MUCH-ABUSED NUMBER

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 82, 8 April 1931, Page 16

MUCH-ABUSED NUMBER

A correspondent writing- to the "Daily Telegraph" on the subject of had hick in numbers says: —"Is not V/oolley the luckiest and happiest village in Somerset? It contained at the time of the outbreak of the war 13 houses. Thirteen men went from Woolley to France, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, and 13 came back alive, thanks for which are recorded on a brass tablet in All Saints' Church. Dr. Nansen, the Arctic explorer, had every reason to believe in the luck of 13. That was the number of his party on the Frain. Bo left his ship for the North Pole on 13th March, 1895; the Fram broke from the ice on. 13th August of the following year, and Nansen himself arrived at Tromso on that date of a following month. A banquet in his honour was given by the Royal Geographical Society on 13th February, 1597, at which Nansen stated that on 13th Der.ember 13 pups tvero bora on board the Fram. So this much, at any rate, may be said for the "luck" of the muchabused number.*'