Sixty-One

[Content Disclosure: Life 61%; The World 61%; Nomenclature 61%; Klondikes 61%; Wheelbarrows 61%; Wombats 61%]

Today's post is brought to you by the number 61, the Community for Public Broadcasting and viewers like you.

Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other forty-one American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Martin Sheehan came in second with 56%.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Jan. 9-11, 2009 finds 34% of Americans approving of the overall job George W. Bush was doing as president and 61% disapproving. Those same 34% were seen to be consuming peanut butter and cheese crackers.

Sixty-one is the sum of two squares, 5² + 6², and it is also a centered square number, a centered hexagonal number and a centered decagonal number. It is also a Keith number, because it recurs in a Fibonacci-like sequence started from its base 10 digits: 6, 1, 7, 8, 15, 23, 38, 61... A Keith number has absolutely no application in the real world.


The chemical element with the atomic number 61 is promethium, is the element with the secondary lowest ordinal number, which does not possess any stable isotopes. Prometheus is a known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals for their use. Zeus then punished him for his crime by having him bound to a rock while a gryphon ate his liver every day only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day. The Gryphon was said to also be fond of fava beans.


The code for international direct dial phone calls to Australia is 61. But Skype is free to Brenda and Uma in the Blue Mountains West of Sydney.

61 years of age: Alice Cooper, James Taylor, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Steve Winwood, Elton John, David Letterman, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Arlo Guthrie

The Highway 61 Blues Festival occurs in June in Leland, Massachusetts. Highway 61 Revisited is a Bob Dylan album

At age 61, President Richard Nixon, resigned the presidency in 1974. He was succeed by Gerald Ford, also age 61. I used to celebrate this event annually until I realized there actually were worst things than Nixon as President. I know, for those of you old enough to remember The Dick, that is hard to believe, but true.

Oh and the picture at the top is a 61 zone zonohedro. No really!