The answer to the question in the title is, of course, you can’t. Bollocks is bollocks no matter from which race, religion, continent or country it comes from, or in what language.
I tried, and tried hard, but I couldn’t let Friday’s non-event go by without a word or several about the Mayans and particularly about the dipsticks who thought they had interpreted the Mayan calendar.
By the way “the Mayan Calendar” is an anagram of “deny earth almanac” so that in itself should have told them something.
But no, in the best bollocks-brain tradition that also brought us ‘the Y2K crisis that never was’ and that never made any sense either, we have been subjected for months and years now to all this end of the world malarkey from so-called learned scholars who knew such a lot about such a little they might as well have known nothing about anything at all. Plus, they have not an atom of common sense between them!
There’s a fasab rule that there are none so dumb as those who think they are smart. I suppose that’s my take on “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. Happily I have been blessed with the ability to recognize that there are at least a trillion things that I don’t know for every little thing that I do know. I have also learned not to jump to conclusions when there is precious little evidence to support them.
So here’s the story.
We all know by now that the Mayans carved a calendar into a big round stone and that some self-important smart asses tried to decipher it and came to the conclusion that, because the calendar apparently stops at Dec 21, 2012, that is the date when the world must end.
That’s a bit like munching your way through a bar of chocolate, looking at the empty wrapper and deciding that there will be no more bars of chocolate ever! (Now THAT would be the end of the world!)
There could have been lots of reasons why the Mayan calendar ended on that date (if indeed it did) but they were either dismissed or, much more likely, never even considered. None of them fit with dipstick logic.
For example,
the wee-calendar-carver-man-person may have keeled over and died without passing on his ‘magic formula’ to a successor.
he may just have got pissed off with the job and stopped.
he could have broken his chisel.
he might have whacked himself on the thumb with his hammer.
he could have continued his work on a second stone that nobody has found yet.
or he may have been the Mayan equivalent of the modern day dipsticks who tried to interpret it and really did think the world was going to end on that date.
It’s not the fact that we have these ‘end of the world’ morons and their equally moronic pronouncements about the apocalypse that annoys me. It’s the utterly depressing fact that no matter how insanely stupid their ideas are there are always hoards of other morons willing to believe them.
How sad is that?
And it has been going on for thousands of years.
A Roman priest and theologian in the second and third centuries, predicted Christ would return in A.D. 500. His calculations were based on the dimensions of Noah’s ark!
In the year 999, despite the fact that there weren’t any of the events required by the Bible transpiring at that time, there was almost hysteria over the return of Christ with all members of society seemingly affected by the prediction that it would happen on January 1, 1000 AD.
In 1186 the “Letter of Toledo” warned everyone to hide in the caves and mountains. The world would be destroyed and only a few would be spared.
In 1420 the Taborites of Czechoslovakia predicted every city would be annihilated by fire. Only five mountain strongholds would be saved.
Also around the same time someone called ‘Mother Shipton’ claimed the world would end 400 years later in 1881.
In 1666 the bubonic plague outbreak killed 100,000 Londoners and, along with the Great Fire of London during the same year, made the world ending likely to most. The fact that the year ended with the Beast’s number (666), didn’t help sanity to prevail either.
By 1809 things were getting really silly. A woman fortune teller, named Mary Bateman, had a magic chicken that laid eggs with end time messages on them. However the uproar she created was ended abruptly when an unannounced visitor caught her forcing a magic egg up the hen’s ass! She was later was hanged for poisoning a wealthy client.
William Miller founded an end-times movement that became known as ‘Millerism’. He determined that the second coming would happen sometime between 1843-1844. A spectacular meteor shower in 1833 gave the movement a good push forward and the anticipation continued to build up until March 21, 1844, when Miller’s one year time table ran out.
In 1874 the Jehovah’s Witnesses were getting in on the fun, but failed. They also struck out in 1878 and 1881. Charles Taze Russell then predicted the Rapture in 1910, followed by the ‘End of the World’ in 1914. He later reinterpreted this as the ‘invisible’ return of Christ when the world ignored him and continued. The Witnesses had no better luck with predictions for 1918, or 1925, or 1957, or 1975, or 1994. Amazingly, the failure of every one of their forecasts has not affected the growth of the movement, the Watchtower magazine, a major Witness periodical, having apparently over 13 million subscribers worldwide.
Then the revisit of Haley’s comet was, for many, an indication of the Lord’s second coming. The earth actually passed through the gaseous tail of the comet. One of the few sane people of the time was enterprising enough to sell ‘comet pills’ to people for protection against the effects of the toxic gases.
1960 was the date chosen by Piazzi Smyth, a past astronomer royal of Scotland, whose 1860 book titled “Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid” both predicted that year as the date of the new millennium and was responsible for spreading the belief in pyramidology throughout the world.
1962 saw Pope John XXIII contributing to the madness, predicting that visitors from outer space would arrive in chariots of flaming steel and would share their advanced knowledge with humanity. Our life span would be increased to 150 years or longer and most diseases would be wiped out.
In 1967 when the city of Jerusalem was reclaimed by the Jews, prophecy watchers declared that the ‘Time of the Gentiles’ had come to an end.
