19th January: The number 19

10 things you didn't know about the number 19:

1. 19 is the 8th prime number. It's also the fifth "happy number". A happy number is one where if you take the sum of the squares of its digits, then take the sum of the digits of the resulting number, and keep going, eventually the number will reach 1, or keep going in an endless loop with no 1. The numbers which end in 1 are happy numbers.
2. 19 is the atomic number of Potassium.
3. According to the Qur'an, there are 19 angels guarding Hell. Also in the Qur'an, the birth of Jesus is announced at the reference Qur'an 19:19.
4. In golf the "19th hole" is the clubhouse bar.
5. 19 is the name of Adele's 2008 debut album, so named since she was 19 years old at the time.
6. It is also the title of a song by Paul Hardcastle, released in 1985, based around the statistic that 19 was the average age of soldiers killed in the Vietnam war.
7. 19 is the legal age for buying cigarettes in Alabama, Alaska, New Jersey, Utah and parts of New York; for buying alcohol in most of Canada, and for getting married in Nebraska.
8. Nineteen is an unincorporated community located in Ohio County, Kentucky, United States. The nineteenth President of the United States was Rutherford B. Hayes. The nineteenth state to enter the Union of the United States was Indiana.
9. The game of Go is played on a grid of 19×19 lines.
10. There is no combination of cards in a hand of cribbage that adds up to 19 points. Hence in cribbage, "19 points" is a joking reference to scoring nothing at all.

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