March 18 (My Birthday)

Today's March birthday is brought to you by the number "18"

Interesting number that number 18 is, so I thought I'd use this day, the 18th of March (my birthday!), to expound on the significance of the number 18, as well as its under-appreciated place in the world around us.

Here are some interesting points about 18:

• when spoken, the number 18 is often misheard as the number 80.
  
  
• aside from zero, 18 is the only number that equals twice the sum of its decimal digits (1+8 = 9, multiplied by 2 = 18!)
  
  
• 18 is the atomic number of the element argon.
  
  
• In Chinese tradition, 18 can be either a lucky or unlucky number.  Since the Chinese word for 18 sounds very similar to the Chinese word indicating that "one will be prosperous", the 18th floor of many buildings in China tend to be more expensive (the idea is that by living there your  chances of being prosperous will increase).  Conversely, in some of the northern regions of China, 18 is very unlucky since it is believed no one can escape the 18th level of Hell.  Makes sense.  see the Wikipedia entry: "18 (number)"
  
  
• according to the 24-hour clock, 6pm is the 18th hour.
  
  
• In 1971 the musician Alice Cooper released the song "I'm 18",  In 1994 Brian Adams released an album called "18 till I die", and in 2002 Moby released an album called "18". (please note I'm not necessarily endorsing any of these artists)
  
  
• The original title planned for Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 was actually Catch-18 (true story!)
  
  
• the number 18 sounds eerily similar to the A-Team.
  
  
• the 18th President of my native country France was the illustrious Charles de Gaulle.
  
  
• Brian Mulroney was the 18th Prime Minister of Canada.
  
  
• Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the USA.
  
  
• James Joyce's Ulysses has 18 chapters.
  

• the 18th state to join the USA was Louisiana (the home of Mardi Gras!) in 1812.
  
  
• the largest transnational criminal gang in Los Angeles, California is the 18th Street  gang.
  
  
• octodecimo is the size of a piece of paper that was made by cutting a larger sheet of paper into 18 equal pieces. It's also what you call a book  of the same size that has been made in the same way.
  
  
• race horses in the UK cannot have names that are any longer than 18 characters, including spaces.
  
  
• there are generally 18 holes on a golf course.
  
  

• "conservationalists" and "conversationalists", words both consisting of 18 letters, are two words that are anagrams of each other.  They also represent the longest anagram  pairs (not including scientific words) in the English language. 

So there you have it, 18 is not just a pretty, even, semiperfect number found sandwiched between 17 and 19, but it also seems to be loaded with some moderately fascinating facts. 

Most importantly though, it also represents the day in March upon which I was born!  O how different the world would be without that event! (sarcasm)