By the mid 1970s it was the turn of the late Moses David (formerly David Berg) founder of ‘The Children of God’ to predict that a comet would hit the earth, and destroy all life in the United States.
Then a group called the ‘Tara Centers’ placed full-page advertisements in many major newspapers for the weekend of April 24-25, 1982, announcing “The Christ is Now Here!” and predicting that he would make himself known “within the next two months.” After the date passed, they said that the delay was only because the “consciousness of the human race was not quite right…” in other words, all our fault, not theirs!
In 1983, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Guru of the Rajneesh movement also predicted massive destruction on earth, including natural disasters and man-made catastrophes. Floods larger than any since Noah, extreme earthquakes, very destructive volcano eruptions, nuclear wars etc. would be experienced. Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Bombay would all disappear. To the best of my knowledge they are all still around although Bombay did have a makeover name change. .
In 1991 Nation of Islam Leader, Louis Farrakhan, proclaimed the Gulf War would to be “the War of Armageddon … the final War.” Wrong!
In 1992, we had the whacko in Waco. David Koresh and his Branch Davidian group change the name of their commune from Mt. Carmel to Ranch Apocalypse, because of his belief that the final all-encompassing battle of Armageddon mentioned in the Bible would start at the Branch Davidian compound. They had calculated that the end would occur in 1995. After a 51-day standoff, on April 10,1993, they did have their own mini apocalypse when 76 members died as a result of a deliberately set fire.
Also in 1992 Lee Jang Rim started a church called, “Mission For The Coming Days”. Using numerology as the basis for his chosen date, the cult (no spelling error) looked forward to the Second Coming believing that Jesus would return through Sydney Harbour! An hour after the appointed prediction time the cult leaders ran for it, hiding their faces from reporters. One reporter was punched. Some disappointed members committed suicide, probably because they had given all their worldly assets to Lee Jang Rim who was later jailed for two years for embezzling 4.4 million dollars from 10,000 of his cult followers. Ironically Lee Jang Rim had used the money to buy bonds that matured AFTER the end of the world! You gotta laugh!
Pastor John Hinkle of Christ Church Los Angels also caused quite a stir when he announced he had received a vision from God that warned of an apocalyptic event on June 9th, 1994. Hinkle, quoting God, said, “On Thursday June the 9th, I will rip the evil out of this world.” Nope, didn’t happen either.
Then Harold Camping in his book “Are You Ready?” predicted the Lord’s return in September 1994. The book was full of methods that added up Bible numbers up to 1994 as the date of Christ’s return. Of course it was nonsense, but proving that you can’t keep a good man down, he was at it again in 2011, when he pronounced that May 21 that year would be ‘Judgment day’. Needless to say he was wrong again!
In 1993, when Rabin and Arafat signed their peace pact on the White House lawn on September 13, some saw the events as the beginning of the tribulation. With the signing of the peace agreement Daniel’s 1260 day countdown was underway and by adding 1260 days to September, 1993 they came to February 24, 1997 as the fateful day.
The July 29, 1997 an issue of the ‘Weekly World News’ carried a statement by a spokesperson of the ‘International Association of Psychics’ which said that 92% of their 120,000 members had had the same “end time” vision. War, pestilence, and a worldwide plague were among the predicted events which would see the end of mankind by around the year 2001. So much for psychics!
Also around 1997 a group called the ‘Sacerdotal Knights of National Security’ reported that “A space alien captured at a UFO landing site in eastern Missouri cracked under interrogation by the CIA and admitted that an extraterrestrial army will attack Earth on November 27 with the express purpose of stripping our planet of every natural resource they can find a use for — and making slaves of every man, woman and child in the world!”
Then, because 666 times three equals 1998, that year saw another spasm of end of the world predictions. For example, a Taiwanese cult operating out of Garland Texas predicted Christ would return on March 31, 1998. The group’s leader, Heng-ming Chen, announced God would return, and then invite the cult members aboard a UFO. However, the group had to abandon their second coming prediction when a precursor event failed to take place. The cult’s leader said God would appear on every channel 18 of every TV in the world, but as one commentator concluded, perhaps God realized at the last minute that the Playboy Network was channel 18 on several cable systems, and he didn’t want to have Christians watching a porn channel.
Also in 1998 the famous psychic, Edgar Cayce, predicted that a secret, underground chamber would be discovered between the paws of the Great Sphinx and that inside there would be documents revealing the history of Atlantis. This revelation would trigger the Second Coming of Christ. This prediction is more interesting than most because two independent studies have revealed that there is in fact an underground structure just where Cayce said it would be!
The wonderfully and appropriately named ‘Church of the Subgenius’ predicted that on “X Day”, July 5, 1998, the end of the world would occur. At that time, “the Men from Planet X, or XISTS, will arrive on Earth, close a deal with “Bob,” rapture the card-carrying Ordained SubGenii up to the Escape Vessels of the Sex Goddesses, and destroy the remaining population of Earth, VERY VERY SLOWLY.” In case you are wondering, ‘Bob’ is J.R. Dobbs, leader and High Epopt of the Church of the SubGenius, Living Avatar of Slack, the Saint of Sales. You couldn’t make it up!
