James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
I don' t know and I don't much care why the number 7 is considered lucky. But I do know that people who hold to such nonsense seem incapable of making sense even of their own superstitions. Consider this pitch from the marketing department of mydomains.com:
7-7-07 is your lucky day at MyDomain.com!First of all, while it is true that the 7th day, of the 7th month of the 7th year of each of millennium only happens once every millennium, a 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year of each century appears 10 times as often in the calendar, the last time being July 7, 1907.The 7th day, of the 7th month of the 7th year happens only once per millennia. We're celebrating this rare day with a group of incredible weekend specials.
Second, if 7-7-07 will bring good fortune, shouldn't 7-7-77 be even luckier? I don't think July 7, 1977 was a memorably good for me, as I have no idea what I was doing back then. I suppose I might have been at summer camp....
So that means that since July 7, 1007, there have been dozens of days that could have brought at least as good, if not better, fortunes than this past Saturday, and July 7, 1777, which brings us five sevens (!), should have been an incredibly good day. ( suppose it was for some American revolutionaries, but probably not so much for British colonial administrators and soldiers.)
The only thing that might make mydomains.com's appeal worthy of attention to a occidental numerologist would be the fact that this is the first appearance of a four-sevens date since the advent of commercial internet domain-name distribution. But I suppose that would have been difficult to turn into an appealing marketing campaign.
Update: following the appearance of this post, The Island of Doubt was named Blog of the Day by Red Orbit.
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Comments
Here's a bit of lucky 7 trivia from the 1970's:
The band Styx released it's 7th album on 07/07/77. The Grand Illusion became a megahit and was the first of 4 consecutive multi-platinum albums for the band.
Posted by: Charlie | July 10, 2007 6:36 AM