I'm the seventh in a line of Thomas Walter Murphys. My dad is the sixth, my grandfather is the fifth, etc. etc. The first Thomas Walter Murphy died in a concentration camp in the Civil War (he fought for the North... wahoo!). Seven has long been held to be a lucky number, which is one of the reasons why I am confused as to why I often seem to have terrible luck. One of these reasons may be this:

           THOMAS ... 6 letters
           WALTER ... 6 letters
           MURPHY ... 6 letters

666. Perhaps that explains it. Of course, my Dad^TM is the sixth himself, so he is 666 the sixth, which is so terribly unlucky that he has to glue broken mirrors back together every morning just to make it through the day. You can get another notoriously unlucky number, 13, by doing the following:

          TOM    ... 3 letters
          W      ... 1 letter
          MURPHY ... 6 letters
          VII    ... 3 letters
                 -----
                    13 total letters

Or even:

          THOMAS ... 6 letters
          W      ... 1 letter
          MURPHY ... 6 letters
                 -----
                    13 total letters

Look at all this unluck associated with my name!

Regardless of all this, seven happens to be a somewhat interesting number. It is prime, and also the highest prime digit. There are seven "deadly sins". It is the only digit with a two syllable name (besides zero, which doesn't count because it's zero). I think Halley's Comet comes around every 7 years^*. There are 7 days in a week. Liza Wallis from England reports, "There are seven planets in our Solar System. Well, ok, there were seven until Neptune and Pluto were discovered, but at least I tried." Miki says that Libra is the 7th sign of the zodiac, which is interesting, since I am a Libra. Cory, a poor old soul whose sense of humor was torn from him, notes that "7 is the number of rounds a Colt model 1911 .45 Auto holds in its magazine. The US military used the 1911 as the standard-issue sidearm from 1911 until 1988 - 77 years later. (I *might* be wrong about the 1988 part but I think that's right.)"

(If you can think of any other interesting things about seven, or you are a seventh yourself, please Write Me! Well, actually, I'd prefer if it were clever, so uh, give it some thought.)

^* Okay, so this is entirely untrue.

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