The new millennium year of 2000 produced an upsurge in end of the world predictions. When none of that came true some of them regrouped and hit on the ‘no year zero’ excuse, pushing their doomsday date out to 2001. Nope. Wrong again!
A few years later, Shelby Corbett, of Bradenton, Florida put up benches throughout the town advertising that the rapture will happen in 2007! She had little Biblical knowledge but conveniently had a book out pushing the same information.
Then Arnie Stanton noted on September 16, 1997 that that evening was the fourth Jewish festival since April 3, 1996 when a lunar eclipse had occurred. He quoted Luke 21:25-26 which mentions “signs in the sun, in the moon and in the stars and on the earth distress of nations” and decided that “these recent lunar eclipses are the last known astronomical signs that will precede a 7 year (360 day/year) countdown to Armageddon/Christ’s return to the Earth.” Arnie expected that Christ’s return would occur within a few months of September 29, 2004 when Asteroid Toutatis made a very close approach to the Earth. Afraid not Arnie.
On April 17, 2008 Ronald Weinland travelled to Jerusalem and announced that he and his wife were the two witnesses of Revelation. The title of his book, “If it doesn’t come to pass…starting in April, then I’m nothing but a false prophet…” said it all.
And then we had the Mayan calendar nonsense, which brings me back to where this post started. It turned out to be a bit longer than I had intended, but I wanted to give you a flavor of the idiots that are out there, all with equally idiotic followers. And this is just a few of many, many more examples.
So is there an answer?
Well yes there is. And it’s pretty simple. Just do three things, (a) don’t listen to self-important academics and scientists who clearly don’t know what they are talking about. (b) treat others the way you like to be treated yourself, and providing you are reasonably normal and not some kind of kinky masochist, then that yardstick should do fine; and (c) don’t worry about the end of the world, you can’t do anything about it anyway, I mean where are you going to go?
By special request, today’s significant number is the number six. My thanks to John in Australia for the suggestion, turns out it was a very interesting choice. So let’s get started. Enjoy.
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The Number Six 6
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In religion
Chapter One of Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament, tells us that the Creation was done over a six day period, and that man was created on day number 6. Moreover, six days were appointed to man for his labor, while one day is associated in sovereignty with the Lord God, as His rest.
The serpent also was created on the sixth day.
The Sixth Commandment relates to the worst sin – murder.
The sixth clause of the Lord’s prayer treats of sin.
There are six points on a Star of David.
Star of David
There are six Orders of the Mishnah.
Six symbolic foods are placed on the Passover Seder Plate.
The Jewish holiday of Shavuot starts on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan.
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In Islam there are Six articles of belief
Fasting six days of Shawwal, together with the month of Ramadan, is equivalent to fasting the whole year
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In Hindu theology, a trasarenu is the combination of 6 celestial paramanus (atoms)
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In mathematics
Six is the first number which is neither a square number nor a prime number.
Six is the largest of the four all-Harshad numbers.
There are six basic trigonometric functions.
A cube has six faces.
A hexagon is a regular polygon with six sides.
A hexahedron is a polyhedron with six faces, with a cube being a special case.
S6, with 720 elements, is the only finite symmetric group which has an outer automorphism. This automorphism allows us to construct a number of exceptional mathematical objects such as the S(5,6,12) Steiner system, the projective plane of order 4 and the Hoffman-Singleton graph.
Six similar coins can be arranged around a central coin of the same radius so that each coin makes contact with the central one (and touches both its neighbors without a gap), but seven cannot be so arranged. This makes 6 the answer to the two-dimensional kissing number problem. The densest sphere packing of the plane is obtained by extending this pattern to the hexagonal lattice in which each circle touches just six others.
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In science
Six is the atomic number of carbon.
A benzene molecule has a ring of six carbon atoms.
The prefix “hexa-“ (Greek word for ‘six’) also occurs in the systematic name of many chemical compounds, such as “hexamethyl”.
A hexamer is an oligomer made of six sub-units.
Adenine is one of four bases that code for all life in deoxyribonucleic acid. Adenine’s molecular structure is based on a hexagonal ring bonded to a pentagonal ring.
In the Standard Model of particle physics, there are six types of quark and six types of lepton.
In statistical mechanics, the six-vertex model has six possible configurations of arrows at each vertex.
The six-fold symmetry of snowflakes arises from the hexagonal crystal structure of ordinary ice.
People with sexdactyly have six fingers on each hand.
Six babies delivered in one birth are sextuplets.
There are six tastes in traditional Indian Medicine called Ayurveda: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. These tastes are used to suggest a diet based on the symptoms of the body.
Phase 6 is one of six pandemic influenza phases.
The cells of a beehive honeycomb are 6-sided.
Insects have 6 legs.
The measuring instrument called a sextant got its name because its shape forms one-sixth of a whole circle.
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In space
The New General Catalogue object NGC 6 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda.
Messier object M6, a magnitude 4.5 open cluster in the constellation Scorpius, also known as the Butterfly Cluster.
