Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today Number Twenty-Seven 27

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Today is another numbers day and the randomly chosen number is twenty-seven. Were you  born on the 27th, is it your lucky number, has it some other significance for you or do you just like facts and trivia. Whatever your interest you will probably find something in here that you didn’t know about the number twenty-seven.

Enjoy.

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Number Twenty-Seven 27

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In religion

• There are six occurrences of 27th in the Bible: Genesis 8.14; I Kings 16.10, 16.15; 2 Kings 15.1, 25.27; Ezekiel 29.17
• God creates man “male & female” in the 27th verse in Genesis I;
• After the Flood, the earth was dried on the 27th day of the 2nd month (Genesis 8.14);
• In the 27th year the Lord gave Egypt to King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon;
• Book 27 of Proverbs has 27 verses;
• The New Testament is made up of 27 books;
• The Book of Revelation is the 27th Book and last book of the New Testament;
• John Calvin published Institutes of the Christian Religion when he was 27 years old (1536);
• Twenty-seven is the highest level of knowledge in rupaloke (Buddhism);
• In ancient Incan culture there were 27 roads to El Dorado.

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In mathematics

• An Octillion is 10²⁷ which is a 1 followed by 27 zeros
• Twenty-seven is a perfect cube, being 3 to the power of 3 or 3 × 3 × 3.
• Twenty-seven is the only positive integer that is 3 times the sum of its digits.

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In science

• The atomic number of Cobalt (Co) is 27
• The atomic weight of Aluminum (Al) is 27

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In space

• Solar rotation: The Sun rotates on its axis once in about 27 days;
• The 27th moon of Jupiter is Sinope.
• The planet Uranus has 27 moons
• Messier 27, the Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Apple Core Nebula, M 27, or NGC 6853) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula, at a distance of about 1,360 light years;

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• On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, he was 27 years old;

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• This is the official insignia of the NASA STS-27 mission. The patch depicts the space shuttle lifting off against the multi-colored backdrop of a rainbow, symbolizing the triumphal return to flight of our nation’s manned space program. The design also commemorates the memory of the crew of Challenger mission STS-51-L, represented by the seven stars. The names of the flight crew members of STS-27 are located along the border of the patch. They are astronauts Robert L. Gibson, commander; Guy S. Gardner, pilot; Jerry L. Ross, Richard M. (Mike) Mullane and William M. Shepherd, mission specialists. Each crew member contributed to the design of the insignia.

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In books, music, TV and movies

• Rudolph Valentino was 27 when he stared in film Blood and Sand;
• Sergei Eisenstein directs The Battleship Potemkin in 1925, aged 27;
• 27 year old Greta Garbo uttered the famous words, “I want to be alone” in film Grand Hotel in 1932;
• Errol Flynn (1909-1959) stars in film Charge of the Light Brigade (1936);

• Ingmar Bergman (born 7-14-1918) directs his first film Crisis (1945);
• Deanna Durbin, teenage star retires in 1949, aged 27, after her 22 film career;
• In the 1977 Carl Reiner movie Oh, God!, Jerry Landers (John Denver), a supermarket manager meets God (George Burns) on the 27th floor in Room 2700;
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard has made contact with twenty-seven species of aliens in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation;
• The following famous authors published these works when they were 27 years old: Jacob Grimm, Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1812-1815); George Sand, her first book, Indiana in 1831; Nikolai Gogol, The Inspector General in 1836 and Upton Sinclair, The Jungle in 1906;
• Famous Scottish poet Robert Burns publishes The Kilmarnock Poems in 1786, aged 27;
• Rupert Brooke was 27 when he wrote the poem “If I should die, think only this of me…” in 1914; he died the following year (1915) in World War I;

RupertBrooke

• Hugh Hefner (born 1926) publishes Playboy magazine (1953);
• In 1956, Grace Kelly was 27 years old when she retired from movies to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco;
• Aged 27 Julie Andrews starred in her first film Mary Poppins in 1963 and won an Oscar for the Best Actress (1964);

• January 27 is the birthday of Mozart 1756, Lewis Carroll 1832, and Jerome Kern 1885;
• When he is 27 years old Claude Debussy composes Claire de Lune in 1890;
• The 27 Club is the collective term used when talking about musicians and singers who all died at the age of 27: Robert Johnston, blues singer and musician; Brian Jones, founder member of the Rolling Stones; Janis Joplin, rock singer, from drugs overdose in 1970; Jimmy Hendrix, rock guitarist, died from drugs overdose in 1970; Jim Morrison, rock singer, from a heart attack in 1971; Kurt Corbain, rock singer, from drugs overdose in 1994; and Amy Winehouse, singer, from drink and drug overdose in 2011.

