We all know the numbers from 0 to 9. But how did they appear? Where did these familiar 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 come from, which we constantly use in Everyday life? What are they called and why do they have that name? Let's plunge into history and find out the answers to these and many other questions.

History of numbers

Even in ancient times, people needed an account. Even when there were no letters and numbers yet, when ancient man didn’t know what two or five were, he had to perform simple steps to divide the spoils, determine the number of people for the hunt, and many others.

Initially, he used his hands, and sometimes even his legs, and pointed with his fingers. Remember the saying “I know it like the back of my hand”? It is quite possible that it was invented in those distant times. It was the fingers that were the first tools for counting.

Life went on as usual, everything changed, people needed some other signs besides fingers. The numbers were getting bigger, it was difficult to keep them in my head, I had to somehow designate them and write them down. This is how the numbers appeared. Moreover, different countries came up with their own. The first were the Egyptians, then the Greeks and Romans. Nowadays we sometimes use Roman numerals. However, the most popular and used by us to this day are the numbers invented in India before the beginning of the 5th century.

Why are they called that?

Why are the usual numbers called Arabic, since they were invented in India? And all because they became widespread precisely thanks to Arab countries who began to actively use them. The Arabs took Indian numbers, changed them a little and began to actively use them. Among those who helped the world discover the familiar Arabic numerals were the Frenchman Alexandre de Villiers, the British teacher John Halifax and the famous mathematician Fibonacci, who often traveled to the East and studied the works of Arab scientists.

The word “digit” itself is of Arabic origin. The consonant Arabic word “sifr” denotes those icons that we are used to using 0,1, 2...9.

Let's take a closer look at the numbers

Digit 1

Guess the riddle:

Sister with a sly nose
The account will be opened...( unit)

That's right, this is number 1. The very first number. It's easy to write. This is where acquaintance with numbers always begins. You can make any number from units, for example 1+1=2, etc. In China, one is the beginning of everything. However, so do we. Start school year– September 1, and New Year- 1st of January.

The number 1 symbolizes the beginning, unity, integrity, like God, the sun, the universe, the cosmos. It is an indivisible and unique number.

Digit 2

Next riddle:

Neck, tail and head,
Like a swan number...( two)

Number 2. Look at it carefully. She really looks like a swan. In some countries, the two is considered a symbol of opposition, and in some, on the contrary, a symbol of pairing. And also integrity. Millions of creation without a pair are not whole... For example, two wings, two eyes, two ears and other parts of the body. Every family starts with two...

The number two is often found in literature. Remember Krylov’s fables “Two Doves”, “Two Dogs” or the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm “Two Brothers”, Nosov’s fairy tale “Two Frosts”. Two is the smallest prime number. And also the worst grade in school. In order not to get bad grades, you need to study well.

Digit 3

Let's solve another riddle:

What a miracle
What a number!
Every tomboy knows.
Even in our alphabet
She has a twin sister...( three)

Number 3. You probably noticed that the number three appears very often in many fairy tales: “A father had three sons”, “he rode for three days and three nights”, “spit three times”, “knock on wood three times”, “ clap your hands three times,” “turn around your axis three times,” “say something three times,” “three heroes,” “three wishes,” etc. The number "three" is considered sacred. The number really looks like the letters of the Russian alphabet “Z”.

Digit 4

I'm standing after the number 3,
And I’m a little inferior to the number five.
What kind of figure am I?

Number 4. They say that four is the most magical of numbers. In most countries it is a symbol of integrity. But in Asian countries they treat it with concern. In life, we encounter the number 4 very often: 4 seasons, 4 cardinal directions, 4 natural elements, 4 times of day, etc.

Number 5

How many fingers are there on a hand?
And a penny in the pocket,
U starfish rays,
Five rooks have beaks,
Blades of maple leaves
And the corners of the bastion,
Tell me about it all
Numbers will help us... (five)

Number 5. In most schools this is the best grade! Although, for example, in Germany they give an “A” to those who don’t try hard enough. Where can we meet five? For example, there are 5 continents on Earth, and the symbol of the Olympic Games has 5 rings, and there are 5 fingers on both hands and feet.