Messier object M6
The gaseous planet Saturn has hexagonal clouds on its north pole discovered by Voyager 1 in 1977 and verified again in 2006 by the Cassini spacecraft, meaning this hexagon is a persistent structure on the scale of a planet.
Saturn’s hexagonal north pole clouds
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Apollo 6
Apollo 6, the final unmanned mission of the United States Apollo Program, was launched on April 4, 1968. It was an A type mission and the second test flight for the Saturn V launch vehicle, intended to demonstrate full lunar injection capability of the Saturn V with a nearly full simulated payload, and also the capability of the Command Module’s heat shield to withstand a lunar-speed re-entry.
Apollo program insignia
The mission was not designed to go to the moon, but merely to achieve a trans-lunar speed toward an imaginary point in space nowhere near the moon, then turn around and return in about 10 hours.
However, fuel line failures in several Saturn V second and third stage engines prevented it from achieving lunar injection, but it was able to get close to lunar return velocity by using the Apollo spacecraft’s engine, as was done on Apollo 4, the first Saturn V test. Despite the engine failures, the flight nonetheless provided NASA with enough confidence in the Saturn V to use it for manned launches.
Launch video
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In politics
Massachusetts was sixth to receive statehood on, Wednesday, February 6, 1788.
The Sixth Amendment (Amendment VI) to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that sets forth rights related to criminal prosecutions. The Supreme Court has applied the protections of this amendment to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The sixth President of the United States of America was John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) who served from March 4, 1825 to March 4, 1829. His V.P. Was John C. Calhoun.
John Quincy Adams Sixth President of the United States of America
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The sixth Prime Minister of Australia was Sir Joseph Cook, (7 December 1860 – 30 July 1947). A coal miner from Silverdale, Staffordshire, Cook emigrated to Lithgow, New South Wales during the late 1880s, and became General-Secretary of the Western Miners Association in 1887.
He was a founding member of the Australian Labor Party, and was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as Member for Hartley in 1891.
Later Cook switched to the Free Trade Party, and was a minister in the cabinet of Premier George Reid from 1894 to 1899. During Australia’s first federal election in 1901, Cook was elected unopposed to the federal seat of Parramatta, and served as the deputy to Reid, then Alfred Deakin, following the creation of the Commonwealth Liberal Party from Cook’s and Deakin’s parties.
As leader of the Liberal Party, Cook became Prime Minister following the 1913 elections; but he only had a one-seat majority in the lower house and no majority at all in the upper house, so he repeatedly sought to obtain a double dissolution. The outbreak of World War I just before the September 1914 election led to a Labor victory. Following a split in the Labor party in 1916, Cook joined William Morris Hughes’ Nationalist Party of Australia, and following the Nationalist victory in the 1917 election, served as Minister for the Navy, then Treasurer under Hughes.
In 1921 Cook resigned from the federal parliament, and was appointed Australian High Commissioner in London. During 1928 and 1929, he headed the Royal Commission into South Australia as affected by Federation. He died in Sydney in 1947.
Joseph Cook sixth Prime Minister of Australia
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Australia has six states, Queensland (capital, Brisbane); New South Wales (capital, Sydney); Victoria (capital, Melbourne); Tasmania (capital, Hobart); South Australia (capital, Adelaide); and Western Australia (capital, Perth). The Northern Territory (capital, Darwin), as the name implies, is classed as a ‘territory’, not a ‘state’.
Australia political map
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The ‘Six Counties’ is a term used to describe Northern Ireland which consists of the six north-eastern counties of the island of Ireland. It was created when Ireland was partitioned in 1921. After a campaign of terrorism, murder and bombing lasting almost thirty years the London government (of first Conservative John Major and later Labour Tony Blair) along with the Clinton administration brought about a ‘peace’ agreement that saw terrorists installed as part of the Northern Ireland government in Belfast. This was done during the 1990s and pre the 9/11 terrorists attacks on New York when Americans got first hand experience of what terrorism was all about. It is questionable if a post 9/11 American administration would have been so keen to participate in appeasing terrorism.
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In sport
The National Basketball Association and National Hockey League have six divisions.
The Original Six teams in the National Hockey League are Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, New York, Boston, and Detroit. They are the oldest remaining teams in the league, though not necessarily the first six; they comprised the entire league from 1942 to 1967.
In American college football, there are six conferences that automatically qualify for Bowl Championship Series games.
Six-man football is a variant of American or Canadian football, played by smaller schools with insufficient enrollment to field the traditional 11-man (American) or 12-man (Canadian) squad.
In a football (soccer) game each side is allowed a maximum of three substitutes, making six in all.
In ice hockey, six is the number of players per team, including the goaltender, that are on the ice at any one time, excluding penalty situations.
In volleyball, six players from each team on each side play against each other.
In some sports, six goals is known as a double-hat-trick, but is very hard to accomplish. A hat-trick in sport is the achievement of a positive feat three times or more during a game, or other achievements based on threes. The term was first used in 1858 in cricket to describe H H Stephenson’s feat of taking three wickets in three balls. A collection was held for Stephenson, and he was presented with a hat bought with the proceeds. The term was used in print for the first time in 1878 and was eventually adopted by many other sports including association football, water polo, and team handball, but did not become popular in North America until the mid-1940s in the National Hockey League.
