777 facts about the number 7

secret bonus page of an extra 77 facts

1

Seven out of ten reported victims of cyber-stalking are females aged between 18 and 34 (1+8+3+4 = 16, 1+6 =7).

2

When Pooh Bear writes a poem about Piglet's Doing of a Very Grand Thing, he tells Piglet, "There are seven verses in it."

3

In the film Elf, the character Buddy tells of his journey to the city in which he had to travel through 'the seven levels of the candy cane forest'.

4

Monkey Gone To Heaven, a song by The Pixies from their Doolittle album, has the repeating chorus of "if the devil is six then god is seven".

5

In the book Jack in the Box by William Kotzwinkle, some of the characters try to build their bodies by drinking a protein shake called Formula 77.

6

7

8

Only seven prisoners were actually liberated during the Storming of the Bastille.

9

Hawaii is the world's largest consumer of Spam per capita, devouring seven million tins of it per year.

10

16. 8. 2oo8 (these digits collapse to 7) - today I bought a 'bumper pack' of oranges. When I got it home I found it contained 7 oranges. (The next day, Clancy came to visit and brought a 'bumper pack' of oranges from a different retailer - this, too, contained 7 oranges).

11

In 2008 Aston Martin announced that they would be selling in 2009 a car they codenamed the One-77, the most expensive car ever produced, of which there would only be seventy-seven built.

12

"The mold only grows on metal and the spores die if they're away from both mold and metal for more than one seventy-seventh of a second."

13

The Beatles have had seven members - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Pete Best, Stuart Sutcliffe and Jimmie Nicol.

14

15

August 7th, 2oo9: "Brazen arsonists torched seven police cars during a flash raid on a Maghull, Merseyside police station".

16

In 1972, in his monologue "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television", comedian George Carlin listed the seven worst words:

• Piss
• Shit
• Fuck
• Cunt
• Cocksucker
• Motherfucker
• Tits

17

In the film Amadeus, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had seven buttons on his coat.

18

In September 2009 metal-detector enthusiast David Booth discovered "the most important hoard of Iron Age gold in Scotland to date" in a field in Stirlingshire. He commented: "I basically parked the car up and got the metal detector out and picked a direction to set off and about seven steps later there it was".

19

When I went to a ceilidh in October 2009, the ticket I bought upon entering (and which I needed to redeem in order to get my hop pot supper) (and which turned out to be non-vegetarian, despite being assured that such an option was available, meaning I had to get a refund) had the number seven written on the back in biro.

20

At the end of each episode of the comedy show Phoenix Nights, there is a panel of seven people appraising variety acts with a view to booking them to perform at the Phoenix Club.

21

There is a lovely, lovely song recording by They Might Be Giants which is titled Seven.

22

When I worked with the youngest youth group at Gorey Youth Club in Jersey in November 2oo9, one of the girls lost a tooth during the drama session I was leading. The workers laughed and said it was a common occurrence, stating that on a good night the children might collectively lose as many as seven teeth.

23

The 2oo8 film Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith, has the tagline "Seven Names. Seven Strangers. One Secret."

24

According to Jewish tradition, there are seven Noachide laws which apply to all human beings.

25

"He leaned forward and put the question in a whisper that ricocheted seven times around the room".

26

It takes food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.

27

In the 2009 Grand National horse race, the number seven horse was called Stan. It fell at the seventh fence.

28

S. Darko, the sequel to the film Donnie Darko, starts by telling the viewer that "seven years later, Donnie's youngest sister Samantha has run away from a home shattered by the death of her brother"

29

In the book The Man Who Fell To Earth by Walter Tevis, Thomas Jerome Newton records and releases an album (which is actually a message to his family which he hopes will be broadcast on FM radio so as to travel back to his home planet) titled poems from outer space. The description of it reads: "We guarantee that you won't know the language, but you'll wish you did! Seven out-of-this-world poems by a man we call the visitor".

30

The 7-M Mandate is the idea that Christians need to take charge of a country by 'capturing' seven 'mountains' that represent cultural aspects of society: business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family and religion.

31

The American flag features seven red stripes on a white background.