Number 6

How many letters does a dragon have?
And a million have zeros,
Various chess pieces
The wings of three white chickens,
Legs of the Maybug
And the sides of the chest.
If we can’t count it ourselves,
He will tell us number...(six)

Number 6. The trickiest number. If it stands on its head, the number 6 will become a nine. The cube has 6 sides, all insects have 6 legs, many musical instruments each have 6 holes - these are examples of where the number 6 appears in life.

Number 7

How many colors are there in a bright rainbow?
How many wonders of the world are there on earth?
How many hills does Moscow have in total?
This figure is so suitable for us to answer!

Number 7. Easy to write, resembles an ax or a question mark. Perhaps everyone knows that this figure is considered the luckiest. Each week has 7 days, music has 7 notes, and the rainbow has 7 colors; world civilization has 7 wonders of the world. As you can see, the number 7 is also very common in life.

I also love the number 7. folk beliefs and loves to live in fairy tales. Well, who doesn’t know such favorite fairy tales as “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats”, “The Little Flower of the Seven Flowers”, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “The Tale of the Princess and the Seven Knights”.

The most desired word in the world also contains the number 7 - Family.

Number 8

This is necessary! We wear numbers
On the nose, take a look, please.
This figure plus hooks -
You get points...

Number 8. Number 8 is an inverted infinity sign. For many nations this number is special. For example, in China it means prosperity and wealth. The famous mathematician Pythagoras also believed that the number 8 is harmony, balance and prosperity. Do you remember what holiday we celebrate on March 8? How many hooves do two cows have? How many legs does a spider have?

Number 9

A kitten was walking across the bridge,
He sat down on the bridge and hung his tail.
"Meow! It’s more convenient for me this way...”
The kitten has become a number...!

Number 9. Remember when we recently studied the number 6? Doesn't the number 9 look like it? This is the last number in the series.

Digit 0

The numbers stood up like a squad,
In a friendly number row.
First in order role
Numbers will play for us...

Number 0. This is the only number that cannot be divided by. The number zero is neither positive nor negative. The first to use the figure was the medieval Persian scholar Al-Khwarizmi.

We have already found out that the history of numbers and numbers is as old as the world. Over the entire period of its existence, figures and numbers have become overgrown with a variety of myths and legends. There are many interesting facts associated with them. The most interesting of them are presented below.

1. Translated from Arabic, the word “digit” means “emptiness, zero.” Agree, this is very symbolic.
2. Is it possible to write zero in Roman numerals? But no. You cannot write “zero” in Roman numerals; it does not exist in nature. The Romans started counting from one.
3. The largest number on this moment– centillion. It represents a unit with as many as 600 zeros. It was first written down on paper back in 1852.
4. What do you associate with the number 666? Did you know that this is the sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel in a casino?
5. All over the world it is believed that 13 is an unlucky number. In many countries, the floor numbered “13” is skipped and the twelfth is followed by the fourteenth or, for example, 12A. But in Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea) the unlucky number is 4, so the floor is also skipped. In Italy, for some reason, another unloved number is 17.
6. On the contrary, 7 is considered to be the happiest and most successful number.
7. The Arabs themselves write numbers from right to left, and not as we are used to doing from left to right.
8. An interesting theory of one mathematician is that numeric value is directly related to the number of angles in writing the numbers. Indeed, earlier the numbers were written in an angular manner; they acquired their rounded, familiar shape over time.

1. When we look at the farthest one visible stars, we are looking 4 billion years into the past. The light from it, traveling at a speed of almost 300,000 km/second, reaches us only after many years.

2. There are 33 or 34 vertebrae in the human spine.

3. There are about 2000 taste buds in the human body.

4. 99 percent mass solar system concentrated on the Sun.

5. A whale's heart beats only 9 times a minute.

6. Fingernails grow about 4 times faster than toenails.

7. 12 billion years is the age of the oldest galaxies photographed space telescope"Hubble".

8. An adult takes approximately 23,000 breaths (and exhalations) per day.

9. Children are born without kneecaps. They appear only at age Throughout life female body reproduces 7 million eggs.

10. The right lung of a person holds more air than the left.

11. The height of the Nix Olympic volcano, located on Mars, is more than 20 km.

12. A car driving with average speed 60 mph, it would take approximately 48 million years to reach our closest star (after the Sun), Proxima Centauri.

13. In Death Valley, the driest and hottest place on globe, lives over 15 species of birds, 40 species of mammals, 44 species of reptiles, 12 species of amphibians, 13 species of fish and 545 species of plants.

