Ian Stewart: Number Symbolism ... Lincoln and Kennedy
[Ian Stewart is a science writer, science fiction writer, and a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick in England. ]
Humanity has had a love-hate relationship with numbers from the earliest times. This relationship is especially appropriate to discuss this week, as yet another Friday the 13th rolls around.
As I explain in greater length in my entry on “number symbolism” for Encyclopaedia Britannica, the enormous range of symbolic roles that numbers have played in various cultures, religions, and other systems of human thought can be gauged from a brief survey, which I aim to provide this week in five, daily blogs, covering number mysticism and numbers 1-20, plus 100.
Numerical coincidences abound, and they are often so remarkable that it is difficult to explain them rationally. Not surprisingly, many people become convinced that these coincidences have irrational explanations. What, for example, should be made of the famous similarities (not all of them numerological) between U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, taken from a far more extensive list in Martin Gardner’s The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix (1985)?
Lincoln was elected president in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.
Both were assassinated on a Friday.
Lincoln was killed in Ford’s Theatre; Kennedy was killed riding in a Lincoln convertible made by the Ford Motor Company.
Both were succeeded by Southern Democrats named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, Lyndon Johnson in 1908.
The first name of Lincoln’s private secretary was John, the last name of Kennedy’s private secretary was Lincoln.
John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839, Lee Harvey Oswald in 1939.
Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and fled to a warehouse; Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theatre.
John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald both have 15 letters.
The first public suggestion that Lincoln should run for president proposed that his running mate should be John Kennedy. (John Pendleton Kennedy was a Maryland politician.)
Shift each letter of FBI forward by six letters in the alphabet and you get LHO, the initials of Lee Harvey Oswald.
One explanation for coincidences of this kind is selective reporting. Anything that fits is kept; anything that does not is discarded....
Read entire article at Britannica Blog
Humanity has had a love-hate relationship with numbers from the earliest times. This relationship is especially appropriate to discuss this week, as yet another Friday the 13th rolls around.
As I explain in greater length in my entry on “number symbolism” for Encyclopaedia Britannica, the enormous range of symbolic roles that numbers have played in various cultures, religions, and other systems of human thought can be gauged from a brief survey, which I aim to provide this week in five, daily blogs, covering number mysticism and numbers 1-20, plus 100.
Numerical coincidences abound, and they are often so remarkable that it is difficult to explain them rationally. Not surprisingly, many people become convinced that these coincidences have irrational explanations. What, for example, should be made of the famous similarities (not all of them numerological) between U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, taken from a far more extensive list in Martin Gardner’s The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix (1985)?
Lincoln was elected president in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.
Both were assassinated on a Friday.
Lincoln was killed in Ford’s Theatre; Kennedy was killed riding in a Lincoln convertible made by the Ford Motor Company.
Both were succeeded by Southern Democrats named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, Lyndon Johnson in 1908.
The first name of Lincoln’s private secretary was John, the last name of Kennedy’s private secretary was Lincoln.
John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839, Lee Harvey Oswald in 1939.
Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and fled to a warehouse; Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theatre.
John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald both have 15 letters.
The first public suggestion that Lincoln should run for president proposed that his running mate should be John Kennedy. (John Pendleton Kennedy was a Maryland politician.)
Shift each letter of FBI forward by six letters in the alphabet and you get LHO, the initials of Lee Harvey Oswald.
One explanation for coincidences of this kind is selective reporting. Anything that fits is kept; anything that does not is discarded....