32

In the film Where The Wild Things Are, Max finds himself in a strange land inhabited by seven wild things. He also meets two owls, Bob and Terry, who tell him to ask them a question in seven words.

33

Here is a copy of a piece of artwork by Alfred Kubin, which has seven bambinos feeding from their mother.

34

Within fifty years of William the Conqueror winning the Battle of Hastings in 1066, one in seven men in England were called William.

35

In the film The Ant Bully, after Lucas has returned to human size, he puts paid to the bully once and for all with six other children - seven of them in total.

36

Following the death and subsequent cremation of Dr Timothy Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996), seven grams of his ashes were buried in space aboard a Pegasus rocket carrying the remains of 24 other people - it was launched on April 21, 1997, and remained in orbit for six years until it burnt up in the atmosphere.

37

After the computer system crashes in the film Chemical Wedding, we see a computer monitor showing an entire screen of number 7s - this melts away, only to be replaced by another identical screen of number 7s.

38

The sachets of Hovis Fast Action Bread Yeast that I bought for use in my bread making machine each weighed seven grammes.

39

The British Library has installed seven robotic cranes in its storage facility at Boston Spa, that will be used to retrieve items in its new Additional Storage Building that will eventually house approximately seven million items from the UK national collection.

40

There are 'about seventy seven' species of Pinguicula, the insectivorous plant known more commonly as The Butterworts.

41

Muslims, evidently, don't like touching dogs (and especially dogs' saliva). If they do come in contact with a dog, they're supposed to wash their hands before praying; some Muslims would do as many as the magical seven washes.

42

Jasper Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, had received 76 publisher rejections before its eventual acceptance for publication in 2001. The actual publisher was therefore the seventy-seventh.

43

Knowing the mind of God: Seven theories of everything was the title of an article in the New Scientist magazine in March 2010 - The seven theories are:

• String theory
• Loop quantum gravity
• Causal dynamical triangulations
• Quantum Einstein gravity
• Quantum graphity
• Internal relativity
• E8 (a complex eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points)

44

Terry Butcher is a former English football player (he was also a captain of England) who won seventy-seven caps in a ten-year international career.

45

Find seven dolphins:

46

Great Danes have an average life expectancy of only seven years owing to heart defects.

47

Over the Valentine's Day weekend of 2010 Jeff Ondash, a 51-year-old Ohio man working under his World Speed Hugging Championship moniker of Teddy McHuggin, gave hugs to 7,777 people on the Las Vegas strip.

48

Following the 9-11 terrorist strike on New York City the third tower, a 47-storey building known as Tower Seven, collapsed seven hours after the twin towers.

49

In 2003 British adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven days.

50

Salute by gunfire is an ancient maritime practice which might have originated in the seventeenth century. In the earliest days, seven guns was the recognized British national salute because seven was the standard number of weapons on a vessel.

51

In the film How To Lose Friends And Alienate People (which has seven words in its title) the character Sidney Young is told by his boss Clayton Harding that there are seven rooms.

52

On the evening of 23rd September, 1954, police were called to a Glasgow graveyard where they encountered hundreds of children aged from four to fourteen, some of them armed with knives and sharpened sticks, hunting 'a 7ft tall vampire with iron teeth'. The crowd were eventually dispersed but returned on several consecutive nights, hunting the so-called 'Gorbals Vampire'. Theories about how this urban myth started included the mention in the Bible (Daniel 7.7) of a monster with iron teeth.

53

The first time I used the Interparcel courier service for parcel delivery, the tracking page of their website contained seven entries at the end of my parcel’s journey:

• 31/12/2013, 11:49, Awaiting collection
• 2/01/2014, 08:55, Goods collected
• 2/01/2014, 15:19, On route to delivery depot
• 2/01/2014, 15:26, Awaiting collection
• 3/01/2014, 03:57, Arrived at delivery depot
• 3/01/2014, 08:26, Goods loaded onto a van
• 3/01/2014, 13:39, Goods delivered

54

When we went out for lunch on January 5th, 2014, I ordered pesto linguini served over tomato basil sauce, with red onion and olives. When it arrived I was pleased to note that the meal contained seven green olives.

55

In the book Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad, it says that at Minor Threat's second gig there were seven bands on the bill, each of which performed their version of a song by the band Wire.

