Seven

Today is July 7th, 2007 -- or 7/7/07 -- as is duly noted by today's NW. So in honor of what is apparently the luckiest day in the history of chronology here are some bitching facts about the number seven:

* The Bolans of West Africa used for reckoning a kind of heptal (base-7) positional notation system.

* In Japan, the word shi means 'death'. In some cases nana ('7' in early classical Japanese) replaces the word shichi ('7', in modern Japanese) because it contains shi.

* In Dante's 14th century work, The Divine Comedy, the seventh circle of hell is guarded by the Minotaur and receives, among others, the violent, blasphemers and Sodomites.

[Pretty much these are all ripped off verbatim from places that can be found here, here, and here.]