14. If the Earth rotated in the opposite direction around its axis, then there would be two fewer days in a year.

15. Echo - reflection of an air wave. If the rock reflecting the sound is less than 30 m away from us, then the echo does not occur.

16. In 10 minutes, a spacecraft can photograph up to 1 million square meters. km earth's surface, while such a surface can be removed from an airplane in 4 years, and geographers and geologists would need at least 80 years for this.

17. In France, near the city of Verdun there are two towers at a distance of 60 m from each other, and if you stand between them and shout, you can hear echoes of the word twelve times.

18. An iguana can stay underwater for up to 28 minutes.

19. Mormon leader Braham Young had 27 wives.

20. According to the UN, 250 thousand newborn babies are born on earth every day.

21. Every second approximately 3 people.

22. More than a third of all those who publish marriage advertisements are married.

23. The Incas and some other tribes of pre-Columbian Peru used decimal system centuries, Europe began to use this method later.

24. On May 6, 1978 at 12:34 p.m., the time and date numbers lined up in a specific order that would not repeat itself until 2078. The digits for the day of the week, date and year can be read as 5/6/78. Let's combine them with time and get 12345678.

25. The largest number used by mathematicians is a centillion. It's a 1 followed by 600 zeros. Any number over a centillion is considered abstract, lying at infinity. Although attempts have been made to define such abstractions. For example, megiston is 10 raised to the power of six billion. Or googolplex - 10 to the power of googol (googol - 1 followed by 100 zeros).

26. 1001 - the smallest four-digit number that is the sum of two cubes natural numbers.

27. The entire population of the world can be packed into a cube with an edge of one kilometer

28. In 1868 on Polish city About 100,000 meteorites fell in Pułtusk in one night.

29. 53 percent of American philatelists are... women.

30. According to research conducted by the Detroit Free Press, 68 percent of professional hockey players have lost at least one tooth on the ice.

31. English statisticians calculated that average person During his life he walks 100,000 kilometers.

32. 10% of men and 8% of women on Earth are left-handed.

33. What five-digit number, when multiplied by four, produces a number that is the reverse sequence of digits of the original number? 21978 x 4 = 87912.

34. Men commit suicide three times more than women. However, women attempt suicide three times more often than men.

35. A person blinks 10 million times a year.

36. Words national anthem Only 15% of Dutch people know the Netherlands.

37. Average age Internet users in the world are 33 years old.

38. In Japan, 93% of corpses are cremated, in England - 67, and in America - only 12%

39. Every day, 200 million couples around the world make love. That's 2000 pairs at any given time.

40. In Lobachevsky’s geometry, the sum of the angles of a triangle is always less than 180. In Euclid’s geometry it is always equal to 180. In Riemann geometry, the sum of the angles of a triangle is always greater than 180.

41. If the number 111 111 111 is multiplied by itself, you get the interesting number 12 345 678 987 654 321 (all numbers first increase and then decrease in order).

42. On the head of blonds (and blondes) there are an average of 150,000 hairs, on the head of brunettes (and brunettes) - 100,000.

43. In Russia, a person who is 20 years old but not 21 will say that he is 20 years old, and in America and Europe - that he is 21 years old.

44. At the beginning of the second millennium (1000), the population of the Earth was 400 million people, by the end of it (1999) - already 6 billion.

45. There are more than 300,000 people in Sweden with the surname Carlson (or Karlsson).

46. ​​The average woman uses 2 kilograms of lipstick in her entire life.

47. In 1977, among American physicists women made up only 8%.

48. The most popular in the world female name- Anna. Almost 100 million women wear it.

Numbers are found everywhere in our lives. Date of birth, age, address... This article contains the most Interesting Facts about numbers that will not leave you indifferent.

• 1. In countries such as China, Japan and Korea, the number “4” is considered unlucky. Therefore, there are no floors with numbers ending in “4”.
• 2. A centillion is the largest number that looks like 1 followed by 600 zeros. This number was recorded back in 1852.

• 3. The number “13” is also considered unlucky in many countries. Therefore, the floor after “12” is designated “14”, “12A” or “M” (the thirteenth letter in the alphabet).
• 4. Arabs write numbers from right to left, starting with the lowest digits. Therefore, seeing the familiar Arabic numerals in the text Arab peoples, we will read them from left to right incorrectly.

