Treinta y Tres

Rolling Rocks’ 33

Where has the year gone? 365 days ago seems almost like yesterday. At least they were a relatively good 365 day (with an obvious exception… but I guess it could have been much worse).

So… what has 33 have in store? Anyone’s guess really… but looking at the significance of the number, one suspects there might be a bit there.

• 33 is the largest positive integer that can not be expressed as a sum of different triangular numbers. It is also the smallest odd repdigit that’s not prime (unless we consider 1-digit integers to also be repdigits).
• The sum of the first four factorials is 33.
• Jesus’s age when he was crucified in 33 A.D., according to many, though not verified historically.
• Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three.
• A highly significant number to the Freemasons, and is one of their sacred numbers, recurring profusely throughout their ‘Dogma’ (as Albert Pike calls it), rituals and other miscellaneous places.
• In French, Italian, Romanian and Spanish, the word a patient is usually asked to say when a doctor is listening to his or her lungs with a stethoscope (Trente-Trois, Trentatrè, Treizeci ÅŸi trei, and Treinta y Tres).
• A normal human spine has 33 vertebrae when the bones that form the coccyx are counted individually.
• And much much more…

Oh well, with the world cup this year, and a new PC coming soon (fingers crossed), hopefully there will be more blogging this year than last.