Facts about 7 - page 4

777 facts about the number 7

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334

Enguerrand de Marigny was hanged as a sorcerer on the gibbet of Montfaucon, France, on April 30th, 1315. In order to exonerate the memory of this victim of injustice, his godson Enguerrand de Saint Cloud vowed to remain in his suit of armour until the King of France declared Marigny innocent – and so, Saint Cloud wore a suit of armour for seven years. Bizarrely, so did his horse.

335	In Greek Gnosticism, the heavens were said to be governed by seven androgynous spirits.

336	In South African Lore, if a woman in the seventh month of pregnancy sees an Abatwa (tiny people who live in anthills) then she knows that the child she is carrying will be a son.

337	Many Hawk-Moth (Sphingidae) Caterpillars are marked with seven diagonal side stripes. (These caterpillars are also often known as Sphinxes, due to their distinctive resting posture).

338	A letter I received from British Telecom on 27th November 2003 agreed to credit my telephone account with the sum of 77p, which equalled a 20% discount on calls made to my internet provider during the billing period August to November 2003 - the total number of calls in this time period was 77.

339	The luxury liner Lusitania was torpedoed off the south coast of Ireland on the 7th May, 1915.

340	Seven women were known to have had relationships of some sort with Adolf Hitler.

341	In Assyro-Babylonian Myth, there are seven precincts of the Underworld.

342	In the Kurt Vonnegut novel Mother Night, the character Howard W. Campbell, Jr. refers to a third play he’d written titled Seventy Times Seven. He also meets a man in a bar who claims that he can thoroughly satisfy seven women in a night, provided they are all different.

343

In the short story The Blue Bottle by Ray Bradbury (as featured in the anthology Long After Midnight) the Blue Bottle (an ancient Martian artifact that can grant the deepest wishes of those that come to possess it) is discovered in one of the ". . . seven rooms filled with glitter and shine".

344	There are seven known species of Lonchopteridae (Pointed-Wing Flies) in Britain.

345	The following seven people died when the fishing vessel Solway Harvester was shipwrecked, in force nine winds and "horrendous" conditions, on 11th January 2000, 11 miles off the Isle of Man.

	Pictured, left to right: Craig Mills, age 29. Robin Mills, age 33. David Mills, age 18. David Lyons, age 17. Wesley Jolly, age 17. John Murphy, age 22. Martin Milligan, 26 (pictured with girlfriend Allison McIlwraith).

346	The Faeries are said to commune at prehistoric burial mounds in Ireland every seven years to mourn their banishment from Heaven.

347	The sketch in Chris Morris’ surreal comedy show Jam, where office workers fall down an empty lift-shaft whilst a hapless security guard watches on, occurs on the seventh floor.

348	When devotees of Aum Shrinrikyo (the Supreme Truth Society), now known as the Aum cult, made their first experimental sarin gas attack, in Matsumoto, Japan, on June 27th 1994 the result was seven people dead (and over 200 injured).

349

Recently at Baal Hill Farm in Wolsingham, County Durham, a woman pulled a knife out of her boot and stabbed her husband to death in front of their ten-year-old daughter. The punishment for this as imposed by the courts was seven years imprisonment. (Obviously 'recent', in this context, depends upon when you read this).

350	John Reginald Halliday Christie was one of seven children. Before progressing to rape, murder and necrophilia, he once spent seven months in prison for stealing money and postal orders from letters when he worked for the Post Office.

351	On my X-ray Spex CD, Poly Styrene (on the back cover photograph) is wearing a badge of a six spot / one spot domino. Enough said.

352

The artist Paul Gauguin was born on the 7th June, fathered seven known children, exhibited at the Seventh Impressionist Show and executed and transported back to Paris seven paintings whilst seriously ill in Tahiti. His paintings The Yellow Christ (1889) and one of the versions of Horsemen on the beach (1902) both feature seven people, and the name Gauguin has seven letters.