56

In the book Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold, Carter is reading a book (The Practician’s Manual of Legerdemain by Prof. Ottowa Keyes) in which he finds ‘the rules – seven positive commands, seven negative – that each master conjuror should follow’. These are:

   ALWAYS!!!
- BEFRIEND OTHER MAGICIANS
- MAINTAIN A CALM DISPOSITION
- PUNISH MEDDLERS
- THINK ON YOUR FEET
- IRON YOUR SILK HANDKERCHIEFS AND POLISH YOUR SHOES
- RESPECT YOUR AUDIENCE
- If volunteers have joined you onstage, politely bid them au-revoir and
  TAKE YOUR FINAL BOW ALONE

57

The same book also tells Carter that there are seven types of trick: the antiscientific demonstration, the disappearance, the mentalist demonstration, the penetration, the production, the transformation, the transportation.

58

My friend Phil Smith was drinking a bottle of beer called Seven Giraffes so I made him take the label off for me to show you.

59

In the film Nanny McPhee, said Nanny has to take charge of seven unruly children (and a very good job she does, too). In the film Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, the children are chasing what I could have sworn was six piglets, but in the scene where said piglets are being chased along the lane (before being trapped under the wedding-dress veil), there are clearly seven of them. Later on, Nanny McPhee tells the children about the seven medals she is wearing - I can't remember what they were for, but there was a special meaning for each of the seven.

60

The tagline for the 1971 Sam Peckinpah film Straw Dogs was, "The knock at the door meant the birth of one man and the death of seven others!"

61

In the book The Fellowship of the Frog by Edgar Wallace, much of the action revolves around the unscrupulous actions of a shadowy villain called 'Number Seven'.

62

According to an article in the Telegraph (June 3rd, 2010), one in seven French people admit to being racist.

63

The BBC news in July 2010 told that police in Australia were investigating the poisoning of seven million vegetable seedlings, including tomatoes, aubergines and melons - detectives believed that a herbicide was injected into the irrigation system at a nursery in northern Queensland.

64

In the film Up In The Air, the character Ryan Bingham becomes the seventh person ever to reach the target of ten million air miles.

65

In August 2010 it was reported that Martin McGuane, an 80-year-old man from County Clare in Ireland, was lucky to escape death when a car crashed through his front wall and into his house.
A little investigation found out that this was the seventh time a car had crashed into his home. He now only uses his back door as he deems the front door ‘too dangerous to use’.

66

In the film The Passion of Darkly Noon, Darkly is given a new room above a barn to live in. The long horizontal window behind him in the scene where he’s settling in comprises seven sections.

67

68

There were seven members in the reformed Dead Poets Society, in the film of the same name.

69

70

Star Trek: The Next Generation is a television series that ran for seven years from 1987 to1994 through seven seasons.

71

“Inside was the perfect gift for any child from seven to seventy-seven” / (p.177). . . “Here’s Abominable Lunch Number Seventy-Seven", she announced. “Made from plastic food bags, parsley, and gum from under theatre seats. Brush your teeth after or you’ll taste the poison all afternoon”.

72

In the film Bee Movie, there is a display board with a headline from a bee newspaper consisting of seven words: “Bee Goes Bererk – Stings Seven Then Self”.

73

Page 117, Chapter 7: “He pauses, turns his pencil on its head and erases the last seven words, then resumes”

74

‘seven braves juggling lit torches, tossing them from man to man in a hypnotic pattern’

75

‘Told to catalogue all of the late President’s belongings, he responded with a seven-page memo that described, down to the carpet lint, the condition and disposition of every item as it was examined and packed for storage’.

76

In a list of the Top 10 World’s Hottest Peppers, there are several entries with seven in their name:
7 Pot Brain Strain, 7 Pot Primo, 7 Pod Douglah (7 Pot Douglah, Chocolate 7 Pod, 7 Pot Brown), and 7 Pod Red - also mentioned are other 7 Pod Varieties (Red [Giant], Barrackpore, SR Strain, Primo, Jonah, Brain Strain, Yellow).

77

Here's a lovely pieces of artwork I found pictured on the internet, featuring seven frogs standing on top of each other.