• 5. Interesting facts about numbers include modern technologies. Thus, Google is one of the most popular search engines. It was invented by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The name of the search engine was chosen for a reason. So, its creators wanted to show the amount of information that the system can process. In mathematics, a number that consists of one and one hundred zeros is called a “googol”. It is also interesting that the name “Google” is spelled incorrectly (not “googol”). But the founders liked this name idea even more.
• 6. 666 is the sum of all the numbers on the casino roulette.

• 7. The number “13” in Greece is considered an unlucky day only when it falls on a Tuesday. In Italy they fear Friday the 17th. But statisticians in the Netherlands calculated that on the 13th there are fewer accidents and accidents, because people are more careful and collected.
• 8. The term “digit” means “zero” in Arabic. Only with time given word began to be used to denote any numerical symbol.

Facts about numbers. These are prime numbers and many others. We have included some numbers, such as Pi and a number of others, in separate materials. So we advise you to read them too. Here are a few interesting facts about numbers, which will probably be of interest to you.

Facts about negative numbers

In our time negative numbers known to many, but this was not always the case. Negative numbers were first used in China in the 3rd century, but they were allowed to be used only in exceptional cases, since they were considered nonsense. Somewhat later, negative numbers began to be used in India to indicate debts.

Thus, in the work “Mathematics” in nine books, published in 179 AD. BC, during the Han Dynasty and commented on in 263 by Liu Hui, the Chinese system of counting sticks used black sticks for negative numbers, and red ones for positive numbers. Also, Liu Hui used slanted counting sticks to indicate negative numbers.

The "-" sign, which is now used to denote negative numbers, was first seen in ancient manuscript Bakhshali in India, but there is no consensus among scholars as to when it was composed, with disagreements ranging from 200 CE to 600 CE. e.

Negative numbers were already known in India in 630 AD. e.. They were used by the mathematician Brahmagupta (598-668).

Negative numbers were first used in Europe around 275 AD. BC They were introduced into use by the Greek mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria, but in the West they were considered absurd until the appearance of the book “Ars Magna” (“Great Art”), written in 1545 by the Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576).

Prime Number Facts

Numbers 2 and 5 are the only ones from the series prime numbers, which end in 2 and 5.

Other facts about numbers

The number 18 is the only number (besides 0) whose sum of digits is 2 times less than itself.

2520 is the smallest number that can be divided without a remainder by all numbers from 1 to 10.

The number "five" is pronounced "ha" in Thai. Therefore, the number made up of three fives - 555, will be pronounced as a slang phrase denoting human laughter - "Ha, ha, ha."

We all know that palindromic words exist. That is, those that can be read from left to right and right to left and their meaning does not change. However, there are also palindromic numbers (palindromons). They represent a mirror number that will be read and have the same value in both directions, for example, 1234321.

The word Googol (the origin of the Google brand) represents the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

The only number that cannot be written in Roman numerals is “Zero”. Also, in modern mathematics, zero has some peculiarities in its interpretation. Thus, in Russian mathematics it is not classified as a series of natural numbers, but in foreign science it is.