In American and Canadian football, a touchdown earns 6 points.
In Australian Rules football, six points are received for a goal.
In cricket there are six balls to an over, and a “six” or “sixer” is a shot in which the ball clears the boundary without bouncing, scoring six runs.
In rugby union, the starting blindside flanker wears jersey number 6. (Some teams use “left” and “right” flankers instead of “openside” and “blindside”, with 6 being worn by the starting left flanker.)
In most rugby league competitions (but not the European Super League, which uses static squad numbering), the jersey number 6 is worn by the starting stand-off half (Southern Hemisphere term) or five-eighth (Northern Hemisphere term).
In football (soccer) AC Milan retired shirt number 6 belonging to their legendary center back and captain Franco Baresi in 1997.
In Britain, Arsenal retired the number 6 shirt after their long serving center back and captain Tony Adams retired in 2002.
In Major League Baseball: the Atlanta Braves, for manager Bobby Cox; the Boston Red Sox, for Johnny Pesky; the Detroit Tigers, for Hall of Famer Al Kaline; the Minnesota Twins, for Tony Oliva; the St. Louis Cardinals, for Hall of Famer Stan Musial; the San Diego Padres, for Steve Garvey.
#6 Stan Musial
In the NBA: the Boston Celtics, for Hall of Famer Bill Russell; the Orlando Magic, for their fans (the “sixth man”); the Philadelphia 76ers, for Hall of Famer Julius Erving; the Phoenix Suns, for Walter Davis; the Sacramento Kings, also for their fans.
Hall of Famer Julius Erving
In the NFL: the Kansas City Chiefs, for Warren McVea.
Warren McVea
In the NHL: the Detroit Red Wings, for Larry Aurie; the Pittsburgh Penguins, for Ian Ackerman; the Toronto Maple Leafs, for Hall of Famer Ace Bailey (the Leafs have a unique policy of not retiring numbers unless the player honored either died or suffered a career-ending incident while a member of the team. Bailey suffered a fractured skull during a game in 1933; while he recovered and lived for nearly 60 years after the incident, he never played again. The Leafs would issue the number to Ron Ellis in 1968 at Bailey’s personal request, and Ellis wore it until his own retirement in 1981.)
Hall Of Famer Ace Bailey
In NASCAR, the number 6 is currently owned by Roush Fenway Racing. Since the 2007 season, the first year in which Roush Racing was merged with the Fenway Sports Group that owns the Boston Red Sox, the Cup Series version of the car has been driven by David Ragan. From 1988 to 2006, Mark Martin drove the #6 in the Cup Series for what was then Roush Racing.
Roush Fenway Racing #6 car
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Cars and Bikes
Yamaha YZF R6
The Yamaha YZF R6 is a super sports bike, motorcycle manufactured by Yamaha Motor Company. The Yamaha comes with many sports bikes that are Yamaha R1, Yamaha FZ8, Yamaha R15 and Yamaha Vmax, Yamaha MT01 and more. The Yamaha YZF R6 is the one of the most advanced production in the 600cc segment from Yamaha. The Yamaha, bike manufacturer is flourishing in the Indian Market with the most stylish and delivers the best and advanced technology in India.
Yamaha YZF R6 Motorcycle
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Audi S6
Easily distinguishable by the row of LED running lights that graces both sides of its front bumper, Audi’s sport-inspired version of its A6 executive saloon, the S6, has much more than visual cues to separate it from its little brothers. This four-door, five-passenger luxury sport sedan comes standard with the six-speed Tiptronic automatic transmission with steering-wheel-mounted paddle shifters, Audi’s quattro AWD and a 435-hp, 5.2-liter V10 designed by Lamborghini.
Audi S6
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Mercedes 600
During the resurgence of Germany from the rubble of WWII, after a tough post-war German automotive industry was recovering, and it was there that Mercedes Benz proposed making the car better representation of the world, whatever the cost. Work began in 1955 and after eight years of development the result was the Mercedes 600, also known as der Großer Mercedes, a car totally superlative in all respects. This was the car of choice of Presidents, Popes, dictators and billionaires.
Mercedes Benz 600 Pullman
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In books, music, television & movies
Six Graves to Munich by Mario Gianluigi Puzo, perhaps better known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola.
Six Days Of The Condor, a thriller novel by James Grady first published in 1974 by W.W. Norton, is a suspense drama set in contemporary Washington, D.C., and is considerably different from the 1975 film version, Three Days of the Condor starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. It was followed by a second novel by Grady titled Shadow of the Condor, released in 1978.
Hexameter is a poetic form consisting of six metrical feet per line.
Six Degrees of Separation is a movie about an affluent New York couple find their lives touched, intruded upon, and compelled by a mysterious young black man who is never quite who he says he is.
Six Days Seven Nights is a movie starring Harrison Ford and Anne Heche. Robin Monroe, a New York magazine editor, and the gruff pilot Quinn Harris must put aside their mutual dislike if they are to survive after crash landing on a deserted South Seas island.