353	Seven species of tree have the potential to actually worsen air quality if over-planted. These are: Crack Willow Poplar English Oak Red Oak Sallow Sessile Oak White Willow Carefully managed planting of these alongside other species, however, improves air quality.

354	Following several massacres by disgruntled postmen and the anthrax-spore terrorist letter campaign of 2001, 77% of Americans questioned in a poll feared that they may be targeted by an unspecified postal threat.

355	In March 2003 in Berkshire, England, it took surgeons seven hours to remove a forked harpoon head from the face of teenager Matthew Hawkins. He had been shot with the weapon during a neighbourhood argument. There are seven letters in the word ‘harpoon’ and the names ‘Matthew’ and ‘Hawkins’.

356

On July 4th 2003, whilst on a journey to Cleckheaton in West Yorkshire, I spied several metal rods lying at the side of the road as I drove through a roundabout junction. Intuiting how good they would look included in one of my welded figure sculptures, I stopped at the same point as I travelled back again early in the morning of the 5th July and picked them up. You’ll not be surprised to find that there were seven of them. One was longer and a slightly different shape to the others, but I hardly think that this kind of pedantic quibble should prevent a fact as worthy as this from being listed here.

7 metal rods
(They ended up forming the skeleton of an elephant).


357	P.127: “After speaking, the janitor stood where he was for seven minutes, thinking.”

358	Ian Duncan Smith of the UK Conservative Party lost a vote of confidence when the result was announced at 7:07 pm after seven hundred and seventy-seven days as Tory leader.

359	The Siberian Shamans' astral ascent into the spirit realm was symbolised as climbing a seven-branched birch pole.

360	On average, insects and other arthropods moult their skins between four and seven times in their lives.

361	A disgruntled worker is said to have wrecked a seven-storey office block in Birmingham on April 23rd 2003. He knocked the nozzles off fire hydrants on the seventh (and sixth) floors and caused approximately £1 million worth of damage to the building.

362	JK Rowling intends to write seven Harry Potter books in total. (And now, much later, she has).

363

Fred West, serial killer, liked wearing old and worn clothes to such an extent that he once used a pair of new jeans as a draught-excluder for seven years before putting them on. Three of his children – Stephen, Mae and Tara – wrote a poem to their dead sister Heather that began with the line, “It seems we lived a seven year con”. When 25 Cromwell Street was demolished and the land turned into a walkway, seven cast-iron bollards were erected to prevent vehicular access at the Cromwell Street end.

364

Seen on a wall behind a service counter:
Burger King Seven Step Service Procedure
    1. Smile, greet and take order
    2. Suggestive sell 1 item
   3. Repeat and total order
    4. Cash transaction
    5. Assemble Order
   6. Repeat and deliver order
    7. Polite parting phrase

365

“The first time I took it I got very high indeed . . . I spent the whole evening running around trying to find a pencil and paper because when I went back into the bedroom later, I discovered the Meaning of Life. And I suddenly felt like a reporter, on behalf of my local newspaper in Liverpool, I wanted to tell my people what it was . . . I eventually found it and I wrote it down, and gave it Mal for safekeeping. Anyway, Mal gave me this little slip of paper in the morning, and written on it was, ‘There are seven levels!’ And we pissed ourselves laughing, I mean, ‘What the fuck’s that? What the fuck are the seven levels?’ But looking back, it's actually a pretty succinct comment; it ties in with a lot of major religions but I didn't know that then”
(Barry Miles, ‘Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now’, Secker & Warburg 1997, p.188-189).

366	In the following picture, Jim Carrey – playing the part of Bruce in the film Bruce Almighty – is clearly seen to have seven digits on his outstretched hand.

7 fingers


367	True Thomas of Ercildoune was a renowned prophet or seer in 13th Century Scotland. The Ballad of True Thomas relates how he became enchanted by the Queen of Faeries and how after seven years spent in the Otherworld, he returned to the everyday world with clairvoyant powers.

368	Woodlice most frequently have seven pairs of legs.

369	The instruction for the Seventh Degree of Aleister Crowley's Magical Order the Ordo Templi Orientis is the aim to find the one true God.