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In politics

• Florida became the 27th State to enter the Union (March 3, 1845)

• There are twenty-seven words in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution;
• The 27th President of the United States was William Howard Taft (1857-1930), who served (1909-1913). He later served as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1921-1930).

President William H Taft

• Taft was the heaviest president ever at 332 pounds, and famously got stuck in the White House bathtub. Subsequently he had an oversized version brought in for his use.
• William Howard Taft was the first president to own a car at the White House (he had the White House stables converted into a 4-car garage), the first to throw out the first ball to begin the professional baseball season, and the first president to be buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
• Arizona became a state on February 14, 1912, also making Taft the first President of the 48 contiguous states.
• Taft liked milk so much that he brought his own cow to the White House. The cows name was Mooly Wolly. Mooly was replaced by another cow called Paulin. Paulin was the last cow to graze on the White House lawn.
• During his administration, the U.S. parcel post system began, but sadly during his term Congress approved the 16th Amendment, providing for the levying of an income tax.

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In sport

• Carlton Fisk, Baseball Hall of Famer, wore uniform #27 while playing with the Boston Red Sox. Fisk waves his homer fair to win Game 6 of the 1975 World Series 7-6 in the 12th inning against the Cinncinati Reds.

Carlton Fisk

• The size of a tennis court for singles is 78 feet long and 27 feet wide.
• In tennis Bill Tilden (1893-1953) won his first Wimbledon tennis championship in 1920 at the age of 27 (he went on to win  it two more times in 1921 and 1930); he also won his first US Championship in 1920 aged 27 (and went on to win it six more times in 1921-25, and in 1929)

• At the age of 27, Bob Feller achieved a strike-out record of 348 batters; Sandy Koufax breaks his own NL strike-out record with 276 and also sets major-league record with 11 shut-outs for a left-hander;
• Dawn Fraser won the Olympic 100-meters freestyle swimming in 1964 aged 27.

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In militaria

• USS Suwannee (CVE-27)
• During WWII, USS Suwannee (CVE-27) (originally an oiler AO-33, converted to an escort carrier AVG/ACV/CVE-27) saw a great deal of active service and earned 13 battle stars.  She took part in the invasion of North Africa and during the Naval Battle of Casablanca from 8–11 November, Suwannee sent up 255 air sorties and lost only five planes, three in combat and two to operational problems. She was also the first escort carrier to score against the enemy undersea menace, and she helped to prove the usefulness of her type in anti-submarine warfare.
• Later the Suwannee was sent to the South Pacific. For the next seven months, she provided air escort for transports and supply ships replenishing and bolstering the marines on Guadalcanal, as well as for the forces occupying other islands in the Solomons group. She also participated in the Gilbert Islands operation as part of the Air Support Group of the Southern Attack Force, and her planes bombed Tarawa, while the ships in the Northern Attack Force engaged the enemy at Makin.
• During 1944 the Suwannee joined the Northern Attack Force, and her planes bombed and strafed Roi and Namur Islands, in the northern part of Kwajalein Atoll, and conducted antisubmarine patrols for the task force. By 30 March, she was in the vicinity of the Palau Islands as the 5th Fleet subjected those islands to two days of extensive bombing raids.
• On 24–25 October 1944, the Japanese launched a major surface offensive from three directions to contest the landings at Leyte Gulf. Suwanee was hit during the attacks but was able to resume air operations helped to fight off two more air attacks. Just after noon on 26 October, another group of kamikazes jumped Taffy 1. A Zero crashed into Suwanee’s flight deck at 1240 and careened into a torpedo bomber which had just been recovered. The two planes erupted upon contact as did nine other planes on her flight deck. The resulting fire burned for several hours, but was finally brought under control. The casualties for 25-26 October were 107 dead and 160 wounded.
• Suwannee remained in reserve at Boston for the next 12 years. She was redesignated an escort helicopter aircraft carrier, CVHE-27, on 12 June 1955. Her name was struck from the Navy List on 1 March 1959. Her hulk was sold to the Isbrantsen Steamship Company, of New York City on 30 November 1959 for conversion to merchant service. The project was subsequently canceled and, in May 1961, her hulk was resold to the J.C. Berkwit Company, also of New York City. She was finally scrapped in Bilbao, Spain, in June 1962.

