subject: Is Odd Odder Than Unusual? [print this page] In 1737 three fingers, a vertebra and a tooth were removed from Galileo's body while it was being transferred from storage to his elaborate tomb. One finger and the vertebra were found quickly, but the tooth and the other two fingers remained in an Italian marquis' family until 1905, when the family no longer remembered what was in the ornate, wooden box and sold it. The box turned up at auction in 2009. The relics were authenticated by cultural officials in Florence and will be displayed in a Florence museum - allowing the earth to revolve around the sun happily ever after.
In 1909 British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton had 2 crates of McKinlay Scottish whiskey shipped to Antarctica. Although Shackleton abandoned this polar expedition, the whiskey was found in 2006 frozen in ice under an expedition hut near Cape Royds. In 2009 the present owners of the whiskey distillery asked New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust to drill through the ice to the crates. Although most of the bottles must stay where they are for historical reasons, the distillery owners want to taste the 100-year-old whiskey in hopes of replicating it for sale. Maybe it should be tasted over ice.
In 2009 a London law firm was selling Christmas gift vouchers for divorce advice. According to a spokesperson for the firm, Christmas is an especially stressful time for families, resulting in a large increase in people wanting divorce advice in January. More than 60 gift vouchers were sold the first week. Lloyd Platt & Company usually charges $530 an hour for advice, but with the gift voucher a half hour costs $203. According to my math, that's a saving of $62 for half an hour. One would think at Christmas the emphasis would be put on saving marriages - not money.
Finally, in most parts of the western world 13 is thought unlucky. However, in much of East Asia 4 is considered unlucky. That is because the word for 4 sounds like the word for death in both Japanese and Mandarin. In Italy 17 is considered unlucky. In Roman numerals 17 is XVII. That is an anagram for VIXI, which in the Italian language means "I'm dead". In Russia a dozen flowers are never given as a gift because even numbers of flowers are used only in funeral arrangements. Obviously, when traveling there are numbers you can't count on.