Material from TolVIKI

• (If 30 thousand years ago a person had an idea of ​​a million and wanted to depict it with the help of notches, making one notch per minute for 8 hours a day, it would have taken him about 6 years! Getting acquainted with the number 0, hardly anyone imagined that this is one of the greatest discoveries! The various methods of notation of numbers invented by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans had a drawback: as the numbers increased, new signs were needed. The great Archimedes learned to name huge numbers, but he did not know how to designate them. The smallest thing was missing - zero! 0 was first invented by the Babylonians (two thousand years ago). But they used it only to indicate missing digits in the middle of a number. They did not think of writing zeros at the end of the number. In India around the 19th century, zero was attached to nine digits and it became possible to denote any number with these ten digits, no matter how large it was. And most importantly, the record became short. After this discovery, people received a powerful tool for understanding nature. After all, without zero, many scientific achievements would not have been possible, for example, space flights and the invention of computers . --We are from 90.ID 048 18:53, October 24, 2012 (MSD)))
• (In Italy, in addition to the common European fear of the number 13, the number 17 is also considered unlucky. A possible explanation for this lies in the graves of the ancient Romans, on which there were often inscriptions VIXI, which translated means “I lived” or “My life is over” If we express the inscription in Roman numerals, then we get VI + XI = 6 + 11 = 17. --Omega_IDm2012_027 19:28, October 24, 2012 (MSD))
• (Number 13 in life famous people. 1. J.V. Goethe usually spent Friday the 13th in bed. 2. Bismarck did not put his signature on this day even under the most harmless text. 3. When in 1965 British Queen Elizabeth came to Germany, at the last moment the organizers of the trip noticed that the train was arriving at track 13 of the railway station. I had to urgently change the numbering.. 4. Richard Wagner was most unlucky with the devil's dozen - he died on February 13th. Although, in fact, the composer’s entire life was firmly connected with this number. The original German spelling of the composer Richard Wagner's first and last name has 13 letters. He was born in 1813, wrote 13 major works, and the premiere of Tannhäuser took place on March 13. Wagner finished Parsifal on January 13. Sergei Korolev was calm about the number 13, but for some reason he couldn’t stand Mondays. Spaceships in the Soviet Union they did not fly on Mondays. 5. Napoleon never fought on Friday the 13th. Furthermore, the 13th of every month was No Shot Day for his enemies. 6. There are people who believe that the number 13 brings good luck. For example, the first pilot to cross the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh, was not actually the first, but the 13th to do so. Twelve attempts before him ended in failure...--X People IDm2012 041 21:12, October 25, 2012 (MSD))

• Number 42. There are not so many mystical numbers in the history of mankind. But very few people know about the number 42. And it is very mystical and unusual!

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead we're talking about that at the death judgment people will need to answer for their 42 mortal sins before the 42 gods. Before leaving his body and remaining forever in the astral plane, Buddha answered questions for forty-two years. Even our beloved Gogol, who was very fond of mysticism, did not ignore this number. In his story “The Nose,” the main character had to serve until he was 42 years old - this is how he justified his ardent reluctance to tie the knot. The prayer “Ana be Koach,” which fans of Kabbalah know, consists of seven lines, and each line contains six words (7x6 = 42). And if you add up the first letters of all these words, you get the name of God. And what’s interesting is that they begin to study Kabbalah only after turning 42 years old. 42 looks like a symbol of life and creative destiny poet A. Balmont, he was born 42 years after the Decembrist uprising, collaborating in the anti-government magazine "Red Banner", published in Paris, he published 42 poems there. Balmont died in 1942. This number appears in the book “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll: “At that moment the King, who was hastily writing something in his memorial book, shouted: - Silence! “Law number Forty-Two!” - loudly he read: “All persons over a mile tall must leave the courtroom.” The Magnificent Six IDm2012 088 13:33, October 27, 2012 (MSD)))

• Number 33. The sacred mystical number of many spiritual traditions, including Russian (“thirty-three heroes”, “thirty years and three years”). A. Holguin writes: “Some researchers find a connection between 33 letters of the alphabet and 33 vertebrae in the human spine. And even the number of cervical (7), thoracic (12), lumbar (5), sacral (5) and coccygeal (4) is not counted simple next to each other numbers. On the one hand, they correspond to certain letters of the alphabet, on the other - 7 main planets, 12 signs of the Zodiac, 5 primary elements in the YANG state, 5 primary elements in the YIN state and 4 elements - Fire, Air, Water, Earth." In many traditions, in including Christian is considered a symbol of sacred age, upon reaching which developing person All spiritual powers and abilities are fully revealed. Age of Jesus Christ. --Lords of Numbers IDm2012 076 15:58, October 27, 2012 (MSD)
• The number 142857 is called a cyclic number. This is due to the fact that if this number is multiplied by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, then the result is a number made up of the same digits, with their circular rearrangement. You can show focus on this property. Need 2 people.

142857 * 5 = 714285

142857 * 4 = 571428

142857 * 6 = 857142

142857 * 2 = 285714

142857 * 3 = 428571

The numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are written on the cards and given to the second participant in the trick. Cards with numbers 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, 7 remain with the magician.

