16 November: 16

On the sixteenth day of the month, 10 things you might not know about the number 16.

1. Ever wondered why there are sixteen ounces in a pound? It's to do with sixteen being the fourth power of two, and the old fashioned way of weighing grains using a balance scale. Splitting a heap of grain, flour or rice into sixteen equal portions was much easier using this method than splitting things into ten parts. In China, too, there were sixteen liangs in a jin.
2. Sixteen is the atomic number of sulphur.
3. In Belgium, Sixteen is a colloquial term used to refer to the government or the Prime Minister, because the official seat of the Belgian federal government is located on 16, rue de la Loi in Brussels. It's similar to 'Number Ten' being used to refer to the Prime Minister in the UK.
4. Each player in a game of Chess starts with sixteen pieces. A chess set has sixteen pawns.
5. Sixteen is the minimum age in the UK to be allowed to have sex or marry with parental consent. That may be why reaching sixteen, especially for girls, has become a kind of coming of age, especially in the US, inspiring songs like Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, You're Sixteen, Sweet Little Sixteen and Sixteen Candles.
6. Numbers on most bank cards have sixteen digits.
7. The longest lived spider in the world was called Number 16. She was a wild female trapdoor Spider who lived in North Bungulla Reserve near Tammin, Western Australia. She died in 2016 at the age of 43. However, it's thought she died from a parasitic wasp sting rather than of old age.
8. There are unincorporated communities in both Montana and Kentucky which are called Sixteen.
9. Sixteen is a Polish band who represented Poland in the 1998 Eurovision song contest. There's also a choir in the UK called The Sixteen.
10. In numerology, people whose number is sixteen are strong willed and analytical with a need to study and understand everything. If you see the number sixteen often, angelologists say this is a reminder that your destiny depends on your thoughts and action.

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