10 Mind-Blowing Fun Facts About Numbers You Never Knew!

1. Unlucky and Lucky Numbers in Japan

Whoever said numbers don't lie, clearly never met a superstitious Japanese person: In Japan, numbers hold significant meaning, with 4 being unlucky due to its resemblance to the word "death," 7 seen as lucky for its significance in Buddhism, 8 considered auspicious because of its shape, and 9 unlucky as it's similar to words for agony or torture.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

2. Baker's Generous Dozen

Whoever said 13 was unlucky clearly never met a baker with a penchant for generosity: A baker's dozen consists of 13 items, rather than the standard 12, to ensure these kneading maestros adhered to strict British regulations on baked goods' weight, thereby avoiding harsh penalties and providing customers with a scrumptious "vantage" unit.
Source => gothambagels.com

Did you know the ancient Sumerians' sexagesimal system from 3rd millennium BC is still used in modern GPS navigation? Discover how this old math technique continues to simplify our world today!

=> Fun Facts about Math

3. Kaprekar's Magical Constant

Step right up, ladies and gents, and bear witness to the mesmerizing, the astonishing, the numerical Houdini known as Kaprekar's constant, a touch of arithmetic wizardry for your entertainment: By manipulating a 4-digit integer's digits into ascending and descending order, then subtracting the smaller number from the larger, and repeating the process, you'll astonishingly reach the magical 6174 within a maximum of just 7 steps, unless of course, you dare to use a number with the same four digits, as the common trickster Kaprekar's constant shall not perform then! Be not disappointed, smaller 3-digit integers shall reveal the mystical 495, whereas larger 5-digit numbers shall show off a plethora of repeating patterns! Ha!
Source => brilliant.org

4. Heptagon's Exclusive Party

If a regular heptagon threw a party, compass and straightedge would be the only sad souls left off the guest list – forever cursed to miss out on the geometric revelry: Here's the serious scoop – the regular heptagon, as the smallest regular polygon that cannot be constructed using a compass and straightedge, maintains its exclusivity due to its coordinates involving cube roots. Though, fear not, origami and neusis construction enthusiasts, as you're still invited to the shindig!
Source => polytope.miraheze.org

5. Unsung Hero: The Zero

Once thought to be as empty as a politician's promises, our friend "zero" has actually been quite the unassuming hero: As the brilliant mathematician Brahmagupta deduced, zero is much more than a placeholder, possessing its own null value that led to ground-breaking developments in algebra, calculus, and fields like physics, economics, and computing.
Source => history.com

6. Iceland's Gossiping Gadgets

Who needs area codes when you're chilling with Björk and puffins? Certainly not Iceland: All phone numbers in the country are seven digits long, with mobile phones starting with 6, 7, or 8, Reykjavik landlines kicking off with 5, and countryside calls beginning with 4. Adding to the mix, nine-digit numbers starting with 3 are reserved for machine-to-machine chats, because even gadgets need a way to gossip!
Source => en.wikipedia.org

7. Googol vs. Googolplex: Size Matters

In a mathematical match of David and Goliath - with numbers too humongous for us mere mortals to comprehend - the googol sits like a grain of sand beside the giant googolplex, serving as a stark reminder that the universe's sense of humor makes our brains spin: A googol is 10 to the power of 100 (1 followed by 100 zeros), but a googolplex turns up the ante to 10 raised to the power of a googol, which is so immensely large that it's impossible to write down. The term "googol" was concocted by a creative 9-year-old, Milton Sirotta, revealing the power of young minds and their penchant for mind-boggling ideas.
Source => techtarget.com

8. A Mile's Roman Roots

Step aside, Cinderella and her little glass foot, because this tale of feet is much more entertaining: It turns out the seemingly arbitrary number 5,280 is the exact number of feet in a mile, a measurement derived from the Roman "mille passum," equaling 1,000 paces or 5,000 Roman feet, but standardized by the British Parliament in 1592 to coincide with eight furlongs (660 feet each), giving us our modern mile length.
Source => rd.com

9. Two's Prime Time Party

The number two may have a small circle of friends, but it's still the life of the primest party out there: 2 is the only even prime number, existing as the lone champion in a sea of infinite primes that are only divisible by themselves and the number one.
Source => sparknotes.com

10. Roman Numerals: Numeric Superheroes

Step aside, Hollywood sequels and superheroes: there's a numerical hero that's been saving the day since way before you were born, and it doesn't even need a cape! This set of valiant characters has been roaming the clock faces, gracing movie titles, and popping up in all sorts of ancient texts like a mathlete on a mission: Roman numerals can represent any number up to 3,999 using just seven letters – I, V, X, L, C, D, and M – and was the popular numerical system throughout Europe until the late middle ages when Western Arabic numerals took over the numeric universe.
Source => englishhistory.net