Six Days in June is a documentary about the Six Day War.
Sixth Sense starring Bruce Willis is a movie about a boy who communicates with spirits that don’t know they’re dead seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist.
Number 6 (Teresa Palmer) is a character in the movie I Am Number Four (2011).
The Six Million Dollar Man, was an extremely popular sci-fi television series from the 1970s about former astronaut Steve Austin crippled in an airplane crash but rebuilt using bionic components that gave him super-human strength and speed.
The Bionic Six are the heroes of the eponymous animated series.
A group of six musicians is called a sextet.
There are 6 semitones in a tritone.
A standard guitar has 6 strings.
Most woodwind instruments have 6 basic holes or keys (e.g., bassoon, clarinet, pennywhistle, saxophone); these holes or keys are usually not given numbers or letters in the fingering charts.
Les Six (“The Six” in English) was a group consisting of the French composers Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre in the 1920s.
Bands with the number six in their name include Six Organs of Admittance, 6 O’clock Saints, Electric Six, Eve 6, Los Xey (sei is Basque for “six”), Out On Blue Six, Six In Six, Sixpence None the Richer, Slant 6, Vanity 6, and You Me At Six.
#6 is the pseudonym of American musician Shawn Crahan, when performing with the band Slipknot.
“Six geese a-laying” were given as a present on the sixth day in the popular Christmas carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”.
The concerti grossi Opus 3, organ concertos Opus 4 and Opus 7 (each) by Georg Frideric Handel.
The sixth album by Dream Theater, Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence, was based around the number six: the album has six songs, and the sixth song — that is, the complete second disc — explores the stories of six individuals suffering from various mental illnesses.
Six is the second album by Mansun released in 1998. It takes its name in part from the main character in the television series The Prisoner, and from A. A. Milne’s poetry book, Now We Are Six.
Patrick McGoohan played prisoner number 6 in the mysterious British television series called The Prisoner, catchphrase “I am a man, I am not a number”.
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In militaria
Carrier Air Wing Six
Carrier Air Wing Six (CVW-6) was a United States Navy aircraft carrier air wing whose operational history spans from the years prior to World War II to the end of the Cold War, including participating in the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, and the Vietnam War.
When the unit was named “Air Group Six” during its time on the Enterprise, it was the Navy’s only carrier-based air group to carry out three complete tours of duty during World War II.
It was based on 15 different carriers during its operational lifetime. The lineage of Carrier Air Wing Six can be traced to the Enterprise Air Group, created on 1 July 1938, which included the following squadrons and aircraft:
Bombing Six (VB-6) — 18 Douglas SBD-2 Dauntless dive bombers
Fighting Six (VF-6) — 18 Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighter
Scouting Six (VS-6) — 18 Douglas SBD-2 Dauntless dive bomber
Torpedo Six (VT-6) — 18 Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bomber
Enterprise Air Group
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Douglas DC-6
The Douglas DC-6 is a piston-powered airliner and transport aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1958. Originally intended as a military transport near the end of World War II, it was reworked after the war to compete with the Lockheed Constellation in the long-range commercial transport market.
More than 700 were built and many still fly today in cargo, military and wildfire control roles.
The DC-6 was known as the C-118 Liftmaster in United States Air Force service and as the R6D in United States Navy service prior to 1962, after which all U.S. Navy variants were also designated as the C-118.
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Shenyang F-6
The F-6 was a Chinese copy of the MiG-19S Farmer-C cannon-armed day fighter. From the late 1960s to the final batch in 1971, a total of more than 70 F-6s were reported delivered, equipping six squadrons at 3 bases, for both interceptor and attack duties. Some of the 1971 batch were late production F-6C version, featuring a prominent braking parachute housing at the base of the rudder.
A few FT-6 two-seat trainers also appear to have been supplied. The FT-6 wasn’t certified for production until December 1973, so these examples must have been delivered after this date. It is also reported that 4 F-6 aircraft are fitted with ventral cameras for the reconnaissance role – whether these are export versions of the JZ-6 or local conversions is not known.
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Beechcraft T-6 Texan II
Developed from the Pilatus PC-9, the Beechcraft T-6 Texan II is a single-engined turboprop aircraft built by the Raytheon Aircraft Company (now Hawker Beechcraft). The T-6 is used by the United States Air Force for basic pilot training and by the United States Navy for Primary and Intermediate Joint Naval Flight Officer (NFO) and Air Force Combat Systems Officer (CSO) training. It has replaced the Air Force’s T-37B Tweet and is replacing the Navy’s T-34C Turbo Mentor.
The T-6A is also used as a basic trainer by the Royal Canadian Air Force (CT-156 Harvard II), the German Air Force, the Greek Air Force, the Israeli Air Force (Efroni), and the Iraqi Air Force.
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AT-6
As well as being an initial trainer, the multirole Hawker Beechcraft AT-6 is capable of performing missions including: net-centric ISR with the ability for precise geo-registration, streaming video and datalinks, light attack including combat search and rescue (CSAR), close air support, forward air control and convoy escort, homeland defense (border security), port security, counter-narcotics operations and civil missions such as disaster area reconnaissance, search and rescue and firefighting. There are tandem HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick) controls fore and aft for pilot and instructor.