370	Guandong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) reported in April 2003 that a measured combination of TCM and western medicine had brought down the fever of most of their SARS patients after an average period of seven days.

371	In May 2003, seven people died near the Cambodia / Vietnam border. SARS was initially suspected but it is now thought that they were killed by another new killer 'bug' - an unidentified form of pneumonia.

372

A fortune teller in Cambodia declared that three-year-old Ouen Sambath was the son of a dragon in a past life and is destined to become a Kruu Khmer (tradition healer) at the age of seven, due to the boy’s close friendship with a python called Chamreun (Lucky). To buy enough chicken to keep the snake well fed (& thus less likely to devour the infant) costs 40,000 Cambodian rial – the equivalent of £7 – each week.

373	In 2003, a ten month old girl survived being deliberately thrown out of a seventh floor window in New York as trees broke her fall.

374

The ship Mary Celeste, when embarking on what was to be its last voyage in 1872 from New York, bound for Genoa, was carrying a cargo of 1700 casks of crude alcohol; its Captain (Benjamin Spooner Briggs) was 37 years old, and he was leading a crew of seven. Captain David Morehouse of the ship Dei Gratia, also leading a crew of seven, salvaged the Mary Celeste and was awarded £1700 salvage money in 1873.

375

Conspiracy theories and military research into sonic weapons followed the claim by researcher Vladimir Gaureau that sound waves operating at a frequency of 7Hz could induce involuntary defecation, nausea, epileptic fits and rupture of internal organs. There are seven letters each in the name 'Gaureau' and the word 'weapons'.

376	Sgt. Howie, in the film The Wicker Man, is greeted at the harbour by a deputation of seven male islanders upon his first arrival at SummerIsle.

377

In November 1982 various crime specialists in America put forward the idea of a National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime (or NCAVC), a proposal that was unanimously accepted seven months later. The FBI handbook Sexual Homicide: Its Patterns and Motives estimates conservatively that the success rate of the NVAVC has been about seventy-seven per cent.

378

County Durham is currently comprised of seven district councils. These are in alphabetical order - Chester-le-Street, Derwentside, Durham City, Easington, Sedgefield, Teesdale and Wear Valley.
(Taken in this order Andy Paciorek, Numero Uno ‘Facts about the Number Seven’ fact finder and contributor, lives in the seventh district, Wear Valley, and his dad once claimed that it was "seven years since I last drank Lucozade").

7 districts

379

The John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassination on 22nd November 1963 has been described as ‘Seven seconds that shook the world’. Also:

JFK was born in 1917. He started at Harvard University in 1937. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his Profiles in Courage in 1957.
Air Force One, the presidential aircraft, was a Boeing 707 (which, on the day of the assassination, landed at Love Field, Dallas, Texas). The motorcade in which JFK was travelling left Love Field at 11.47am.
After the shooting, police scoured the area and sealed off the Texas Book Depository building at 12.37pm. After finding a kind of ‘sniper’s nest’ in front of a half-open window, it took a further seven minutes for police to find a Mannlichter-Cacarno rifle stashed behind some packing cases. This rifle had a seven-round magazine. It was later calculated that it wouldn’t be possible to fire this rifle three times in much less than seven seconds.
Air Force One took off from Love Field with the body of JFK aboard at 2.47pm.
Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who officially shot JFK, was in turn shot by Jack Ruby (who had moved to Dallas in 1947) and was pronounced dead at 1.07pm on 24th November.
Public opinion polls after Lee Harvey Oswald was so publicly murdered showed that a seven to one majority of Texans were in favour of a light sentence for Jack Ruby.
The Warren Commission, the investigative body formed to ascertain the truth about the assassination of JFK, comprised seven men.

380	In the early evening of January 17th, 1950, workers in the vault of the Boston branch of Brinks Incorporated, the American money-moving firm, were surrounded by seven masked men. After stealing a staggering amount of money said men left quietly and nonchalantly at around seven p.m.

