What’s special about 53?…

• Fifty-three  is the 16th prime number. It is also an Eisenstein prime, and a Sophie Germain prime.
• The sum of the first 53 primes is 5830, which is divisible by 53, a property shared by few other numbers.
• 53 written in hexadecimal is 35, that is, the same characters used in the decimal representation, but reversed. Four additional multiples of 53 share this property: 371 = 173₁₆, 5141 = 1415₁₆, 99481 = 18499₁₆, and 8520280 = 0820258₁₆. Apart from the trivial case of single-digit decimals, no other number has this property.
• 53 cannot be expressed as the sum of any integer and its base-10 digits, making 53 a self number.
• 53 is the smallest prime number that does not divide the order of any sporadic group.

I have no idea what any of that means… so let’s try something else…

• The racing number of  Herbie, a fictional Volkswagen Beetle  with a mind of his own, first appearing in the 1968 film The Love Bug
• The code for international direct dial phone calls to Cuba
• In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and its animated TV special the Grinch says he’s put up with the Whos’ Christmas cheer for 53 years.
• Fictional 53rd Precinct in the Bronx was found in the TV comedy “Car 54, Where Are You?”
• 53 More Things To Do In Zero Gravity is a book mentioned in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• The maximum number of players on a National Football League roster.

More my speed. The most important thing is today, July 1, is our 53rd wedding anniversary.

Old Bill Shakespeare said it well: ‘To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. ‘

Betty, in my eyes you are now as you were when I first laid eyes upon you in Mr. Gregory’s chemistry class. Your beauty today is deeper and more beautiful than it was when I first saw you.

I am a blessed man.