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• MIG-27
• The Mikoyan MiG-27 is a variable-geometry ground-attack aircraft, originally built by the Mikoyan design bureau in the Soviet Union and later license-produced in India by Hindustan Aeronautics as the Bahadur (“Valiant”). It is based on the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 fighter aircraft, but optimized for air-to-ground attack. Unlike the MiG-23, the MiG-27 did not see widespread use outside Russia, as most countries opted for the MiG-23BN and Sukhoi Su-25 instead. It currently only remains in service with the Indian, Kazakh and Sri Lankan Air Forces in the ground attack role. All Russian and Ukrainian MiG-27s have been retired.
• It was used by Soviet forces during the later stages of the Afghanistan conflict in 1987–1989.
• The MiG-27 aircraft also entered service with the Sri Lanka Air Force in 2000. During the Sri Lankan Civil War, they saw considerable action bombing strategic targets and providing close air support.
• Since 2001, the Indian Air Force has lost 12 MiG-27s to crashes and in mid-February 2010, India grounded its entire fleet of over 150 of the aircraft after a MiG-27 crashed on 16 February 2010 in Siliguri, West Bengal. The crash was attributed to defects in the R 29 engines of the aircraft, suspected to have occurred during the overhauling of the aircraft by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
• The MiG-27 remains in service with the Kazakh Air Force.

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• Alenia C-27J
• The Alenia C-27J Spartan is a medium-sized military transport aircraft. The C-27J is an advanced derivative of Alenia Aeronautica’s G.222, with the engines and systems of the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules.

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• CZ 27
• The CZ-27, a single action semiautomatic pistol with a capacity of 8 or 9 rounds, was developed in around 1926 by Czech arms designer Frantisek Myska in an attempt to produce simplified version of the CZ Vz.24 pistol, chambered for less powerful 7.65×17 SR Browning ammunition (also known as .32 ACP) and suited for police and security use.
• It was put into production in 1927, at arms factory in Praha. Until the appearance of the famous CZ-75 pistol, the CZ-27 was one of the most successful handguns produced in Czechoslovakia, with well over 500 000 guns of this type produced between 1927 and 1951. During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia it was manufactured for German armed forces and police as Pistole model 27, or P.27(t) in short. It was extensively used by Czechoslovak police and security forces, and widely exported to many parts of the world.

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• OTs-27 “Berdysh” pistol
• Originally developed by the TSKIB SOO (central design bureau for sporting and hunting arms, Tula, Russia, later merged with famous KBP design bureau) the OTs-27 “Berdysh” is a Double Action semiautomatic 9 mm pistol with a capacity of 18 rounds. It was developed for “Grach” trials, with the goal being the replacement for the venerable Makarov PM as a standard issue sidearm for Russian army. The  OTs-27 was subsequently dropped from the Grach trials, but the development continued and the pistol first appeared circa 1994.

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Other stuff

• Cities located at 27 degrees longitude are Lajes, Azores and Izmir, Turkey;
• Cities located at 27 degrees latitude are Brisbane, Australia and Katmandu, Nepal;
• There are 27 bones in the human hand;
• The Hebrew alphabet consists of 27 letters;
• Napoleon was named commander of the army of Italy during his 27^th year, on March 2, 1796;

• Elias Howe invents the first sewing machine in 1846 when he was 27 years old;
• When he was aged 27 F.W. Woolworth founded Woolworth Co. (1879) selling 5¢ and 10¢ merchandise;
• There are 27 small cubes in a Rubik’s cube;

• In 1806, aged 27, Zebulon M. Pike discovers Pike’s Peak, Colorado;
• At the age of 27, Captain Matthew Webb was the first person to swim the English Channel in 1875. He took 21 hours 43 minutes for the distance of 21 miles. Sadly eight years later, aged 35, Webb drowned while trying to swim across the waters above Niagara Falls in an attempt to exploit his fame as a swimmer. A memorial stone to Webb carries this inscription: “Nothing Great Is Easy”.

• John Smith was 27 years old when he led the first English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607; he was saved from death by Pocohontas.