The number 142857 is laid out, the second participant chooses any of his cards, and the magician asks to multiply 142857 by the number he pulled out. While the second participant is multiplying, the magician collects the cards and rearranges the cards as follows: if you need to multiply a number by 6, then the product must end with a two, because 6 * 7 = 42. If the deck is cut so that the two is at the bottom, then after the cards are revealed it will be the last card and the number represented by the cards coincides with the answer of the second participant.--The Magnificent Seven IDm0004 19:28, October 27, 2012 (MSD)

• Number of the beast 666 - Smith number, the sum of its digits is equal to the sum of the digits of its prime factors (2,3,3,37): 6 + 6 + 6 =2 + 3 + 3 + (3 + 7) = 18.

666 is equal to the sum of its digits and the cubes of its digits: 6 + 6 + 6 + 216 + 216 + 216 = 666. 666 can be written as nine different digits in two ways in their ascending order and one in their descending order: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 567 + 89 = 666 123 + 456 + 78 + 9 = 666 9 + 87 + 6 + 543 + 21 = 666 The sum of all integers from 1 to 36 inclusive is 666. This means that 666 is the 36th triangular number.-- Ministry of Emergency Situations IDm2012 025 21:55, October 27, 2012 (MSD)

• Pi has two unofficial holidays. The first is March 14, because this day in America is written as 3.14. The official celebration begins at 1:59 am to match the number 3.14159 with the date. The second is July 22, which is written in European format as 22/7, and the value of such a fraction is a fairly popular approximate value of Pi.

The first million decimal places in Pi consists of: 99959 zeros, 99758 ones, 100026 twos, 100229 threes, 100230 fours, 100359 fives, 99548 sixes, 99800 sevens, 99985 eights and 100106 nines.--IDm2 numbers 012 023 23:42, October 27, 2012 (MSD)

• The secret Doctrine of the East says that with the number SEVEN the deepest of secrets is connected. SEVEN is the basic number of nature, man and existence in general. This is the basic number of the manifested Cosmos.

In Ancient Babylon, 7 gods were known, which then included the Sun and the Moon. All incomprehensible natural phenomena were attributed to the gods, and gradually the idea of ​​gods was combined with the seven planets. Venus was considered by the Romans to be the goddess of beauty, Mercury the god of trade, Mars the god of war, Jupiter the god of thunder, and Saturn the god of sowing. They began to count time using them. Thus the seven-day week was born. The names of the days are associated with the names of the gods, Sunday (7th day) among the Germans is sontag (day of the Sun).--IDm2012 003 20:14, October 29, 2012 (MSK)

• The authenticity of a euro banknote can be verified by its serial number, letters and eleven digits. You need to replace the letter with its serial number in the Latin alphabet, add this number with the rest, then add the digits of the result until we get one digit. If this number is 8, then the bill is genuine. Another way to check is to add the numbers in a similar way, but without the letter. The result of one letter and number must correspond to a specific country, since euros are printed in different countries. For example, for Germany it is X2. --Umnyazhki IDm2012 037 17:34, October 30, 2012 (MSK)

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One. - Number 1 represents God. The Egyptians, in their hymns to Amun-Ra, proclaimed him "the first one" or perhaps "the only one." The Pythagoreans equated the unit with the deity, indivisible and containing all things. Muslims say: "He - Allah - is one." The Babylonians considered 1,2,6,10, 11,12 and 13 unlucky numbers.

Two. - The number 2, the perfect number, acts as a sign of duality. It was considered the source of evil and the emblem of divisible matter. It is a symbol of rebellion against unity. The Egyptians had an amulet in the shape of two fingers; their country consisted of two parts and their kingdom was also double. Christian priests raise two fingers when blessing.

Three. - represented birth, life and death; beginning, middle and end; childhood, maturity and old age. It symbolizes the Trinity, so it was in highest degree sacred. --Twice two IDm2012 052 11:02, October 31, 2012 (MSK)

• Mysterious powers were attributed to the number 9: at some times good, and at others unkind. “Nine will have no way,” they said in ancient times. The title of I. Aivazovsky’s painting “The Ninth Wave” recalls the formidable forces of nature.
• These beliefs arose when the limit of counting was the number 8 , and behind it - something mysterious, strange...
• The ancient Greeks had a good reputation for this number. The jury on Olympic Games consisted of nine judges, there were nine muses - patrons of the sciences and arts. It was the personification of completeness, prosperity, and not something unknown, dark.
• Nine has become a symbol of material success in numerology.
• According to the ancient Greeks, the number two This - symbol of love and impermanence, is always in search of higher harmony and balance. Number two- this is softness and tact, the desire to smooth out sharp corners. It is between light and darkness, good and evil, heat and cold, wealth and poverty.
• Name number two symbolizes a changeable character and even some kind of internal restlessness. There is no need to worry about trifles and all sorts of insignificant reasons; you need to avoid disputes and quarrels. Greatest success collaboration will bring.