381	There are seven known species of Leaf-Cutter Bees in Britain.

382	When the 24 Hours of TG box set of Throbbing Gristle cassettes was originally released in 1979, the complete set would have cost you £77 if you lived in the UK.

383	“Walter watched the naked man scrape up seven pieces of dirt with his thumbnail and pop them into his mouth before he forced himself to look away.”

384	In the painting Hylas and the Nymphs by J.W. Waterhouse the man, Hylas is depicted being tempted into the water by seven lovely but dangerous water-maidens.



385	After reading fact number 260, Chris Sienko got in touch with the following correction: I got out my old NIV (New International Version) Bible, and did some searching around. I'm assuming you already know some of the Joseph story (Technicolor Dreamcoat and all . . .I've actually never seen / heard the musical!). His brothers sold him into slavery because he was always talking about these dreams where he'd be king some day and such. They threw him in a cistern, and then when they saw some merchants coming by, they sold him into slavery in Egypt. As a slight diversion, it's worth noting that on the same page that this all happens, one of Joseph's brothers (Judah) marries a woman and gives birth to a son named Onan. And yes, it's as in THAT Onan. Mr. "Seed spilled upon the ground." Onanism and all that. Aaaaaaaanyway, Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt to a man named Potiphar, "one of the Pharoah's officials, the captain of the guard." Joseph did well for himself at this point, and Potiphar, seeing that he seemed to have a pretty good streak of luck / god on his side and all that, put him in charge of the household. "with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything but the food that he ate." Okay, it looks like this is a much longer story than I thought, so let's summarize quick. Potiphar's wife tries to seduce Joseph, he says no, and as he runs away from her, his overcloak is left behind. She says "he tried to ravage me and I screamed," so Joseph is put in prison. But again, because he's Mr. Favored In God's Eyes, he gets put in charge of all those held in the prison (teacher's pet, I guess). Later, there was a cupbearer and a baker in the service of Pharaoh (trust me, this is all going somewhere) who were put in this prison because they had offended the Pharaoh in some way. Soon after they had dreams, and Joseph interprets these as well. The cupbearer has one where he sees a vine with three branches, which bud into grapes. The cupbearer, in the dream, squeezes the grapes into Pharaoh's cup and puts it in his hands. Joseph says this means that in three days, Pharaoh will put you back in your favoured position. So the baker, liking the sound of that interpretation, tells his dream as well. In his dream, the baker had three baskets of bread, but the birds were eating from the top one. Joseph said this meant in three days, Pharaoh would come and have them chop off his head, hang him on a tree, and the birds would eat his flesh (far out . . .) Joseph asked the cupbearer to remember him when he got out of prison, but of course, the cupbearer forgot him. Until two years later, when Pharaoh had a dream. Actually, there are TWO instances of seven here. In Pharaoh's initial dream, there are seven heads of grain, healthy and good, growing on a single stalk. Next to them, a stalk with seven withered and inferior heads of grain grew up. The seven withered heads of grain swallowed the seven fat and healthy ones. The cupbearer remembers Joseph's skill and tells Pharaoh about how he was right about his and the baker's dreams, so Pharaoh orders for him. He then tells Joseph two dreams . . . both the one about the seven skinny cows swallowing the seven fat cows (without putting on any noticeable weight, continuing to be just as emaciated), as well as the seven thin grains eating the seven fat ones. Of course, Joseph notes that these are the same dream, basically (duh). The seven fat things were seven years of prosperity that were coming, and the seven thin things were seven years of extreme famine that were coming right after. Joseph recommended that Egypt do some serious storehousing of leftover grain during the prosperous years, so that all could be fed during the lean years. Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of all this, even putting his signet ring on Joseph's finger. Then there's some yadda yadda told you so stuff later about his brothers coming to Egypt during the famine and Joseph putting them through all sorts of tests and such, basically as an excuse to see his youngest brother Benjamin (who was living with their father at the time). At that point, the seven stuff kind of falls off. Anyway, it was the then-current Pharaoh (not King David) whom Joseph interpreted dreams for.