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Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today Number Forty-Two 42

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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They’ve been ‘beautiful’,  they’ve been ‘big’  and they’ve been ‘unusual’.  Today we have another  ‘significant’ number, forty-two, so-called because of its use and the beliefs surrounding it.

Enjoy.

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42 Forty-Two

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In Religion

• In Japanese culture, the number 42 is considered unlucky because the numerals when pronounced separately — “shi ni” (four two) — sound like the phrase, “unto death”;
• There are 42 principles of Ma’at, the Ancient Egyptian personification of physical and moral law, order, and truth. In the judgement scene described in the Egyptian and the Book of the Coming/Going Forth by Day, there are 42 gods and goddesses of Egypt, personifying the principles of Ma’at. These 42 correspond to the 42 Nomes (Governmental Units) of Egypt. If the departed successfully answers all 42, s/he becomes an Osiris;
• 42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabbalistic tradition; 
• In Judaism, the number (in the Babylonian Talmud, compiled 375 AD to 499 AD) of the “Forty-Two Lettered Name” ascribed to God. Rab (or Rabhs), a 3rd century source in the Talmud stated “The Forty-Two Lettered Name is entrusted only to him who is pious, meek, middle-aged, free from bad temper, sober, and not insistent on his rights”. 
• 42 is a sacred Tibetan number and there is also a 42 armed Hindu God;
• The first book to be printed with movable type, the Gutenberg Bible, is also known as the “42-line Bible”, as the book contained 42 lines per page;
• The Forty-Two Articles (1552), largely the work of Thomas Cranmer, were intended to summarise Anglican doctrine, as it now existed under the reign of Edward VI..

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In The Bible

• Forty Two, 3½ and 1260 – this is the amount that is given to the wicked or for people to bear fruit. Judgment occurs at the end. It is based on the law that God only expects results after the third year of planting (Leviticus 19: 23-25);
• This time period appears in many prophecies as 1260 days, 42 months or 3½ years. It is the period that God allows the beast to operate. Notice that this is equal to 6 x 7 months. It is man’s portion of the jubilee cycle; 
• Two female bears kill forty two children after they ridiculed the prophet of God. 2 Kings 2: 24; 
• 42 Cities are given to the Levites in addition to six cities of refuge (Numbers 35: 6); 
• 42 men of Beth-azmaveth were counted in the census of men of Israel upon return from exile (Ezra 2:24); 
• Israel camped 42 times in the wilderness during the 40 year exodus. 
• The goat’s hair and linen curtains covering the sanctuary have a length of 42 and 40 cubits. 
• Jesus was forty two generations from Abraham. (Matthew 1).

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In Mathematics

• 42 is the product of the first three terms of Sylvester’s sequence; like the first five such numbers it is also a primary pseudoperfect number;
• 42 is a partition number – the number of different ways 10 can be represented as the sum of natural numbers;
• 42 is a Størmer number;
• 42 is a perfect score on the USA Math Olympiad (USAMO) and International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).

Simple Magic Cube adding to 42

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In Science

• 42 is the atomic number of molybdenum;
• 42 is the value of the angle rounded to whole degrees for which a rainbow appears (the critical angle);
• In 1966, mathematician Paul Cooper theorized that the fastest, most efficient way to travel across continents would be to bore a straight hollow tube directly through the Earth, connecting a set of antipodes, evacuate it (remove the air), and then just fall through. The first half of the journey consists of free-fall acceleration, while the second half consists of an exactly equal deceleration. The time for such a journey works out to be 42 minutes. Remarkably, even if the tube does not pass through the exact center of the Earth, the time for a journey powered entirely by gravity (also known as Gravity train) always works out to be 42 minutes, as long as the tube remains friction-free, as while gravity’s force would be lessened, so would the distance traveled at an equal rate. (The same idea was proposed, without calculation by Lewis Carroll in 1893 in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.)

Gravity Train Concept

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In Technology

• The glyph, or character, corresponding to the number 42 in the ASCII character set, is *, the asterisk, commonly known as the wildcard character;
• In the TIFF image file format, the second 16-bit word of every file is 42, which is used together with the first word to indicate byte order;
• In the reiser4 file system, 42 is the inode number of the root directory;
• In the military IRIG 106 Chapter 10 data recording standard, the hex value 0x464F52545974776F (ASCII “FORTYtwo”) is used as a magic number to identify directory blocks;
• The GNU C Library, a set of standard routines available for use in computer programming, contains a function—memfrob()—which performs an XOR combination of a given variable and the binary pattern 00101010 (42) as an XOR cipher;
• 42 is the result given by the web search engines Google and Wolfram Alpha when the query “the answer to life the universe and everything” is entered as a search.

