(reproduced from my old website, ‘the Darkened corner’)

I was first enlightened abt 23 around 1991, during my ‘Throbbing Gristle is the ABSOLUTE BEST BAND IN THEE WORLD’ phase.. I had purchased a book called ‘Tape delay’ by Charles Neal & was reading the interview w/ Genesis P-Orridge, where he mentions his enslavement in the 23 phenomena. ‘Hm,’ I said, ‘that’s pretty byzarre..’ Naturally I mentioned it to my mates & they were like, ‘That’s bollocks, you can mention practikally any number & it’ll start cropping up everywhere you look’. I conceded that point, but soon after, 23s began popping up a lot W/OUT ME EVEN LOOKING FOR THEM. So I did a bit ov research into that accursed number & now submit my findings below, for yr perusal..

+ Serial killer Dennis Nilsen’s flat number
+ Age ov Kenneth Ockenden – Dennis Nilsen’s 2nd victim
+ Number ov times the Zodiac killer stabbed one ov his female victims
+ Age ov Manson Family member Charles Watson during the Tate/La Bianca murders
+ Number ov attacks by Peter Kürten in 1929
+ Length ov time in minutes ov the first spacewalk
+ Number ov distriks ov Tokyo
+ Number ov pairs ov chromosomes in a human haploid cell (egg or sperm)
+ Number ov atomik tests condukted at Bikini Atoll
+ Number ov viktims due to plane bomber/mass murderer Joseph Guay, 1949
+ Number ov people killed by mass murderer George Hennard; at a Luby’s restaurant in Texas
+ Infusium 23 – a shampoo
+ Age ov Vernon Butts, accomplice ov murderer William Bonin
+ Age ov Keryn Barnes, first victim ov Michael & Suzan Carson
+ Age ov Ian Curtis when he committed suicide

JANUARY Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born 1756. Sergei Eisenstein, born 1919.

FEBRUARY
+ 1584 Gutenberg Day
+ 1900 Steamer ‘Rio de Janiero’ sinks in San Francisco Bay
+ 1936 First rocket air mail flight, Greenwood Lake, NY
+ 1958 Last Municipal arc light, over intersection ov Mission & 25th St, San Francisco, CA, removed
+ 1960 Patent for Barbie filed
+ 1996 William Bonin becomes the first Californian inmate executed by lethal injection

MARCH Akira Kurosawa, movie director, born 1910. Werner von Braun, rocket scientist, born 1912
+ 1919 Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist movement in Milan, Italy
+ 1933 German Reichstag granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers
+ 1964 Gemini is the first spacecraft to change its orbit
+ 1965 Gemini 3 launched, the first US 2-man space flight

APRIL Joyce DeWitt (Janet from Three’s Company), born 1949.
+ 1753 St. George’s Day
+ 1871 Blossom Rock in San Francisco Bay blown up
+ 1896 First ‘moving pictures’ are shown on a public screen in New York called the VITASCOPE system
+ 1962 First American satellite to reach moon launched from Cape Canaveral
+ 1962 Marilyn Monroe scheduled to begin filming Something’s got to Give, her final film, but awakens w/ acute sinusitis
+ 1967 Russia launches first Soyuz mission
+ 1969 Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for killing Bobby Kennedy
+ 1972 Apollo 16 astronauts explore the surface ov the moon
+ 1985 Debut ov New Coke

MAY
+ 1430 Joan of Arc captured by Burgundians who sold her to the English
+ 1903 First automobile trip across US from SF to New York (ended April 1)
+ 1908 Dirigible explodes over SF Bay; 16 passengers fall, none die
+ 1934 Bonnie & Clyde killed in an ambush
+ 1945 Nazi Henrich Himmler commits suicide while in prison at Luneburg, Germany
+ 1949 West Germany was proclaimed
+ 1959 Marilyn Monroe offered screenplay for film The story on Page One
+ 1962 M. Monroe shoots swimming scene for Something’s got to Give in the nude
+ 1980 Funeral held for Ian Curtis

JUNE Alfred Kinsey, sexologist, born 1894. Alan Turing, pioneer in computer theory, born 1912
+ 1868 Christopher Latham Sholes patents Typewriter
+ 1938 Civil Aeronautics Authority (US) created
+ 1959 Marilyn Monroe operated on to relieve chronik endometriosis, resulting in abnormally painful menstrual periods
+ 1962 M. Monroe photographed in 1st ov 5 sessions for VOGUE by Bert Stern
+ 1985 Bomb destroys Air India Boeing 747 in the air, 329 die
+ 1991 S/D films shoots Hurtling metal flying bright petrol; also during the drive to Tammy’s place, Davecat goes the wrong direktion down I-94 and doesn’t realise it until the crew reach 23 mile
+ 1992 My Bloody Valentine performs at St Andrew’s; Detriot, Michigan

JULY Myra Hindley, born 1942. Dog Days.
+ 1798 Napoleon captures Alexandria, Egypt
+ 1829 The typewriter is patented
+ 1852 First interment in US National Cemetary at Presidio
+ 1904 The Ice cream cone is invented
+ 1918 first publik reading ov the Dada Manifesto by Tristan Tzara, in the ‘Meise’ in Zurich, Switzerland
+ 1937 Isolation ov pituitary hormone announced
+ 1972 ERTS 1 (Earth Resources Technology Satellite), later called LANDSAT, launched
+ 1980 Soyuz 37 ferries 2 cosmonauts (1 Vietnamese) to Salyut 6
+ 1997 Spree killer Andrew Cunanan commits suicide

