_____ The number forty. A brief explanation. _____
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The one thing that science, religion and literature can all agree on, is that forty is a special number. From a scientific aspect, it takes forty weeks for a baby to fully finish developing in the womb. It also took chemists forty attempts to develop the spray we know as WD-40 (full name: Water Displacement, 40th formula).
Language and literature prove it too, as forty is the only number in the English alphabet whose letters appear in alphabetical order. When the bubonic plague gripped Europe during the Middle Ages, ships would be isolated in harbor for forty days before passengers could go ashore. The Italian word for forty is quaranta-hence the term 'quarantine'. Forty is also the number of thieves Ali Baba clashes with in Arabian Nights.
In religion, forty seems to be shorthand for "a long time." Jesus spent forty days fasting in the wilderness being tempted by the devil; the great flood lasted forty days and forty nights; the Jewish people wandered the desert for forty years.
You decide for yourself. Do numbers supposedly bring ''luck", be it good, or bad, or are ''lucky numbers'' simply traditions without roots?