386	In the film Ed Wood, when trying to pitch the film Glen or Glenda, Ed (played by Johhny Depp) is told to shoot whatever baloney he likes as long as it’s seven reels long. The word baloney contains seven letters.

387	The Paneu are a collective of seven Afghan-Kafir Gods.

388	The Seventh Book of Moses is the name of a Dutch Grimoire (book of magical invocations).

389

In the Celtic wonder tale The Lad of the Skin Coverings, for every knot that was unfastened on the thong binding Conan the warrior, seven knots remained bound tight. In the same tale a messenger states that the hero Finn is bound by “. . . crosses, and as spells, and as seven fairy fetters of travelling and straying, that he would neither stop nor take rest until he reach the Queen of Ruaidh’s place”. Whatever that means.

390	In the Celtic Folk-tale The Lad of the Skin Coverings, the palace of King Lochlan was guarded by 7 warriors.

391	Headless cockroaches can live for seven days after beheadings, because of nerve cell clusters elsewhere in their bodies.

392	J. W. Waterhouse, in his painting The Danaides, depicts seven of the fifty daughters of King Danaus - 49 (7 x 7) of whom were condemned to death for having murdered their husbands on their wedding nights.

seven daughters of King Danaus


393	In the Hans Christian Andersen tale Ole Luk-Oie (a Scandinavian equivalent of Wee Willie Winkie or the Sandman), the title character tells a little boy called Hjalmar seven different stories, one for each night of the week.

394	It takes seven years for Oak Tree leaves to rot.

395	Aaron Barshak, the Comedy Terrorist, set off seven security alarms (which were ignored by guards and the police) when he gatecrashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle, sporting a Bin Laden beard and a peach frock.

396	For her Golden Jubilee, Queen Victoria was presented with a seven-foot tall orchid bouquet.

397	Orchids take seven years to bloom.

398	The English plant hunter Joseph Hooker spent seven months in Assam searching for rare orchids, during which time he was nearly drowned by three hundred inches of rain and had ascended further up Mt. Kanchenjunga than any other European before him.

399	The Great Stove at Chatsworth, the world’s largest greenhouse in the early 17th century, was heated by seven miles of pipes.

400	In April 2003 four young girls were alarmed to be mugged and robbed of their water canteens by a troop of thirsty baboons, after walking for seven miles in drought-hit North Kenya.

401	There are seven known species of Ptchopteridae (False Crane Flies) in Britain.

402	The scientist Byron Sykes developed a theory that all people of European descent can trace their ancestry back to one of seven initial DNA strains. These he named the seven daughters of Eve and are as follows: Ursula Xenia Helena Velda Tara Katrine Jasmine

403	Tylenol developed a plastic protective seal that became the standard in the drug industry after some crazy guy spiked a bunch of Tylenol bottles with poison, killing seven people.

404

Whilst most natural history books tend to try to explain the life-cycles of insects with the least possible number of pictures, for some reason The Practical Entomologist by Rick Imes has chosen to show both Hemimetabolous and Holometabolous development in seven stages. (The word ‘insects’ has seven letters).

seven stages of insect development


405	Another Brother’s Grimm fairy tale is entitled The Seven Swabians.

406	In Gnostic myth, Eloai is the ruler of the seven Heavens of Chaos.

407	The sinkholes of the Fakahatchee Swamp in Florida are filled with as much as seven feet of standing water.

408	The mysterious cryptid manimal of Florida known as the Swamp Ape is said to be seven feet tall and weigh seven hundred pounds.

409	Spiders’ legs are composed of seven segments.

410	The 1851 book Orchids for the Millions by Benjamin Williams proved so popular in that era that it had to be reprinted seven times.

411	Approximately seven tenths of the Earth's surface is covered by water.

412

Mark Spitz, considered the swiftest swimmer of all time, made his big splash during the 1972 Olympics, becoming the first athlete to win seven gold medals in an Olympiad. His performances were even more remarkable considering world records were set in all seven events. Fulfilling all the pre-Olympic hype, he won four individual events (in the 100- and 200-metre freestyle and 100- and 200-metre butterfly) and three relay races. After his Munich triumph, Spitz was bombarded with endorsement offers. He soon came to be known more as a good-looking, mustachioed pitchman than for his signature butterfly stroke. He made some $7 million in two years.