AUGUST Barbara Eden, born 1934. River Phoenix, born 1970. Zeta Draconid meteor shower, radiant in Draco
+ 1617 The first one-way streets are established in London
+ 1927 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti executed in Massachusetts
+ 1957 Digital Equipment Corp. founded
+ 1966 Lunar Orbiter 1 takes first photograph of earth from the moon
+ 1973 Intelsat communications satellite launched

SEPTEMBER Jason Alexander (George from Seinfeld), born 1959. The first full day ov Fall.
+ 0000 63 B.C. Octavian (Augustus Caesar) made first Roman Emperor
+ 1846 Johann Galle and Heinrich d’Arrest find Neptune
+ 1877 Urbain J.J. Leverrier, codiscoverer ov Neptune, dies
+ 1956 First video recording on magnetic tape televised coast-to-coast
+ 1973 Largest known prime, 2 ^ 132,049 – 1, is discovered
+ 1976 Soyuz 22 returns to Earth
+ 1976 Malcolm McLaren founds Glitterbest, the Sex Pistols management company
+ 1977 Cheryl Ladd replaces Farrah Fawcett on ‘Charlie’s Angels’
+ 1977 Third test of the Space Shuttle Enterprise
+ 1998 Stereolab releases their ‘Dots and loops’ album

OCTOBER Karl Jansky, discoverer of cosmic radio emissions in 1932, born 1905. Diana Dors (in England), born 1931. Orionid meteor shower, radiant in Orion. Swallows leave San Juan Capistrano
+ 4004 BC The Day ov Creation (Sunday) as calculated by Archbishop James Ussher ov Armagh, Ireland, (circa 1650)
+ 1910 Blanche Scott became first woman solo a public airplane flight
+ 1915 25,000 women marched in NYC, demanding the right to vote
+ 1948 Marilyn Monroe receives first review for a film she appeared in
+ 1956 First video recording on magnetic tape televised coast-to-coast
+ 1973 President Nixon agrees to turn over White House tape recordings

NOVEMBER Dennis Nilsen, serial killer, born 1945. Billy the Kid (William H. Bonney), born 1859. Boris Karloff, born 1887. Vladislav N. Volkov, Soviet cosmonaut (Soyuz 7, 11) born 1935. John Kilbride, Brady/Hindley victim, killed 1963. Klaus Kinski died, 1991
+ 1852 Just past midnight, a sharp jolt causes Lake Merced to drop 30 feet
+ 1863 Patent granted for a process ov making color photographs
+ 1927 Murderer William Edward Hickman, under the alias Donald Evans, rents an apartment to commit killings in
+ 1948 Lens to provide zoom effects patented (F.G. Back)
+ 1988 25th Anniversary ov ‘Doctor Who’

DECEMBER Jean-Francois Champollion, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics, born 1790. Last day of Saturnalia
+ 1569 St. Philip ov Moscow martyred by Ivan the Terrible
+ 1672 Giovanni Cassini discovers Rhea, a satellite ov Saturn
+ 1690 John Flamsteed observes Uranus but doesn’t realize it’s undiscovered
+ 1947 Transistor invented by Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley in Bell Labs
+ 1953 M. Monroe flies to San Francisco to marry Joe DiMaggio
+ 1959 Murderer Patrick Byrne strangled his first victim
+ 1968 Borman, Lovell and Anders first men to orbit moon

+ The letter W is the 23rd letter in the alphabet & has 2 points down & 3 up
+ The first Apollo moon landing was at 23.63 degrees east; the second was at 23.42 degrees west
+ Shakespeare was born 23 April 1556 & died 23 Apr 1616
+ The human biorhythm cycle is set for 23 days
+ Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times by assassins
+ The US set off 23 atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll
+ According to Mayan prophecy, the world will end 23 Dec 2012
+ There are 23 chapters ov the Cult Awareness Network
+ Blood takes 23 seconds to circulate thru the human body
+ The Unabomber killed or wounded 23 people
+ Every 23rd wave crashing on a beach averages twice as large as normal
+ There are exaktly 23 numbers & letters on the face ov all US coins
+ The NY Yankees have won the World Series 23 times
+ The Nissan company takes its name from ‘ni’, Japanese for two, and ‘san’, which means three
+ Shakespeare was 46 (23×2) years old when the King James bible was published. Psalm 46 (23×2) has as its 46th word ‘shake’, and the 46th word from the end is ‘spear’

..so you see, 23 is associated w/ a myriad ov oddness.. 23 doesn’t appear as much in my day-to-day existence; at least, not as many eventful occasions have centred round that number. These daze I’ll glance at a clock & see it’s 23-past-wotever; that’s really the extent ov it. Yet & still, it’s a number to be reckoned w/.. (cue ominous musik)
Ov course, the list can always use new input. If you have any 23 fakts, don’t hesitate to send them in & I’ll add them to this mighty list..

in front ov Eye ov Horus, Pittsburgh, PA