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In Space

• Messier object M42, a magnitude 5.0 diffuse nebula in the constellation Orion, also known as the Orion Nebula;
• The New General Catalogue object NGC 42, is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus;
• In January 2004, asteroid 2001 DA42 was given the permanent name 25924 Douglasadams, for the author Douglas Adams who popularized the number 42 and died in 2001; 
• Kepler-42, is a red dwarf in the constellation Cygnus around which orbits the three smallest exoplanets found to date.

Messier-42 also known as the Orion Nebula

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In Politics

• The 42nd President of the Unites States of America was Democratic Party William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton, from January 20, 1993 to January 20, 2001. Vice President was Al Gore. Remembered more for ‘blow-jobs’ in the White House, Clinton’s Presidency also oversaw the disastrous Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, that repealed the parts of the Glass–Steagall Act which had not already been repealed. This 1999 Act took down barriers to competition between traditional banks, investment banks, and insurance companies, in some cases allowing firms to participate in all three markets thus making distinctions between these categories less clear. It has been held largely responsible for the current financial crisis. 

Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of America

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In Sport

• 42 is the jersey number of Jackie Robinson, which is the only number retired by all Major League Baseball teams. Although the number was retired in 1997, Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees, the last professional baseball player to wear number 42, is currently still using it;
• 42 is the jersey number of basketball Hall of Famer and one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History James Worthy, small forward for the Los Angeles Lakers, who retired his jersey number in 1995;
• 42 is the jersey number of football Hall of Famer, Ronnie Lott, safety for the San Francisco 49ers, who retired his jersey number in 2003;
• 42 is the jersey number of Chicago Bears legend Sid Luckman, which was retired by the Bears; 
• 42 is the jersey number of Pat Tillman, which was retired on November 13, 2004 by Arizona State University; 
• 42 is the number of laws of cricket;
• 42 is the number of kilometers in a marathon;
• 42 is the number of a NASCAR car owned by Earnhardt Ganassi Racing. It is currently being driven by former F1 star and Indy 500 champion Juan Pablo Montoya;

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In Militaria

• XB-42
• The most notable aircraft with the 42 designation was the XB-42 ‘Mixmaster’. This aircraft was developed initially as a private venture and an unsolicited proposal was presented to the United States Army Air Forces in May 1943 which resulted in an Air Force contract for two prototypes and one static test airframe, the USAAF seeing an intriguing possibility of finding a bomber capable of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress’ range without its size or cost.
• The aircraft was unusual in design in that it had a pair of Allison V-1710-125 liquid-cooled V-12 engines mounted behind the crew’s cabin, each driving one of the twin propellers which protruded from the rear of the aircraft’s fuselage. The pilot and co-pilot sat under twin bubble canopies, and the bombardier sat in the extreme front behind a plexiglass nose.
• The first XB-42 was delivered to the Army Air Force and flew at Palm Springs, California on 6 May 1944. Performance was excellent, being basically as described in the original proposal; as fast or faster than the de Havilland Mosquito but with defensive armament and twice the bombload. The twin bubble canopies proved a bad idea as communications were adversely affected and a single bubble canopy was substituted after the first flight, a problem that could have been rectified, but the end of World War II changed priorities and the advent of the jet engine gave an alternative way toward achieving high speed.

XB-42 ‘Mixmaster’ and model

 

• AG-42
• The AG-42 rifle (official designation Halvautomatiskt Gevaer 42) was developed by Swedish engineer Erik Eklund while working at company C. J. Ljungman AB. Officially adopted by Swedish army in 1942, this rifle served in Sweden until mid-1960s, when it was replaced in service with 7.62mm AK-4 rifle (license-build HK G3 rifle).