413	In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that when a child was born it would be guarded until a certain age by seven Hathors (spirits that sometimes had the heads of cattle).

414	Lampreys (eel-like parasitic fish with an impressive set of teeth) have 7 pairs of circular gill openings running along their sides.

415	In December 2002 an eight year old girl in Australia defied the odds by surviving an attack from a deadly taipan snake. Her treatment consisted of seven shots of anti-venom.

416	In Breton-Celtic lore the submerged lands off the coast of Brittany are said to rise from beneath the waves once every seven years.

417	“Recent surveys reveal that about one in seven people in Britain claims to have seen a ghost”.

418

W. K. Kellogg (of breakfast cereal fame) told people, "I was my father's seventh son, born on the seventh day of the week and the seventh day of the month. My father was a seventh child, and the name 'Kellogg' has seven letters." When he travelled, he booked rooms on the seventh floor; his Michigan license plates had to end in a seven.

419	During the Vietnam War, as many as one in seven American soldiers took heroin.

420	Enid Blyton wrote a number of children’s books in the Secret Seven series.



421	In regional Greek Myth there were seven Muses recognised in Lesbos.

422	In the film Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 the goth-chick crashed a van into a tree after swerving to avoid the ghosts of seven murdered children.

423	During mating, males of the millipede species Polyxenus Lagunis secrete a chemical from glands in their seventh segment.

424	In the Celtic wonder tale The Bare-Stripping Hangman, in order to help the king the hen-wife required as much butter as his seven cow-houses produced in seven years, as much wool as his seven sheep-houses produced in seven years and as much meat as his seven ox-houses produced in seven years.

425	Mentioned in the Celtic wonder tale The Bare-Stripping Hangman, are the Fiery Dragon of the seven Serpent-heads and the Great Barns of the seven Stoops, seven Bends and seven Couples.

426	Aileen Wuornos, America’s first female serial killer, murdered seven men.

427	On February 14th, 1929 (14 =2X7, 1+9+2+9=21=3X7), seven rivals of Al Capone were murdered in a Chicago garage in what was later dubbed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

428	And on a similar theme, the gangster film The Sting set in 1930’s Chicago and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, won seven Oscars.

429	Distinguishing features of the Pearl Bordered Fritillary and Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary Butterflies are their underwing markings resembling a string of seven pearls.

430	A statue of Sir Thomas Browne stands in Norwich Haymarket. Browne was the author of various strange books including the seven volume Pseudoxia Epidemica (or 'Browne's Vulgar Errors') - a study of strange beliefs and superstitions published in 1646.

431	The Forestry Commission’s Native Pinewood Inventory recognises seventy-seven pinewoods in seven biochemical regions of Scotland. The book People and Woods of Scotland: A History edited by John Fowler consists of seven essays by seven writers.

432	In the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (seven letters in each name) the journeyman Orlick informed young Pip that the devil lived in a corner of the smithy's forge and every seven years would light the furnace using a live boy as fuel.

433	There are seven major chakras of the body, represented by the following gemstones (as seen in a pretentious advert for a necklace): Red Garnet, Orange Carnelian, Yellow Citrine, Green Peridot, Blue Howlite, Indigo Sodalite, Violet Amethyst.

434	The Poludnica (Midday Spirit) is a supernatural Polish Hag prone to attacking people with a sickle. Sometimes she wanders alone but at other times she will be seen accompanied by seven massive black dogs.

435	The cow pictured below is called Becky, was born in February 2002 and belongs to Colin Fry from Bude in Cornwall. "As far as I’m aware there has been no image manipulation jiggery-pokery, it’s just an accurate representation of a bona-fide bovine blessed with that number".