• Why is there 360 ​​degrees in a circle?

The history of human development knew different systems Reckoning. The sexagesimal number system was invented in Ancient Babylon. The Babylonians counted in threes, according to the number of joints on each finger of the left hand, that is, up to 12. Then each finger right hand meant 12. Thanks to this, the count continued until 60. The number 60 became ritual in Ancient Babylon: there were so many gods, and each of them had its own numerical designation from 1 to 60. For example, the creator of the universe was designated by the number 20; god of the planet Jupiter - 11; god of the moon - 30. The height of the golden idol installed in the temple of Nebuchadnezzar was 60 cubits. It is not surprising that the number 60 formed the basis of the ancient Babylonian calendar. Observing features circular motion Moon and Sun, the Babylonians came to the conclusion that the year consists of 360 days. That’s why they divided the circle into 360 degrees, one degree for each day. The year was divided into 12 months, because the Sun lingers in each constellation of the Zodiac for about a month, and the Moon moves across the sky in a month - 30 days. In one of the Babylonian temples there was a statue of a god surrounded by 360 jars, each of which symbolized one of the days of the year. CHILDREN X IDm2012 062 22:01, November 7, 2012 (MSK)

• From the history of zero.

The word "zero" comes from the Latin word "Nulla", meaning "no" (significant figure). Greek astronomers, who used sexagesimal fractions, introduced a special sign to separate the digits, shaped like the letter O (omicron, the first letter in Greek word"onden", meaning "nothing"). In the 7th century V Ancient India The decimal positional number system was already used and together with it the zero was systematically used, which was designated by a dot and also a circle. Some scientists believe that the circle for zero was introduced by the Greeks. The Indians called zero "sunya", which meant "empty", in the sense of the absence of a place in the number. The Arabs, from whom Europeans adopted the decimal number system, translated the Indian "sunya" into the Arabic word "as-sifr". That is why until the 17th century. zero was called a "digit". For Europeans, Indian arithmetic and, in particular, zero were initially considered some kind of secret. Therefore, they began to give the name “digits” or “cipher” to any secret writing. Nowadays, zero is not just a symbol for separating digits, but a number that can be added. subtract, multiply and divide like other numbers. The only limitation is that you cannot divide by zero.--Snoopy IDm2012 069 22:26, ​​November 7, 2012 (MSK)

• About the number pi

It is known that the ratio of the circumference to the diameter cannot be accurately expressed either by an integer or ordinary fraction, nor a final fraction. Archimedes obtained approximate values ​​for pi with deficiency and excess by considering polygons with a sufficiently large number of sides inscribed in a circle and circumscribed around it. In some Asian countries the value pi=root(10) is found, i.e. 3,162... . Astronomer Wang Fan (229-267) argued that pi = 142/45, i.e. 3.155..., and Tzu Chun-chih (428-499) spoke of the "imprecise" value of 22/7 and the "exact" value of 355/113, showing that pi is contained between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927. The last value was recorded in the 7th century. in the form of a named number: 3 zhang 1 chi 4 cun 1 fen 5 li 9 hao 2 miao 7 ho. By 1963, 100,265 decimal places of pi had been found using electronic machines. Calculating such a large number of signs for pi has no practical significance, but only shows a huge advantage and perfection modern means and calculation methods compared to old ones.--Google ID 068 22:59, November 7, 2012 (MSK)

Panic horror of some numbers Great people have experienced this too. For Sigmund Freud this number was 62 . The founder of psychoanalysis was so afraid of this combination of numbers that he preferred to stay only in small hotels with no more than 61 rooms, so that he would not even accidentally get a room with the ill-fated number. And the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who was afraid "bloody dozen", this is the most "dozen" and ruined it. He died at 76, an age which, according to his personal astrologer, was fatal for Schoenberg, since the numbers added up to 13 . The composer died on Friday the 13th