Hawker Beechcraft showcased the AT-6 at the Royal International Air Tattoo and Farnborough International Airshow in the UK in 2010.
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Fiat L6/40
The Fiat L6/40 was a light tank used by the Italian army from 1940 and on through World War II. It was designed by Fiat-Ansaldo as an export product, and was adopted by the Italian Army when officials learned of the design and expressed interest. It was the main tank employed by the Italian forces fighting on the Eastern Front alongside the L6/40-based Semovente 47/32 self-propelled gun. L6/40s were also used in the North African campaign.
The official Italian designation was Carro Armato (“armored tank”) L 6/40. This designation is understood as follows: “L” for Leggero (Italian: “light”), followed by the weight in tons (6) and the year of adoption (1940).
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Ordnance QF 6 pounder
The Ordnance Quick-Firing 6-pounder 7 cwt, or just 6 pounder, was a British 57 mm gun, their primary anti-tank gun during the middle of World War II, as well as the main armament for a number of armoured fighting vehicles.
It was first used in North Africa in April 1942, and quickly replaced the 2 pounder in the anti-tank role, allowing the 25 pounder to revert to its intended artillery role.
The United States Army also adopted the 6 pounder as their primary anti-tank gun under the designation 57 mm Gun M1.
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The Six Gun
Whilst not actually a firearm as such, the term ‘six gun’ or ‘six shooter’ is a general, if inaccurate, description of a revolver. The original name came from the fact that the majority of the early revolvers had a cylindrical bullet magazine that held six rounds of ammunition.
However, modern revolvers come in a variety of capacities including 5 round, 6 round, 8 round and 10 round. An example being the Smith & Wesson Model 617 is a 10 round capacity .22LR revolver shown below.
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Six Million
The Holocaust, also known by the Biblical word Shoah (which means calamity), was the mass murder or genocide of approximately six million Jews during World War II. Led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, it was part of a program of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi Germany throughout German-occupied territory.
Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed. Over one million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust, as were approximately two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men.
Some scholars argue that the mass murder of the Romani and people with disabilities should be included in the definition, and some use the term “holocaust” to describe other mass murders, including those of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, and homosexuals. Recent estimates based on figures obtained since the fall of the Soviet Union indicates some ten to eleven million civilians and prisoners of war were intentionally murdered by the Nazi regime.
The persecution and genocide were carried out in stages. Various laws to remove the Jews from civil society, most prominently the Nuremberg Laws, were enacted in Germany years before the outbreak of World War II. Concentration camps were established in which inmates were subjected to slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. Where Germany conquered new territory in eastern Europe, specialized units called Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews and political opponents in mass shootings. The occupiers required Jews and Romani to be confined in overcrowded ghettos before being transported by freight train to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in gas chambers. Every arm of Germany’s bureaucracy was involved in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar has called “a genocidal state”.
There are numerous Holocaust Memorials throughout the world, including in Jerusalem, Washington, and Berlin, Germany.
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However, it was not the German Nazis, but the Croatian Ustase who were responsible for some of the most bloody and sadistic crimes carried out against the Orthodox population in Croatia. Some of their crimes so heinous that they even appalled the Nazis.
The Ustaše committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children. The number of the Orthodox that the Croats massacred and sadistically tortured to death has been estimated at approximately three hundred thousand.
The legacy of the brutality of this genocidal campaign still affects the political situation in that part of Europe.
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Think it could never happen again? Don’t be too sure. In 1994 in Rwanda, Africa somewhere in the region of one million people were murdered by the Interahamwe death squads in a genocidal campaign. Local officials assisted in rounding up victims and making suitable places available for their slaughter. Tutsi men, women, children and babies were killed in thousands in schools. They were also killed in churches with the collusion of some clergy. The victims, in their last moments alive, were also faced by another appalling fact, namely that their cold-blooded killers were people they knew – neighbors, work-mates, former friends, sometimes even relatives through marriage.
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Finally, other stuff
There are said to be no more than ‘six degrees of separation’ between any two people on Earth.
Extra-sensory perception is sometimes called the ‘sixth sense’.
Six Cardinal Directions: north, south, east, west, up, and down.
The number of sides on a cube, hence the highest number on a standard die.
The highest number on one end of a standard domino.
‘Six’ is used as an informal slang term for the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, the one Ian Fleming’s fictious character James Bond works for.
Six is the number of cans of soda or beer in a ‘six-pack’.
A ‘six pack’ refers to the appearance of well developed stomach muscles.
The term ‘six pack’ also refers to the number of fundamental flight instruments lumped together on a cockpit display.
‘Six Flags’ is the name of a series of amusement parks and theme parks.
‘Six of the best’ is a slang term for corporal punishment particularly in schools where the offending pupil was given six slaps with a cane.
A ‘sixer’ is the name of the leader of the smallest group of Cub Scouts, traditionally consisting of six people.