Becky

436

In the book Titus Groan – part of the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake – the curator Rotcodd would enter the Hall of the Bright Carvings (which was constantly illuminated by seven candelabra) to clean daily at seven o’clock.
When the chef Abiatha Swelter collapses in a drunken stupor his portly frame covers seven flagstones.
Seven of the walls in the octagonal room are covered in full-length portraits.
The character Fuchsia sees seven clouds, which she regards as ominous.
The names Rotcodd, Fuchsia and first and second names Abiatha Swelter each contain seven letters.
Upon hearing the news of the birth of Titus Groan, 77th Earl of Gormenghast, the Dwellers repeat the word ‘Gormenghast’ 77 times.
Seven cedars stand upon the lawn.
Seven characters are described as they advance towards the cool room for Titus’ christening.
When the character Steerpike tries to gain the favour of Lady Fuchsia he remains immobile in a clown stance for seven seconds.
Lady Gertrude receives seven beggars from the outer dwellings to anoint them with oil.
Hand painted in the seven hues of yellow, red, green, violet, pale blue, coral pink and orange, the Groan Twins’ Room of Roots is described as giving the impression of seven boles that have forced their way through the window.
Seven wooden steps lead up to the rostrum and long table in Gormenghast dining room.
As part of Titus’ first breakfast ceremony the character Barquentine is obliged to trample seven times up and down the length of the long-table.
The character Flay observes Keda traversing the seven-foot long crag on Gormenghast Mountain.
The character Irma remembered perfectly lesson seven that ladies do not participate in ‘situations’.
The second book of the Gormenghast trilogy, Gormenghast, continues the tale of Titus Groan, 77th Earl of Gormenghast, when he is aged seven. His mother has seen him only seven times in seven years.
To enter Fuchsia’s room, Steerpike climbs seven stories down from above on a rope.
At the meeting of the professors Shred describes Bellgrove as having difficulty in understanding sentences containing more than seven words.
Irma Prunesquallor’s party, according to her invitation, was due to begin at seven pm.
Titus is sentenced to seven days confinement in the kitchen fort, for running away.
The poet’s rostrum is seven feet above the ground.
During the great flood, Titus receives his boat floating on the seventh floor of the castle.
Steerpike’s rooftop retreat had seven strongholds.
In Titus Alone, the third book of the Gormenghast trilogy, the blue-chinned man at the party in the city recites a poem that speaks of seven biscuit-boxes.
As they flee from the party, Titus and Muzzlehatch find themselves in a hall surrounded by seven doors on a level seven floors above the servants’ quarters.
Seven hounds are seen to pass through Under-River, ready for their meal of seven chunks of crimson horse-flesh.
Seven times the Black Rose tries to escape from Veil, and seven times he finds her again.
Perched on the back of the throne in the Black House are seven owls.
As Titus returns to familiar ground he hears a cannon fire seven times

437

The title-page illustration from De Lapide Philosophica depicts a complex symbolic design incorporating seven rays emanating from the centre. Each of the rays is thought to depict a different Alchemical process. (The word 'Alchemy' contains seven letters).

seven rays


438	The Vile (Ash tree elementals from southern Slavic folklore) were said to ride around on the backs of seven-year-old stags.
439	The promotional material for the first British cultivation of the giant water lily Victoria Amazonica featured a seven-year old girl standing on the floating leaf.

440	The painting by Lucio Fontana titled Spatial Concept (1962) is a plain blue canvas slashed seven times. The words ‘spatial’, ‘concept’, and the name ‘Fontana’ each have seven letters.

441	There are seven known species of Burnet Moths in Britain.

442	Curtis Ricks, the ossified man, died in 1892 of a rare condition that turned his flesh into bone. He left behind a wife and seven children.

443	Prisoner Aleksandr Roppel committed suicide by beheading himself with a circular saw after being sentenced to seven years imprisonment in Krasnoyarsk Region Penal Colony, Siberia, for drug trafficking.

444	When Eva Peron, wife of the President of Argentina, died in 1952 over two million people filed past her coffin as her body lay in state. Seven people were killed in the crush.