AG-42B Rifle

 

• MKb.42
• In 1939 HWaA (Hitler’s army Weapons command) issued a contract for the development of a “Maschinen karabiner”, or machine carbine (MKb for short), chambered for the new 7.92×33 Kurz cartridge, to the company C.G. Haenel Waffen und Fahrradfabrik.
• The famous designer Hugo Schmeisser led the Haenel development team, which produced the first working prototypes of new weapon by 1942. The new weapon was intended as a replacement for submachine guns, bolt action rifles and, partly, light machine guns for front troops. The MKb.42(H) could be fitted with standardbayonet, and has a wooden butt. 

mkb 42h-1 ri

 

• MG 42
• A cheaper to produce but much more reliable replacement for the MG 34, the MG 42 was officially adopted as the MG 42, and production commenced in 1941.
• In general terms, the MG 42 was a great success. It fulfilled the roles of a light machine gun on a bipod, a medium machine gun (on a newly developed Lafette 42 tripod), and an anti-aircraft machine gun, mounted in single and twin installations, ground and vehicle-mounted. 
• After the WW2 the MG 42, unlike other wartime designs, lived on, as in 1958, the FRG (WestGermany) re-instituted its official armed force, known as the Bundeswehr. 
• The simplicity, low manufacturing cost and high effectiveness of the MG 3 attracted several other countries, which either bought the guns from Rheinmetall (such as Denmark), or obtained manufacturing licenses and build (or at least have built in the past) the same guns domestically (such as Italy, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Yugoslavia). In total, at least twenty armies have used or still are using the MG 3 and its versions.

mg42 machine gun

 

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In Books, Movies & TV

• The 42nd Parallel is the first of a trilogy of books, (the others being 1919, and The Big Money), written by John Dos Passos and acclaimed by many to be the great American novel;
• English author Douglas Noel Adams popularized the number 42 in his best known work called the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. The number 42 and the phrase, “Life, the universe, and everything” have attained cult status on the Internet. If you type the answer to life, the universe and everything into Google (without quotes or capitalising the small words), the Google Calculator will give you 42; also, if you go to Wolfram’s Computational Knowledge Engine and type “answer to life, the universe, and everything”, it provides you with the result 42. Microsoft’s Bing search engine will also give you 42. Alphasmart 3000’s calculator, when given any equation that results in 42, will display, “The answer to life, the universe, and everything”. In the online community “Second Life,” there is a section on a sim called “42nd Life”;
• In the Stargate Atlantis Season 4 episode “Quarantine”, 42 are the last two digits in Rodney McKay’s password. After John Sheppard explains to Teyla the meaning of the previous twelve digits, she asks him what 42 is. Then, John says, “It’s the ultimate answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything,” at which point Teyla looks confused;
• In the TV show Lost, 42 is the last of the mysterious numbers, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42;
• In Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Alex browses through records in a record store and we see a record of the, at this time fictional, band Level 42;
• “42” is an episode of Doctor Who, set in real time lasting approximately 42 minutes;
• “The Kumars at No. 42” is the name of a 2003 BBC television series; 
• A made for TV movie 42: Forty Two Up – an installment in a series of documentaries wherein the director revisits the same group of British-born individuals every 7 years;
• On the game show Jeopardy!, “Watson” the IBM supercomputer, has 42 “threads” in its avatar;
• On the Unusuals TV-show there’s an episode called “42”. Detective Leo Banks recently turned 42. On account of his father, uncle, and grandfather dropping dead at 42, Leo is convinced he’ll share their fate. There were 42s all over the episode.

42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos

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Other Stuff

• In New York City, 42nd Street is a main and very popular two-way thoroughfare. Landmarks on it include the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, the main branch of the New York Public Library, and Times Square; 
• Tower 42, originally called the NatWest Tower because it was built for the National Westminster Bank, is the tallest skyscraper in the city of London and the fifth tallest in London as a whole;
• +42 is the historic Country calling code for the former country of Czechoslovakia; 
• 42 is the number of US gallons in a barrel of oil;
• 42 is the number of spots (or pips, circular patches or pits) on a pair of standard six-sided dice;
• 42 is a free tabloid devoted to technology news in Huntsville, Alabama. It is published by the Huntsville Times and is named for “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”;
• Fictional comic book superhero Miles Morales is bitten by a genetically altered spider with a red 42 marked on its abdomen. Morales later assumes the role of Spider-Man as a result of the bite and following the death of Peter Parker in the Ultimate Marvel universe from Marvel Comics. Morales also wins a coveted spot in a prestigious charter school after his number (42) is chosen during a lottery.

Miles Morales Spiderman