1964, two students at California’s Pomona College hypothesized that the number 47 appears with unusual frequency in the world. They began to amass examples, starting a campus tradition that continues to this day:

  • The Declaration of Independence consists of 47 sentences.
  • The New Testament credits Jesus with 47 miracles.
  • Tolstoy’s novel The Kreutzer Sonata is named after Beethoven’s Opus 47.
  • Pancho Villa was killed by a barrage of 47 bullets.
  • The Pythagorean Theorem is Proposition 47 of Euclid’s Elements.
  • The tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are located 47 degrees apart.
  • Cesar proclaimed “Veni, vidi, vici” in 47 B.C.

Now the hypothesis has produced its own reality: Pomona graduate Joe Menosky became a writer for Star Trek and helped to build a universe where 47 appears oddly often:

  • The Enterprise stops at Sub-Space Relay Station 47, a character shrinks to 47 centimeters, and the crew discovers element 247.
  • On Voyager, the emergency medical holographic channel is 47.
  • On Star Trek: Generations, Scotty beams up 47 El-Aurians before their ship is destroyed.
  • According to the 2009 film, the Enterprise was built in Sector 47 of the Riverside Shipyards, and Nero’s ship, the Narada, is said to have destroyed 47 Klingon ships.

Trek producer Brannon Braga has confirmed that Voyager‘s Harry Kim lives in Apartment 4-G because G is the seventh letter in the alphabet.

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