Presenting the number 9

It's the last single-digit number in our counting system...and it's full of kooky surprises.


Nature

• It takes 9 months to make a human baby.
• A cockroach can live as long as 9 days without its head.
• Water expands by about 9 percent as it freezes.
• The common lady bug has 9 spots.

Culture

• Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies.
• There are 9 justices on the US. Supreme Court.
• Baseball has 9 players on a team and 9 innings in a game.
• Bart Simpson has 9 spikes of hair.

Language and literature

• In The Lord of Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, the race of men is given 9 rings of power.
• There are 9 circles, or levels , of hell in Dante's classic 14th-century poem The Inferno:

Limbo, Greed, Violence, Lust, Anger, Fraud, Gluttony, Heresy, Treachery.

Religion and Mythology

• In Christianity, there are 9 types of angels:

Seraphs, Cherubs, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, Ordinary angels.

• The ancient Greeks believed there were 9 muses (goddesses of inspiration):

Polyhymnia (sacred poetry), Thalia (comedy), Euterpe (lyric poetry), Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Urania (astronomy), Erato (love poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Terpsichore (dance and song).

The forbidden city:

Because the number 9 is considered lucky in China, Beijing's imperial palace known as the Forbidden City, has 9,999 rooms. It also has 9 gates, and in a 9 x 9 nail pattern. The emperors who lived there wore robes decorated with 9 dragons.