National Mathematics Day is marked every year on December 22. It marks the birth anniversary of Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. Born on December 22, 1887, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis. He even provided solutions to mathematical problems that were then considered unsolvable. Since the year 2012, his birth anniversary has been marked as the National Mathematics Day. So on this day, we give you some interesting and cool facts about the subject that you may have been completely fearing.

Not all of us were fond of Maths and numbers, equations, theorems can be distressing. Even the mention of complex number and calculations can drive us crazy, since we have grown hating on the subject so much. But as much as the numbers can cause anxiety, they can also be interesting. On National Mathematics Day 2019, we tell you 10 cool facts about the subject or numbers in general.

  • The term hundred depicts 100, but it comes from the word old Norse term, "hundrath", which actually means 120.

  • The word "Forty" is the only number spelling which is spelt with letters arranged in alphabetical order.

  • Every odd number has the letter 'e' in its spelling.

  • Multiplying ones will always give you results in palindromic numbers. For eg: multiply 111,111,111 × 111,111,111 you get 12,345,678,987,654,321 - a palindrome number that reads the same forwards or backwards.

    • If there is a room full of 23 people, there are 50% chances that two people have the same birthday.

    • The number 0 cannot be written in Roman numerals. And also, 0 is considered to be an even number.

    • 555 is a number used as a laugh in Thailand, that's because 5 is pronounced as "Ha"

  • A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

  • Abacus is said to be the invention of the calculator.

  • In 1997, an unwitting crew member onboard the USS Yorktown wrongly entered a zero into one of the ship's computers. Because of this the ship was stranded and unable to move for over two hours!

We hope the above facts help you to understand the subject and some of its terms a little better, or make you love Maths on a lighter note! Share these facts with your friends and wish them on this National Mathematics Day.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 22, 2019 08:30 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).