Today is your lucky day.
If today is your birthday, you might feel especially lucky seeing as it’s the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year, or “777” if you’re the gambling type (and inclined to forgo the zeros usually found in the numeric expressions of dates). That said, it is not recommended that you walk under a ladder or in front of a bus. Why this particular three-digit number has achieved universal approbation as the luckiest number on earth is the font of much cultural conjecture. Suffice it to say, if calendars were jackpots, we would all be rich. So, you see, time is money.
The year 777 A.D. was uneventful for everyone except for perhaps Charlemagne and the Saxons he defeated. Likewise, it’s accepted among scholars of history that absolutely nothing of interest happened in 777 B.C. The first Olympic games had happened a year prior and King Agamestor of Athens was succeeded by his son Aeschylus the following year, but 777 was a total dud. Conventional wisdom suggests that ancient scribes would have recorded 777 B.C. as the dullest year in human experience had they not already been so bored of it. What about the numerically-loaded day 7, 7, 777? No one lifted a finger. This could be due to the cultural inertia accrued when July was known as Quintilis, the fifth month of the Roman calendar before being renamed for Julius Caesar. It was then bumped two months over when the brains behind the Gregorian calendar moved January to the number one spot. This would make today 5-7-7, which frankly doesn’t sound as lucky.
Of course, such date-themed phenomena happen at the beginning of every century. Remember last year when June 6 was thought in some circles to be the “Day of the Beast?” If it was indeed Beast Day, it seems he spent it at home – probably ruing that his day didn’t come one day, one month and one year later. Yep, some guys have all the luck.