Six is the number of feet below ground level where a coffin is traditionally buried, thus also leading to the phrase ‘six feet under’ meaning that a person, or thing, or concept is dead.
In the ancient Roman calendar, Sextilis was the sixth month. After the Julian reform, June became the sixth month and Sextilis was renamed August.
Sextidi was the sixth day of the decade in the French Revolutionary calendar.
‘L’Hexagone’ is a French nickname for the continental part of Metropolitan France.
A ‘hex nut’ is a nut with six sides, and a hex bolt has a six-sided head.
On most phones, the 6 key is associated with the letters M, N, and O, but on the BlackBerry it is the key for J and K, and on the BlackBerry 8700 series and Curve 8900 with full keyboard, it is the key for F.
The ‘6 meter band’ in amateur radio includes the frequencies from 50 to 54 MHz.
6 is the resin identification code used in recycling to identify polystyrene.
In Astrology, Virgo is the 6th astrological sign of the Zodiac.
There are six dots in a Braille cell.
The Six Dynasties form part of Chinese history.
6 is a lucky number in Chinese culture.
The unit of measurement used for the Great Pyramid was the inch and its sexagesimal multiples. The first multiple is the foot, 12 inches (2×6); and after this the rises are 18 (3 x 6), 24 (4×6), 30 (5 x 6), and 36 (6×6 or one yard).
Natural time-spaces are also based on multiples of six, there are 12 months in a year, a day consists of 24 hours (4 x 6), hours are 60 minutes (6×10), and minutes made up of 60 seconds (6×10).
They’ve been ‘beautiful’, they’ve been ‘big’ and they’ve been ‘unusual’. Today we have the number seven, another of what are known as ‘significant’ numbers, so-called because of their use and the beliefs surrounding them.
Enjoy.
7 Seven
The number seven is the most mystical of all numbers. It is considered by a great many people to be ‘lucky’.
It is a number that is mentioned many times in the Bible where it indicates perfection and has its roots in ancient Jewish history.
In the Old Testament for example,
The Creation established the pattern of a seven day week.
The seventh day was a day of rest.
Land was to lie fallow every seventh year to allow it to recover its nutrients.
Noah led the clean animals into the ark in sets of seven pairs for each species.
Solomon took seven years to build the temple in Jerusalem.
The Torah mentions that the Sabbatical, or holy year, occurred every seven years.
The Israelites were told to march around the walls of Jericho seven times, and their enemies would be defeated.
The symbolic Jewish candlestick has seven branches.
This view of the number seven continued in the New Testament.
A disciple asked Jesus, “How many times should we forgive our brethren?” Jesus replied, “70 times 7”.
Revelations 1:16 states, “He had in his right hand seven stars.”
Also in Revelations, the number of seals is seven.
And beyond the Bible, we find the number seven in other religions and societies.
The ancient Greeks considered the number seven to be lucky. They believed it to be the perfect number.
In ancient Egypt there were seven paths to heaven.
In ancient Babylon there were seven branches on their tree of life.
The Arabs carried on this belief and built seven holy temples.
The Goths made sure they worshiped the seven deities.
The Japanese also had seven gods. (In 1995, to celebrate the Japanese Emperor’s seven year reign 17 runners ran 7,777 meters round the imperial palace at 7 minutes past seven on the 7th day of the 7th month.)
The Chinese saw seven as the number governing female life.
Even the Scottish Masons made sure the number seven had relevance in their rites, and their aprons were made with seven tassels on them.
In the US too there are examples of the occurrence of the number seven.
The Founding Fathers declared independence from Britain during the seventh month.
There are seven articles to the US constitution.
And the city of Washington D.C. was built on the 77th longitude.
The number still occurs because of it being thought lucky such as the drink 7-Up and the Boeing airplanes which are always 7?7.
Then there are the Seven Wonders of the world.
The original seven wonders were:
Great Pyramid of Giza
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
Colossus of Rhodes
Lighthouse of Alexandria
(The earliest lists had the Ishtar Gate as the seventh wonder of the world instead of the Lighthouse of Alexandria.)
Map of the original Seven Wonders of the World
In 2001 an initiative was started by the Swiss corporation New7Wonders Foundation to choose the New7Wonders of the World from a selection of 200 existing monuments.
Twenty-one finalists were announced January 1, 2006. Egyptians were not happy that the only surviving original wonder, the Great Pyramid of Giza, would have to compete with the likes of the Statue of Liberty, the Sydney Opera House, and other landmarks, calling the project absurd. In response, Giza was named an honorary Candidate.
The results, announced on July 7, 2007, in Lisbon, Portugal, were:
Great Wall of China
Petra (Jordan)
Christ the Redeemer (Brazil)
Machu Picchu (Peru)
Chichen Itza (Mexico)
Colosseum (Italy)
Taj Mahal (India)
There have also been several atempts to compile a list of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. The main candidates include:
Grand Canyon
Great Barrier Reef
Harbor of Rio de Janeiro
Mount Everest
Aurora
Parícutin volcano
Victoria Falls
And, of course, in the field of entertainment the number seven has featured in several memorable movies, examples of which include:
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