Countdown

My parents always told me that my birthday was special, not because they love me (they do, but that’s not why they told me) or think I’m the best. No… its just that my birthday happened to land on a series of interesting (mainly insignificant, nevertheless, interesting) coincidences.  


My birthday: March 21. Otherwise written as 3-21. 

First of all, 3-2-1 are consecutive strictly decreasing integers. That alone is pretty good. Equinoxes and solstices fall on either the 20th or 21st of March, June, September, or January.

My address: 993 is my house number. Those three digits add up to 21. Illinois has 21 electoral votes and was the 21st state to be admitted to the Union. (I discovered this while collecting state quarters…). In fact, it was admitted on December 3, 1818, also written as 12-3, which is 3-21 backwards. The state is 210 miles in width.

The only reason I’m writing this post is because I was running today and was thinking about this: Let A = 1, B = 2, C = 3… Y = 25, Z = 26. BEATRICE = 2 + 5 + 1 + 20 + 18 + 9 + 3 + 5 = 63. 63 is equal to 3 * 21.

In my excitement, I ran to tell my mom, and she told me that she arrived in both Japan and the United States on the 21st day of some month.

Choking with glee, I am now at my computer reading about the number 21. Here are more coincidences.

21 is a Fibonacci number (I can’t believe I didn’t see this before… btw. 3 is too!) and is the sum of 6 consecutive integers, 1+2+3+4+5+6. 6 is 3! and a perfect number (3+2+1). 3+2+1!!!

21 in base 4 is 111, which is yes, 3 1s. 

21 is also the legal drinking age, and in some cases, voting age, for many countries. There are 21 points in a badminton game and 3 games in a match.

21st century news right here.