The number three

1. Take a look at the calendar: today is the third day of the third month of the third year of the third millennium. That's an awful lot of threes.

2. The last time anything similar happened was on February 2, 1002 - the year that King Aethelred II (or Ethelred) of England - named the "unraed" (mistranslated as unready) for his habit of taking bad advice - massacred his Danish citizens - provoking a Viking invasion by Svein Forkbeard.

3. Though the date 1,000 years and 18 days later was pretty interesting too: if you put the month after the day (20.02.2002) you got a numerical palindrome. Strict adherents to the month-day-year formula will have to wait until February 20, 2020 (02.20.2020) for such joy.

4. But back to the number three, which is for some a magic number. Lots of things come in threes: bad luck, buses, lions, wishes, blind mice, musketeers and porridge-eating bears.

5. And it's not just Goldilocks. Inspired by Aristotle, neo-classical playwrights subscribed to the three unities (place, time and action); many stories, especially fairy stories or folk tales, are in three parts, or have an element that is repeated three times - the same is true for powerful speeches and jokes (think Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman, or liberté, égalité and fraternité); and classical picture composition relies on its own rule of threes.

6. Three may seem to be a pleasing or natural number but unlike one, two, five or 10 it is not one that we can derive from our bodies. To have three eyes, or three legs, is unlikely; to have three fingers unfortunate.

7. But Earth is the third planet from the Sun, there are three primary colours and three dimensions to a solid object.

8. The number is also important in the Christian tradition: Christ represents one third of the trinity (the father, son and holy ghost), was visited by the three wise men and 33 years later - when Peter disowned him three times - rose on the third day after the crucifixion (he died at 3pm).

9. There were also 12 disciples, which is a multiple of three. As is nine (see beginning of this paragraph for a spooky coincidence).

10. Come back to this page on April 4, 3004 to find about the number four: the four elements, seasons, points of the compass, horse masters of the apocalypse, etc.